When Daniel Blank visited his parents in the San Francisco Bay Area for Thanksgiving in 2022, his mother noticed that he was acting secretive and distant. The young man shut his laptop quickly anytime she walked by and offered nothing about his new job at an Ohio startup, saying he had signed a nondisclosure agreement.
The holiday visit was the last time Blank saw his parents before cutting off contact with family and friends, leaving them bewildered and concerned for his safety. Shortly before their son disappeared completely, Nadia Blank said she and her ex-husband received one final message from his phone number.
“Look what you’ve done,” the message said, with a link to a gruesome video of farm animals being slaughtered.
Blank, 26, was arrested in Allegany County, Maryland, on Sunday afternoon along with two members of a cult-like group of vegan anarchists known as the Zizians. Individuals associated with the ideology stand accused or suspected in connection with recent homicides in Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Vallejo. Its adherents are highly educated, many of them in computer science, and appear linked by a devotion to veganism and fixated on the threat of artificial intelligence.
Daniel Blank’s parents told Open Vallejo in an interview Monday that they believe their son’s involvement with the group may be a result of brainwashing.
“He’s not a violent person,” said his father Alexander Blank. “I don’t think that Daniel actually did anything really wrong except maybe being with the wrong people.”
On Sunday, prosecutors charged Blank with trespassing on private property and obstruction, both misdemeanors, according to Allegany County court records. He was arrested alongside 34-year-old Jack “Ziz” LaSota, and Michelle Zajko, a 32-year-old Pennsylvania woman, court records show.
Prosecutors charged LaSota with trespassing, obstructing law enforcement, and possessing a handgun in a vehicle, according to court records. Zajko is accused of trespassing, obstruction, resisting arrest, and carrying a handgun.
All three defendants were ordered held without bond at a Tuesday morning hearing in Allegany County, according to court records. The next hearing is scheduled for March 24.
A man in Frostburg, Maryland, contacted the Maryland State Police around 3:33 p.m. Sunday to report that two men and a woman driving white box trucks with chains on the tires had trespassed on his property. The man told police that the three people were dressed in all black and asked him “if they could camp at the location for a month,” according to the court records obtained by Open Vallejo.
Two state troopers responded to the property, joined by units from the Allegany County Sheriff’s Office and the state Department of Natural Resources Police. There they found the box trucks parked at the end of a dirt roadway, according to court records. As the officers approached the trucks, a person later identified as Blank told a trooper that he had a learning disability and did not understand what they were saying, according to the complaint.
The trooper opened the back door of the second vehicle, a smaller white box truck with a temporary North Carolina license plate. LaSota and Zajko moved into the front of the truck and refused to come out, according to the complaint, while Zajko cried and asked police not to kill her. The pair eventually exited the vehicle but refused to identify themselves.
Police found a rifle in the back of the second truck, a handgun on the front floorboard, and a loaded SIG Sauer P365 handgun in Zajko’s waistband, according to the complaint. Police arrested Blank and LaSota “without incident” but were forced to perform a “controlled takedown” on Zajko after she refused to place her hands behind her back. Authorities identified the trio with photos provided by an FBI supervisory special agent, according to the complaint.
“All of the subjects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country,” authorities wrote in the complaint.
‘Very vulnerable’
Daniel Blank was born in Berkeley and always excelled in school, earning straight A’s and praise from his teachers, his mother Nadia Blank told Open Vallejo. He competed on a science bowl team throughout middle and high school and was fluent in three languages, she said.
Blank, who became vegan in college, graduated a semester early from the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in bioengineering and computer science, according to a resume posted on his LinkedIn profile. As an undergraduate, he conducted research for two Berkeley professors and interned at Oracle and Daphnia Labs.
Blank’s mother said he accepted a high-paying corporate offer in Oakland following graduation.
But within a few years, Blank quit his job and told his parents that he was moving to Columbus, Ohio, to work for a startup. Nadia Blank said her son did not tell them the name of the company or elaborate on the nature of his work, claiming he was bound by a confidentiality agreement. She now suspects her son fabricated the job as a cover story for his move to Ohio.
Daniel Blank stopped responding to phone calls or emails and blocked friends on Facebook in late 2022. Nadia Blank said her son did not inform his Ohio landlord of his departure and “just left everything behind.” His parents filed a missing person report and tracked Blank’s phone to Vermont.
When police conducted a welfare check, they found Blank living in a remote Vermont cabin, according to Nadia Blank. She said police told her that her son was unharmed but “didn’t want to talk to any of us.”
Blank’s parents said their son had mild autism and was nearly blind in one eye. Although he was socially awkward and struggled to fit in with his peers, Nadia Blank said Daniel was kind and trusting of everyone — almost to a fault. She knew that he “wanted to do good in this life.”
“It made him very vulnerable. He was probably very easy to manipulate, to brainwash,” Nadia Blank said. “We were all shocked, everybody who knew him, when he disappeared and when we learned that he became involved with this cult.”
Both of Daniel Blank’s parents told Open Vallejo that they do not believe their son was capable of committing violence against another person.
Under investigation
Daniel Blank, LaSota, and Zajko were previously detained at a hotel in Pennsylvania in January of 2023, according to court records. State police were there to execute a search warrant in connection with the fatal shooting of Zajko’s parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, in their Pennsylvania home less than two weeks prior.
After detaining Zajko, police obtained another warrant for Blank’s hotel room, where they found Blank and LaSota hiding in the bathroom with a hot shower running, according to court records. Authorities arrested LaSota, who went limp and closed their eyes, on charges of obstruction and disorderly conduct.
LaSota stayed in jail for nearly six months before posting bail, according to court records. But LaSota failed to appear for their December 2023 trial, prompting the judge to issue a bench warrant for their arrest. LaSota also had an outstanding bench warrant for failing to appear in Sonoma County court on charges related to a 2019 protest at a conference center. LaSota remained at large until their arrest in Maryland.
Pennsylvania authorities did not charge Blank, LaSota or Michelle Zajko in connection with the deaths of Richard and Rita Zajko, with state police soliciting tips from the public on Facebook last spring and offering a $10,000 award for information leading to an arrest in the unsolved case. Nor were Blank or Zajko charged with any other criminal offense in connection with their detention at the hotel. But state troopers in Maryland alleged in court records on Sunday that Blank is “under investigation for a double homicide that occurred in Delaware County, PA.”
Two other homicides also appear linked to the so-called Zizians. Last month, police in California arrested 22-year-old Maximilian Snyder on suspicion of murdering Curtis Lind, an 82-year-old landlord, on Jan. 17 in Vallejo. Three days later, federal authorities arrested 21-year-old Teresa Youngblut following a roadside shoot-out with Border Patrol agents in Vermont.
Youngblut, who applied for a marriage license with Snyder in November, has since been indicted on federal weapons charges in connection with the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David C. Maland. Felix Bauckholt, a German national who was in the car with Youngblut, was killed while trying to pull a handgun during the encounter, according to federal prosecutors.
This story has been updated to reflect Jack LaSota’s age as confirmed in California and Pennsylvania court records. New Maryland court records provide a different date of birth for LaSota. It has also been updated to reflect that Blank, LaSota and Zajko were ordered held without bond on Feb. 18.
