In the wooded edge of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a confusing landlord remarked strange sights in two of his rental homes.
Tenants wore long black coats and parked box trucks outside the duplexes. They ran an electric cord from one boxing force in one of the apartments and held a stretcher in another.
A neighbor remembers in a similar way of dressed figures who walked around at night. They never spoke a word.
Familiar news and daily pleasure, exactly in your inbox
Watch yourself-the Yodel is the source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories.
By the time the FBI searched the building last week, one of the most recent tenants was killed in a shootout with American border patrols in Vermont, and a second was arrested. A third, a shady figure known online as 'ZIZ', remains missing after the authorities have linked their cultus -like group to six dead in three states.
Officials have offered few details of the cross -country research, which opened open after the death of a Border Patrol Trooper in Vermont during a traffic stop after the death of a Border Patrol. Associated Press interviews and an overview of judicial files and online messages tell the story of how a group of young, very intelligent computer scientists, most of them met in the twenty and 30, met online, shared anarchist beliefs and became increasingly violent.
Their goals are not clear, but online writings include topics of radical veganism and gender identity to artificial intelligence.
In the middle of all this is 'Ziz', which seems to be the leader of the strange group, who called himself 'Zizians'. She has been seen in the vicinity of several places and has connections with different suspects.
She was even declared dead for a while before she appeared in the midst of more violence.
Who is ZIZ?
Jack Lasota moved to the San Francisco Bay Area after obtaining a diploma at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2013 and internship at NASA, according to a profile on a recruitment site for programmers, coders and other freelance employees. NASA officials have not responded to a request to confirm the Lasota internship, but a Jack Lasota is on a website about previous trainees.
In 2016 she started publishing a dark and walking blog under the name ZIZ, in which she described her theory that the two halves of the brain could contain individual values and sexes and “often want to kill each other.”
She used Lasota and says in her writings that she is a transgender woman. She resumed observed enemies, including so -called rationalistic groups, who mainly work online and try to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge. Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
Lasota started an extreme mix of rationalism, ethical veganism, anarchism and other value systems, said Jessica Taylor, an AI researcher who met Lasota personally and online through the rationalistic community and knew her as ZIZ.
When Lasota left the rationalists, she took a group of “extremely vulnerable and isolated” followers, Anna Salamon, executive director of the Center for Applied Rationality, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Taylor said that Ziz -supporters use the rationalistic ideology as a reason to commit violence. “Things like, thinking that it is reasonable to prevent them from paying rent and defending themselves to be deported,” she said.
Poulomi Saha, a professor who has studied Cross, said that the beliefs and writings of Lasota may have seen the readers, an often central factor in the formation of groups that are often labeled. This is especially true in the era of online communities, in which it is easier for marginalized people to look for fellow believers.
“For the person who feels through that blog post, there is probably a kind of double experience,” said Saha, co-director of the program in the critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley. “A where they feel:” I have said this, or think so all this time, and nobody has believed me. “
Lasota, 34, has not responded in recent weeks to several e -mails from Associated Press and her lawyer Daniel McGarrigle refused to comment when asked if she was connected to one of the dead. She missed the court in two states and the Bench -Warrants were published for her arrest. Associated Press repairers have left countless telephone and e-mail messages with the Lasota family and have not received a response.
ZIZ and followers' first run-in with the law
In November 2019, Lasota was arrested together with various other people during a protest outside a retrait center in North California where the Center for Applied Rationality held an event. The delegates of the Sheriff called in a SWAT team and armored vehicle after the Masker-bearing group had blocked the outputs of the building and had cut foilers against the rationalistic organization. The group said they protested against sexual misconduct within the rationalistic group.
The case against Lasota, Emma Borhanian, 31, Gwen Danielson and Alexander Leatham, 29, was awaiting August 2022 when the American Coast Guard responded to a report that Lasota had fallen from a boat in San Francisco Bay. Her body was not found, but her mother confirmed death and a death advertisement was published.
It didn't take long before Ziz appeared again.
A landlord is attacked in California
Against the autumn of 2022, Lasota had moved with other group members, including Borhanian and Leatham, to vans and box trucks on owned by Curtis Lind in Vallejo, about 30 miles north of San Francisco.
