Leader of cultlike group linked to 6 deaths to be assessed for mental competency

Maryland State Police body cam video released in a court filing shows Jack "Ziz" LaSota standing outside a box truck, Feb. 16, 2025, in Frostburg, Md. (Maryland State Police via AP)

BALTIMORE — A lawyer representing the leader of the cultlike Zizians group that has been linked to six deaths told a judge Thursday that there is reason to believe his client is mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Jack LaSota, a transgender woman who goes by “Ziz,” was supposed to be in federal court for a two-day hearing on whether to suppress evidence collected as a result of her arrest in Frostburg, Maryland, last year. Instead, U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar granted a motion filed late Wednesday seeking a competency evaluation.

The judge said LaSota, who has been detained in the Allegany County Detention Center, will be held in federal custody — at least while the mental competency exam is done and a report is prepared. Bredar said another scheduling conference in the case would be scheduled after LaSota’s mental competency has been determined.

Bredar also expressed doubt LaSota’s trial, which is set for June in western Maryland, will proceed as scheduled, due to the federal court’s finding.

“Counsel believes there is reasonable cause to believe that the defendant is presently suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering her mentally incompetent to the extent that she is unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings,” attorney Gary Proctor wrote.

As the hearing got underway, Proctor said LaSota has demonstrated an inability to follow proceedings, equating being a fugitive with being transgender and accusing a judge of being part of an organized crime ring. LaSota told the judge she wants to represent herself.

Authorities have described LaSota as the apparent leader of what outsiders call the “Zizians,” a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists who appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence. Since 2022, members have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing, the shooting deaths of one of the member’s parents in Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left a border agent and another Zizian dead.

LaSota, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank were arrested last February after a landowner found them living in box trucks at the end of a snow-covered dirt road. Though they are not charged with causing any of the six deaths, police quickly connected them to the homicide investigations in California, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

Maryland state Trooper Brandon Jeffries wrote after their Feb. 16, 2025, arrests that all the “suspects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country and have ties with the Zizians Cult.”

All three face state charges of trespassing and illegal gun and drug possession, while LaSota faces a federal charge of illegal gun possession by a fugitive. LaSota also is charged with obstructing the investigation into the deaths of Zajko’s parents. Authorities have called Zajko a person of interest in that case and said they are investigating Blank.

“Ms. LaSota eschews the term Zizian and denies any and all allegations that she and her friends have formed a cult,” LaSota’s lawyers wrote in a recent court filing.

Proctor and co-counsel Jennifer Smith argue that police violated LaSota’s Fourth Amendment right to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure and that she was not trespassing because the landowner had given them until the next day to leave. They also argue that police illegally searched the box trucks without a warrant and therefore any evidence recovered should be barred from trial.

In their response, prosecutors countered that police had probable cause to arrest LaSota and her associates for trespassing, even if they had been given permission to stay another day because the permission didn’t apply retroactively. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Beim also argued that police were justified in conducting a protective sweep for weapons for officer safety and to determine whether anyone was hiding in the trucks. He said officers reasonably suspected LaSota and the others were potentially violent, based on information from media reports about the group.

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Brian Witte And Holly Ramer, The Associated Press

Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.