A string of killings across America — including the stabbing death of a landlord in Vallejo, a deadly shootout in Vermont and the massacre of a married couple in Pennsylvania — are seemingly connected by a fringe group led by an elusive leader in the Bay Area.
In Vermont and California, two suspects appeared in court this week facing criminal charges.
Oxford-educated data scientist Maximilian Snyder, 22, was charged in Solano County with the murder of Vallejo landlord Curtis Lind. In Vermont, 21-year-old data scientist Teresa Youngblut was charged in connection with the killing of a Border Patrol agent in a shootout near the Canadian border.
It has now been revealed that Snyder and Youngblut recently applied for a marriage license.
The connection, though, appears to run deeper than a marriage proposal: The couple has ties to a fringe online group named the Zizians.
The namesake of the group, Ziz, has been accused of making death threats on forums promoting a radical form of Rationalism, which discusses the ethics of veganism, artificial intelligence destroying humanity and using scientific techniques to enhance human decision-making.
A recent Open Vallejo investigation identified Ziz as Jack LaSota, a former tenant at a property on Third Street in Vallejo, where a samurai sword attack in 2022 left tenant Emma Borhanian, 31, dead and landlord Curtis Lind without an eye.
Lind was stabbed to death at the property earlier this month before he could testify in the trial related to the 2022 attack.
In November 2019, LaSota, Borhanian, Gwen Danielson and Alexander Leatham went to Westminster Woods, a children’s outdoor camp in Occidental, wearing Guy Fawkes-style masks.
According to their attorney at the time, they were protesting the “coverup of child molestation by one or more people”; it is not clear who this refers to, or if there are credible allegations of child molestation related to the location.
During the protest, the four were arrested by deputies from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, and as a result of those arrests, they later filed a lawsuit alleging they were tortured and sexually assaulted while in custody.
On Feb. 17, 2023, the group’s attorney, Jerold Friedman, was granted a remarkable motion by the court.
He had asked to withdraw from the case due to the fact that three of the four clients were definitely or possibly deceased.
First was Borhanian, who was killed during the alleged assault on Lind in Vallejo.
The second was Danielson. Friedman wrote that he had last heard from her on Jan. 21, 2022.
Three months later, he “heard a rumor” that she may have killed herself.
“On September 9, 2022, I received an e-mail apparently from a friend of Gwen Danielson that asked if I can share anything about her rumored suicide,” he wrote.
“Taken at face value, the e-mail confirms that Gwen Danielson is missing from her friends.
“I have no information on whether Gwen Danielson is alive and, if she is alive, where she might be.”
Finally, there was LaSota. According to Friedman, he received a phone call in August 2022 from LaSota’s defense attorney in a separate criminal case.
That attorney told Friedman that LaSota fell from a boat in San Francisco Bay and was likely dead.
When Friedman reached out to LaSota’s mother, she also “confirmed that Jack LaSota died.”
Friedman obtained the U.S. Coast Guard report on LaSota’s apparent drowning, which was submitted in evidence to the court.
According to the Coast Guard, LaSota went overboard at approximately 11 p.m. on Aug. 19, 2022.
A map from the Coast Guard depicts LaSota’s last known location as precisely at the midpoint between Oakland Airport and Candlestick Point.
Despite hours of searching — and calm seas, clear weather and a 60-degree night — no trace of LaSota was found.
An obituary posted to Legacy.com appeared not long after, stating only that LaSota “left our lives but not our hearts on Aug. 19 after a boating accident.
“Loving adventure, friends and family, music, blueberries, biking, computer games and animals, you are missed.”