“Emma's van was great,” said someone who knew Borhanian. “It had a fridge and freezer and microwave. It was really a work of art. '
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears for her safety, described Borhanian as a friendly and loving young woman who was so smart that she was working on Google while she was at the university. Google did not respond there to a study about Borhanian's work.
Justice officers say she was one of those who attacked Lind on November 13 when he tried to turn off the group because he did not pay any rent.
Changed by a sword and partially blind, fought back Lind and shoots Borhanian fatally. In conclusion that Lind acted in self -defense, accused officials Leatham and Suri Dao, 23, of murder in the death of Borhanian, as well as attempted murder of Lind.
A person reached by an Associated Press reporter on a telephone number mentioned for Alex Leatham's father refused to comment. Attempts to reach family members for DAO were not successful.
The police believe that Lasota was on the scene of the crime, but she was not arrested.
An older couple is killed in Pennsylvania
On New Year's Eve from 2022 a few were shot and killed in their house in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania.
A doorbell camera recorded audio and video from a car that calls a voice to the house of Richard Zajko, 71, and his wife, Rita, 69. A voice shouts “Mom!” And another voice shouts: “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!” According to a Pennsylvania State Police statement. The police found the couple in the head in a bedroom upstairs after they did not show up to take care of Rita's mother.
The police interviewed the daughter of the couple, Michelle, in her house in Vermont, and a few weeks later she custody her in a hotel in Pennsylvania. She was not arrested or accused of something. Lasota was also in the hotel and was arrested after he refused to collaborate with officers and charged with obstructing law enforcement and disorderly behavior.
Six months later, Lasota was released on bail, but stopped showing before the court.
Lasota's lawyer, Daniel McGarrigle, said last month that his client “was completely and unambiguously innocent from the charges submitted in this case.”
The landlord in California is found dead
In the meantime, the case with regard to the landlord in California became on the way to court. The landlord, who was 82, was the only eyewitness and public prosecutors wanted to hurry further.
But on January 17, Lind's throat was cut and he died, not far from where he had survived the earlier attack.
Maximilian Snyder, 22, who is accused of murder, appeared in the court on 6 February, but long enough to request a new lawyer. It is not clear how he was identified as a suspect; He has ties with a woman who would be involved in a shooting only a few days later.
Snyder is mentioned as in custody in the prison of Solano County in California. Attempts to reach Snyder family members were not successful.
A border patrol agent dies in a shootout Vermont
On. January 20, in Vermont, the American border patrol agents stopped a vehicle with two people connected to the ZIZ group. A hotel employee had called authorities after he had seen one of them, Teresa Youngblut, with a gun.
Youngblut drove the car when it was persuaded on January 20 and the authorities say she quickly opened fire on officers. The passenger, Felix Bauckholt, a German national who is also mentioned in judicial documents such as Ophelia, died, together with the border patrol, David Maland.
Youngblut was injured and arrested and did not owe the charges of firearms.
Authorities who searched the car found a ballistic helmet, night view glasses, breathing and ammunition, the FBI said. They also found two -way radios and used shooting range.
Youngblut applied for a wedding permit with Snyder, the man who was accused of killing the older landlord. He was a childhood friend; It was unclear if they were married. Authorities say that the gun she wore was purchased by a person of interest in the Zajko murders.
The last observation of ZIZ
Youngblut and Bauckholt lived in the two apartments in North Carolina, where the landlord and neighbors now say they saw the strange behavior.
Lasota also lived there like this winter, said the landlord, who assessed the police booking photo of Lasota 2019. He spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was worried about his safety.
A similar worries, a neighbor who lived on the other side of Bauckholt's Duplex until September 2023, remembered that he saw three people who wore long black robes and tactical clothing.
“They rarely came out during the day, but would walk through the neighborhood and in the forest at night,” said the former neighbor, who also only spoke on condition of anonymity for concerns about their safety. “Sometimes they all went for a walk and they all held hands. They seemed to take care of each other a lot. '
___
Associated Press writers Kathy McCormack, Lisa Baumann, Janie Har, Maryclaire Dale and Gary Robertson have contributed to this report.
