Police arrest alleged leader of cultlike 'Zizian' group once declared dead in Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The apparent leader of a cultlike group who was once declared dead in San Mateo County is now in jail being held without bail.
Court records show Jack "Ziz" LaSota was declared legally dead by her family in 2022, who believed she fell into the San Francisco Bay.
LaSota, 34, of Berkeley is now facing gun and trespassing charges after being arrested in Maryland.
The group called the "Zizians" has ties to multiple homicides spanning three states including one killing in Vallejo in January.
A judge ordered LaSota held without bail citing concerns about her being a flight risk and a danger to public safety.
RELATED: Timeline of activities of cultlike group tied to Bay Area, multiple killings across US
Maximilian Snyder was accused of murdering his landlord, Curtis Lind, in Vallejo on January 17.
Police believe the motive was to keep Lind from testifying that two of his former tenants tied to the "Zizians" attacked and nearly killed him two years earlier.
Days after the Vallejo killing, another alleged member of the group was accused of killing a U.S. Border Patrol Agent during a traffic stop in Vermont.
Investigators say the gun used in the Vermont shooting has been linked to the killings of Richard and Rita Zajko in 2022.
Police in Maryland arrested their daughter on Sunday along with LaSota on gun and trespassing charges.
RELATED: Vallejo murder suspect applied for marriage license with woman charged in Border Patrol shooting
Online writings from the group -- span multiple anarchist theories, including radical veganism -- where they look to end the human consumption of animals.
LaSota published a dark and sometimes violent blog under the name Ziz and, in one section, described her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and "often desire to kill each other."
LaSota, who used she/her pronouns, and in her writings says she is a transgender woman, railed against perceived enemies, including so-called rationalist groups, which operate mostly online and seek to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge. Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
For the last five years, UC Berkeley Associate Professor Poulomi Saha has taught the growing course Cults in Popular Culture.
"It is actually not so secretly a philosophy class so it's a class that really asks about one- why we're so obsessed with cults," Saha said.
Saha said what we associate with that word has changed with the internet.
"The internet is so diffuse that it's really hard to pinpoint both connections between people and the kind of causality that especially in a legal case you might want," Saha said.
Saha said for the case involving former Bay Area residents, referring to the group as a cult may be oversimplifying a complicated situation.
"It is these tenuous connections that are holding together a story of many people acting seemingly under the control or influence of an individual," Saha said. "But I don't think we yet know that. For me the question is, why are we so insistent on this a cult?"
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
