A member of the cultlike Zizians group is charged in the killings of her parents in Pennsylvania

The couple was shot to death in their home on New Year’s Eve after police say a neighbor’s doorbell camera captured video of a car pulling up to their home in Chester Heights, a voice shouting “Mom!” and another voice exclaiming, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!”

Michelle Zajko has denied any involvement, and in court filings suggested her father might have killed her mother and then himself.

“I didn’t murder my parents,” she wrote in an April 2025 “ Open Letter to the World.”

Authorities, however, had long described Zajko as a person of interest in the double homicide, two of the six deaths linked to 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 Zajkos’ deaths in Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left a border agent and another Zizian dead.

Zajko, who is charged with providing the gun used to kill U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland in January 2025, was arrested in Maryland a few weeks later along with Daniel Blank and Jack “Ziz” LaSota, whom authorities describe as the group’s leader. Police who responded to a landowner’s complaint about suspicious people parked in box trucks on his property described them as having “ties with the Zizians Cult” and said they would be questioned about crimes across the country.

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. A judge recently granted a defense request for a competency evaluation in the federal case.

In court filings, LaSota’s attorneys said their client eschews the term Zizian and denies that she and her friends have formed a cult. Zajko has claimed authorities arrested the group in Maryland to prevent them from exonerating Teresa Youngblut, who has pleaded not guilty in Vermont to murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Zajko was living in Vermont at the time of her parents’ deaths and was questioned there by police shortly after they died. A few weeks later, officers briefly took her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel but released her without charges. LaSota, staying at the same hotel, was charged with obstructing the homicide investigation and disorderly conduct.

Zajko had been estranged from her parents in the year leading up to their deaths, the prosecutor said. They were killed hours after Rita Zajko texted her daughter in an attempt to reconcile. “Her mother reached out and explained that she was sorry for the rift that had grown between them,” the prosecutor said. “That text went unanswered.”

A few hours later, at least two people entered the home. “The lights go on in the home, and Richard and Rita Zajko are executed,” he said.

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

Holly Ramer, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

A member of the cultlike Zizians group is charged in the killings of her parents in Pennsylvania

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