This story, by Peter D’Auria, Alan J. Keays and Habib Sabet, was first published by VTDigger, a nonprofit news outlet based in Vermont.
A week before engaging in a shootout that killed a border patrol agent and left one of them dead, two young visitors contacted a Vermont realtor in hopes of viewing a property.
Teresa Youngblut, 21, of Washington state, and Felix Bauckholt, a German national — whose role in the Jan. 20 traffic stop-turned-shootout near the Canadian border has exploded into a national news story — contacted a Northeast Vermont realtor seeking to view a house in Wheelock.
The revelations shed some light on the mystery of what exactly the pair was doing in Vermont. And they are among newly emerging details of a larger trail of sometimes unsettling interactions between Vermonters and individuals connected to the case, which has sprawled to involve over half a dozen people and at least six deaths in three states.
A federal grand jury Thursday formally indicted Youngblut on weapons charges that led to her arrest after the shooting. She is set to appear Friday in federal court in Burlington.
The realtor in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing safety concerns, said they spoke only with Youngblut, who referred to herself as Connie and her companion as Sam.
Youngblut contacted the office of a Northeast Kingdom real estate firm on Jan. 13, seeking to view a property in Wheelock, the realtor told VTDigger. According to the realtor and real estate websites, the 11-acre Blodgett Road property is extremely remote and difficult to access in winter. The two-bedroom fixer-upper is off the grid — something Youngblut expressed interest in, the realtor said — and has a generator and wood stoves.
The realtor told VTDigger that they had tried to discourage Youngblut from attempting to buy the house, at least in the middle of winter.
“I said, ‘Maybe it would be a better idea for us to go look at it in the springtime,’” the realtor said. “And she said, ‘We don’t want to wait till spring.’ She was very adamant.”
Youngblut said she planned to pay cash for the house, according to the realtor. The property is listed for just under $200,000 on Zillow.
They made plans for a viewing on the morning of Jan. 14, but after an effort to plow the road that day was unsuccessful, the realtor called Youngblut and left messages telling her the viewing was off. The next morning, however, the realtor learned that Youngblut and at least one other person had shown up anyway, drawing the attention of neighbors.
Another viewing was scheduled for Monday Jan. 20 at 2 p.m. A day before that appointment, however, the realtor received an email from Youngblut complaining that, while she was at the property, she had had an uncomfortable exchange with two men, who allegedly commented on her clothing and what she was doing there.
A week ago, the Barton Chronicle reported that a hunter encountered two people matching the description of Youngblut and Bauckholt in Wheelock and was “surprised” by the way they were dressed.
“After I got that email, I was like, okay, this is a little weird,” the realtor said. The next morning, on Monday, they learned that the seller of the house had accepted another offer and informed Youngblut that the property was no longer available, they said. The viewing was canceled.
Roughly an hour after the viewing was scheduled to have taken place, Youngblut would allegedly open fire during a traffic stop shootout that left U.S. Border Patrol agent David Maland dead. Youngblut is being held at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington.
Conspicuous guests
Youngblut and Bauckholt are two members of a loose group of people who have now been linked to at least six deaths that span three states and two U.S. coastlines — including a double homicide in Pennsylvania and the murder of a landlord in California.
Many of the people appear to be highly educated and have ties to Bay Area communities of rationalists, a movement of philosophically-minded people who prize logical reasoning and are often interested in artificial intelligence and software engineering.
But members of this particular group — dubbed by some “Zizians,” for their following of a blog written by an individual named Jack LaSota under the pen name “Ziz” — appear to have taken those rationalist ideas in an unorthodox and extreme direction.
In Vermont, people linked to Ziz and the shooting in Coventry had drawn the attention of law enforcement — and residents.
The tension was palpable in much of the Northeast Kingdom on Wednesday, where nearly a dozen individuals and local officials that VTDigger attempted to interview declined to speak on record, citing fears for their safety and concerns about compromising the investigation into the shooting.
In the week prior to the shootout, Youngblut and Bauckholt stayed at a hotel in Lyndonville, where their outfits and gear — “all-black tactical style clothing with protective equipment,” including a firearm in a holster, according to court records — drew concern from an employee.
That employee alerted law enforcement, which began to conduct “periodic surveillance” on the duo. Officers with the Vermont State Police and the federal Homeland Security Investigations sought to talk with the pair but they declined to speak at length, saying they were in the area to look at real estate, according to court records.
On Jan. 14, the pair checked out of the Lyndonville hotel and checked into the Newport City Inn & Suites “late” that same day, according to the Newport hotel’s manager Samantha Camley. They stayed there through Jan. 20, the day of the shooting, Camley said.
Camley said staff members interacted exclusively with Youngblut, who often separated with Bauckholt in the parking lot, entering the front office alone while Bauckholt went to their room.
According to Camley, staff described Youngblut as “quiet” and said she “answered questions when asked” but did not speak much otherwise. She said Youngblut was often seen wearing black ski pants, a large black coat, and a mask.
