This story, by Peter D’Auria and Alan J. Keays, was first published by VTDigger, a nonprofit news outlet based in Vermont.
Three individuals affiliated with the Zizians, a fringe movement with ties to Vallejo that is allegedly linked to killings in several states, were arrested Sunday evening in Allegany County, Maryland, according to county records.
Michelle Jacqueline Zajko, Daniel Arthur Blank, and Jack Amadeus LaSota — also known as “Ziz,” according to media reports — were arrested and charged with several misdemeanors after allegedly trespassing on private property in Frostburg, Maryland, according to court records.
The arrests put an end to speculation about the whereabouts of Zajko and LaSota, both of whom had been sought by law enforcement in connection with crimes in other states.
According to charging documents obtained by VTDigger, a Frostburg resident contacted Maryland state police around 3:30 p.m. Sunday to report two white box trucks with chains on their tires trespassing on his property.
The three people inside the trucks had asked if they could camp at the site for a month, according to the charging documents, but the landowner told police the people “appeared suspicious” and he wanted them off his property.
Officers with the state police, the Allegany County Sheriff’s Office and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources responded to the call, according to the documents.
One of the state police troopers, named in court records as Brandon Jeffries, approached one of the box trucks and saw a person, later identified as Daniel Blank, sitting in the passenger seat. Jeffries ordered Blank to show their hands, the filing reads, and Blank “advised that he had a learning disability and did not understand what I was saying,” Jeffries wrote.
Inside the other box truck, state police troopers found Zajko and LaSota, according to the charging documents, dressed all in black and wearing gun belts with ammunition.
Jeffries told Zajko and LaSota to exit the truck, a process that was delayed because “they were saying they were being told to many commands and were not cooperating,” the trooper wrote in the filing. “The female was crying saying not to kill her.”
According to Jeffries’ account, Zajko repeatedly refused to put her hands behind her back and was eventually “taken down to the ground by controlled takedown” before she was arrested. State police found a SIG Sauer handgun in Zajko’s front waistband, the charging documents said.
Jeffries wrote that he also saw a rifle in the back of the vehicle and a handgun on the front floorboard where LaSota was sitting.
According to the documents, Blank, LaSota and Zajko refused to give their names despite “numerous” requests and had to later be identified through photos from an FBI special agent.
Blank, according to the filings, “is under investigation” in connection with a double homicide in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. While the filings do not specify which homicide, Rita and Richard Zajko — Michelle Zajko’s parents — were killed in Delaware County on Dec. 31, 2022.
Blank also had been reported as a “missing endangered person” in a police database, the charging documents stated.
“All of the subjects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country,” according to the court documents.
‘Refrain from speculation’
Zajko, 32, Blank, 26, and LaSota were charged with trespassing on private property and “obstructing & hindering” a police officer, according to the records. (Court records in different states record conflicting dates of birth for LaSota.)
Zajko and LaSota were also charged with misdemeanor firearm possession charges, and Zajko faces an additional charge of resisting or interfering with arrest.
The three individuals have ties — some clearer than others — to a sprawling, mysterious group known as “Zizians,” for their following of a blog written by LaSota under the name “Ziz.”
A number of individuals linked to LaSota are transgender, according to media reports and acquaintances, and it is not clear which pronouns they use. LaSota has also used the name “Andrea Phelps,” according to court records.
The three were booked into the Allegany County Detention Center on Sunday night. They are being held without bond but are due in court Tuesday morning for a bail review hearing.
Lt. Elizabeth Shoemake, the director of operations at the Allegany County Detention Center, said she could not comment on the circumstances of the arrests. But she said that, in a meeting with a court commissioner — a Maryland judicial official who helps determine the terms of bail — LaSota was “not cooperative.”
It was unclear whether any of the three defendants have an attorney. Daniel McGarrigle, an attorney for LaSota in the Pennsylvania case, said he was not representing LaSota in the Maryland case, and declined to comment on whether he had communicated with LaSota since the arrest yesterday.
McGarrigle sent VTDigger a press release from last month urging “members of the press and the public to refrain from speculation and premature conclusions.”
‘Anyone with potential connections’
The arrests open a new chapter in a multi-year saga involving killings in three states.
After a Jan. 20 shootout in Coventry that left U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland and another individual dead, federal law enforcement officials named Zajko as a “person of interest.” Officials have not explicitly spelled out Zajko’s connection to the killing, but she appears to have purchased the firearms that were used in the shooting, according to court records.
Zajko owns land in Derby, Vermont, and was at one point a Coventry resident, where she lived for an unknown period of time with Blank, according to court and municipal records.
Sunday’s arrest was not the first time Zajko, LaSota and Blank have all been detained together by law enforcement. In January 2023, Pennsylvania State Police arrested the trio at a Chester, Pennsylvania, hotel, as part of a state police investigation into the homicide of Rita and Richard Zajko.
During that arrest, according to court records, LaSota lay motionless on the ground and refused to move. Ultimately, law enforcement officers carried the 6-foot-2 LaSota out of the hotel and charged them with disorderly conduct and obstruction. LaSota later posted the $10,000 bail and did not show up for later court dates.
Last month, Curtis Lind, LaSota’s one-time landlord was stabbed to death outside his property in Vallejo, California. The suspect, Maximilian Snyder, applied for a marriage license last year with Teresa Youngblut, who faces charges in connection with the shooting of the border patrol agent three days after Lind’s killing.
Elena Russo, a spokesperson for the Maryland State Police, said in a Monday press release that the agency “is working in coordination with our federal law enforcement partners and the Office of the State’s Attorney in Allegany County as this investigation continues.”
Prosecutors with the Allegany County state’s attorney’s office could not be reached for comment.
Sarah Ruane, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Albany, New York, office, said in an email that the federal agency is “coordinating with our partners from Maryland State Police following the arrest of three individuals on state charges in Allegany County, Maryland.”
“The FBI’s investigation into the assault on U.S. Border Patrol Agent Maland remains active, and we will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to follow every lead and investigate anyone with potential connections to our subject,” Ruane said. “As this investigation is ongoing, we are not able to provide any additional information.”
This article has been updated with additional information from public records.
