An Oxford-trained computer scientist could face the death penalty for allegedly killing an 82-year-old Vallejo landlord to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against his former tenants, according to the Solano County District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors allege in a complaint filed Monday that 22-year-old Maximilian Snyder was “lying in wait” for Curtis Lind before stabbing him outside his property around 2:18 p.m. Jan. 17 near Lemon and Third streets in Vallejo. The complaint charges Snyder, who made his first court appearance Tuesday afternoon, with first-degree murder with special circumstances. He is being held without bail at the Solano County Jail in Fairfield.
Although California’s death penalty has been dormant since Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order pausing state-ordered killings in March of 2019, prosecutors may still pursue capital punishment under the law.
“The defendant is death eligible at this point,” District Attorney Krishna Abrams wrote in an email to Open Vallejo Tuesday, adding that she will make a final decision after Snyder’s preliminary hearing.
Public records show that Snyder applied for a marriage license in November in Washington with 21-year-old Teresa Youngblut, who federal authorities charged last week in connection with the Jan. 20 fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent David Maland in Vermont.
The couple appears to sympathize with a fringe group based in the Bay Area known as the Zizians whose members have allegedly committed multiple violent or disruptive acts in recent years, according to court records, online posts, and interviews conducted by Open Vallejo with people familiar with the ideology and its adherents.
Snyder and Youngblut both attended Lakeside School, a private high school in Seattle. Snyder studied computer science at the University of Oxford, according to his LinkedIn profile, and in 2023 won $11,000 in an artificial intelligence research competition. Youngblut described herself on social media as a computer science student at the University of Washington.
In his first court appearance, Snyder wore a striped jail uniform and shackles. He glanced at a group of journalists documenting the hearing before sitting down beside his lawyer, Conor Trombetta, a Napa-based criminal defense attorney.
Trombetta told Judge Jeffrey Kauffman that he was appearing in court for another attorney, Amanda Bevins, who is traveling outside the country. Kauffman postponed Snyder’s arraignment until next Thursday when Bevins will be back in town. Bevins did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In April, Lind was scheduled to testify against a group of young tenants who allegedly stabbed him in November 2022, two days before they were set to be evicted from his property for failing to pay rent, according to court records. Lind was the sole eyewitness in the trial, according to prosecutors.
Suri Dao, who was living among friends in box trucks on the property, allegedly asked Lind to help with a water leak on the morning of Nov. 13, 2022, according to court records. But when Lind came down to help, Dao and another tenant, Emma Borhanian, allegedly attacked him with knives, stabbing him repeatedly. Another tenant, Alexander Leatham, impaled Lind with a sword through the chest, prosecutors allege.
Lind shot at his attackers, injuring Leatham and killing Borhanian. Court records show that Leatham and Dao have since been charged with the murder of their friend, Borhanian, and the attempted murder of Lind, along with an aggravated mayhem charge.
Posts on the online forum LessWrong.com allege that the three people involved in the 2022 stabbing are associated with Jack LaSota, who goes by Ziz and appears to be the inspiration for the fringe ideology built on a shared affinity for veganism and artificial intelligence theory, among other beliefs. Documents obtained by Open Vallejo indicate that LaSota lived on the Vallejo property with Leatham and Borhanian, among others.
LaSota, Leatham, Borhanian and another person were arrested in 2019 while protesting an event hosted by the Center for Applied Rationality, a nonprofit in Berkeley. The Zizian ideology appears to be a radical offshoot of Rationalism, a broader philosophical movement. During the Sonoma County incident, the protesters allegedly blocked attendees from exiting the venue while wearing robes and Guy Fawkes masks. The protesters filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging mistreatment in connection with their arrest.
Autumn Russell, who describes herself as a member of the broader Rationalist community, said in an interview Monday that she befriended Felix Bauckholt, who she knew as Ophelia, through their shared interest in rationalism.
Russell said Bauckholt, who worked in financial algorithmic trading in New York City, had expressed an idle, philosophical interest in the Zizian ideology before she abruptly disappeared, cutting off contact with friends and going dark online in the fall of 2023. Bauckholt was killed in the Vermont Border Patrol shootout last week in which Snyder’s partner, Youngblut, has been charged.
Russell said she never met Snyder in person but that he contacted several of her friends in an apparent attempt to recruit them into the ideology. In online posts, Snyder appeared to embrace Zizian ideas and beliefs, Russell said, noting he seemed obsessive and analytical.
“My initial reaction to him was very negative,” Russell said. “I never got anything else to contradict that.”