Youngblut and Bauckholt rarely seemed to leave the motel, said Camley, who noted that she saw the pair walking in the direction of nearby restaurants and convenience stores in the immediate vicinity.
The day before the shooting, according to court records, law enforcement had witnessed Youngblut, who carried a handgun, and Bauckholt walking in “tactical dress” in downtown Newport.
Two licenses and a gun
Years before the pair was spotted in Vermont, several other young people with ties to the same group had established residency in the Northeast Kingdom town of Coventry. One of them was 32-year-old Michelle Zajko, who in 2021 purchased a half acre of undeveloped land in Derby, near the Canadian border, according to property records.
A day after the shooting, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent an alert to firearms dealers seeking help “identifying any firearms purchases made by Michelle Jacqueline Zajko, a person of interest in the shooting of a Customs and Border Protection Officer on Jan. 20, 2025.”
The firearms that Youngblut and Bauckholt had at the time of the shooting were purchased in Mt. Tabor, in southern Vermont, a year ago, according to court records. Authorities have not explicitly stated who purchased those guns.
Two years earlier, Zajko had bought a gun from a different Vermont firearms dealer, Green Mountain Sporting Goods in Irasburg, according to Pennsylvania court records.
Zajko tried to buy a Smith & Wesson handgun from the store on Feb. 3, 2022, but was initially unable to because she tried to use a California driver’s license.
Brien Lemois, who said his wife, Trish Jones, owns Green Mountain Sporting Goods, said Wednesday that he “vaguely” remembered Zajko’s visit.
Lemois said Zajko came to the store with another woman. “If I remember her correctly, she said she was living in Orleans and she produced a California license and I was like, ‘Well, you need to be a Vermont resident,’” Lemois said.
The following day Zajko returned to the store with a Vermont driver’s license and bought the Smith & Wesson, as well as a holster and box of ammunition, according to the court documents. Zajko had gotten that driver’s license earlier that day, police later learned.
Zajko’s new license didn’t raise any suspicions, Lemois said, noting that Zajko told him that she had been living in Vermont for nearly a year. Green Mountain Sporting Goods sees “quite a few people” who say they have lived in the state for a while but haven’t yet acquired a Vermont driver’s license, Lemois said.
Zajko appears to have lived at an address in Coventry from about 2021 through 2023. She filed a proof of residency form with the town in Jan. 2021, and police interviewed her there two years later.
Police took an interest in Zajko’s gun purchases roughly a year after she made them, after Zajko’s parents, 72-year-old Richard Zajko and 69-year-old Rita Zajko, were shot and killed at their Delaware County, Pennsylvania residence on Dec. 31, 2022.
Police later determined that Richard and Rita were killed with a gun and ammunition consistent with those purchased by their daughter.
Lemois, of Green Mountain Sporting Goods, noted that Zajko must have passed a background check to complete the firearm purchase.
“If she picked up the gun that day, she got a proceed,” he said.
A ‘difficult customer’
Pennsylvania State Police, according to court filings, later recovered the handgun Zajko had purchased from the Vermont store when they raided a hotel near the Philadelphia airport where she was staying on Jan. 12, 2023, the same day as her parents’ funeral.
At the hotel, police also found LaSota, who blogged under the name “Ziz.” LaSota was arrested that day but later made bail and stopped showing up for court hearings.
According to court filings, police also seized cell phones, SIM cards, and receipts linked to Zajko, which were traced back to an AT&T store in Newport, Vermont.
A Vermont State Police detective went to that store about a week later and spoke to an employee, who reported that the account associated with the receipts was for a customer named “Jacklyn Connor,” the court documents stated.
The employee described the person as a “difficult customer” because she didn’t like to provide identification or an email address. The clerk told police that “Connor” came into the store every few months to add money to her prepaid account or to open a new account, according to court filings.
“Connor” was “standoff-ish, complains about service and is uncomfortable to work with,” the employee told law enforcement, according to the court documents.
The store employee, later shown a photo lineup by police, stated that she was “100% confident” that the person she knew as “Jacklyn Connor” was actually Michelle Zajko.
The FBI takes an interest
After the Jan. 20 shooting that left Maland and Bauckholt dead, FBI agents sought information from multiple real estate firms, according to Nicholas Maclure, the owner of Century 21 Farm & Forest, a firm in the Northeast Kingdom.
In an email sent Jan. 27 to real estate agents around Vermont and obtained by VTDigger, Maclure said the FBI was seeking to speak with anyone who had interacted with Youngblut or Bauckholt.
“As many of you know, they were looking for (real estate) in the area and (the FBI agent) would love to talk to anyone who had any communication with them,” Maclure wrote in the email.
On Tuesday, Jan, 21, the day after the shooting, FBI agents came to the real estate firm of the realtor who interacted with Youngblut and questioned them, the realtor said. The realtor said they asked the FBI agents the reason for the interview at the time but received no answers.
“All they said was to watch the news,” the realtor said.
