The Zizian trans death cult saga takes a major turn.
MEDIA, Pa. — A member of the “Zizian” trans death cult has been charged with double murder more than three years after the shocking execution-style shooting of her parents inside a suburban Pennsylvania home.
Michelle Jacqueline Zajko, 33, was charged in Delaware County, Pa., with multiple counts of first-degree murder, criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit murder, burglary and firearms offenses. In total, 15 felonies and one misdemeanor.
She is accused of driving hours to the home of her parents Richard and Rita Zajko on the night of New Year’s Eve 2022—the night of her 30th birthday—and murdering them. The victims were found shot in the head in Zajko’s childhood bedroom near her stuffed toys.
Caption: Rita, 68, and Richard, 71, Zajko
“It is piece after piece after piece of evidence that has been collected painstakingly over years,” Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said Wednesday at a press conference, standing beside Zajko’s aunt, Rosanne Zajko, and investigators from the Pennsylvania State Police.
The case went cold for years as Zajko disappeared with members of the Zizians after she was arrested, questioned and released without charge in January 2023 near Philadelphia.
The so-called Zizians are a transgender death cult linked to at least eight violent deaths.
The group’s leader is Jack LaSota, a man who identifies as a woman and uses the name “Ziz,” among numerous other aliases. Its members are vegan left-wing transgender rationalists, many with elite educational backgrounds in science and mathematics. The group has frequently been compared to the Charles Manson cult.
Zajko is a biological female who identifies as transgender and nonbinary. Jail records show she uses the name “Alex.”
The criminal complaint details the extensive investigative steps authorities took over more than three years to build the case against her.
Investigators say the two SIG Sauer 9 mm hollow-point cartridge casings recovered at the crime scene matched ammunition found at Zajko’s former residence in rural Orleans County, Vt.
“The same gun that killed Richard and Rita Zajko had been used in that backyard,” District Attorney Rouse said.
During an interview with police in early 2023, days after the murders, Zajko admitted she regularly practiced shooting on the property and maintained she had been at the house with her roommate, Daniel Blank, on the days before, during and after the killings.
Investigators say text messages recovered from the victims’ phones revealed Rita Zajko had reached out to her daughter on the afternoon of Dec. 31, 2022, in an attempt to mend their strained relationship. Zajko never responded. Approximately nine hours later, Rita and her husband were dead.
“It should be noted that it takes approximately 7.5 hours to drive from the defendant’s residence located in Orleans, VT to … Chester Heights Borough, Delaware County, PA,” an investigator wrote in the affidavit.
Zajko, a former bioinformatics researcher who interned for NASA in the Bay Area, wrote extensively on blogs about her hatred of “transphobes,” right-wingers and Christianity. She posted frequently about “trans genocide” and how “fascists” were being empowered.
“This is a child who killed her parents, who walked into her childhood home, took her mother to her childhood playroom, and executed her,” Rouse said.
Prosecutors have not stated a motive but Zajko was the only child of Richard and Rita, who adopted her when she was a baby. She stood to inherit over $3 million from her parents’ and grandparents’ estates. Family friends detail that Zajko was cold to her parents and cut off ties after she moved to California and became involved with the Zizians.
Neighborhood surveillance cameras captured a vehicle pulling into the parents’ driveway at 11:29 p.m. on the night of the killings. Moments later, audio recorded a voice yelling, “Mom!” followed by a second voice shouting, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!” Nine minutes later, two figures were seen fleeing in a vehicle.
After speaking with Pennsylvania state troopers at her Vermont home in January 2023, Zajko and fellow Zizian Daniel Blank immediately fled, according to the criminal complaint.
Blank, a fellow Zizian and UC Berkeley bioengineering alumnus who had been living with Zajko, withdrew $40,000 in cash from a bank in New Hampshire. Police later discovered the money stuffed inside an envelope beneath the passenger seat of Zajko’s Subaru after raiding hotel rooms the group had rented in Chester, Pa. Although Zajko and Blank were released without charges, investigators said Zajko was so eager to leave the police barracks that she abandoned her vehicle on foot, where the cash was later recovered.
A major breakthrough came more than two years later when Zajko was arrested alongside LaSota and Blank in rural western Maryland, where authorities recovered a cache of firearms and tactical gear in their box trucks that were converted to mobile homes. The three face dozens of charges in Allegany County, Md., including firearms and drug offenses.
An ATF alert for Michelle Zajko in early 2025. She shaved her head to evade capture.
After that arrest, the FBI seized Zajko’s mobile phone. Investigators allege they were able to recover a digital journal containing a list titled “things we fucked up,” documenting what prosecutors say were mistakes the Zizians made while attempting to conceal the murders.
“We became aware later on through phone analysis that she created what I believe is a list,” Rouse said. “This included not getting rid of the shell casings that were found at the scene. This included not getting rid of the ammunition that was later recovered from her Vermont home that matched the shell casings found at the scene. This included not sending fake text messages from the phones they left in Vermont, leaving someone behind to send those text messages.”
Zajko has remained in Maryland state custody since her arrest earlier this year and has not yet been scheduled for extradition to Pennsylvania.
Seven alleged Zizians, including Zajko, are currently jailed across three states on charges ranging from murder and attempted murder to firearms offenses. Among those killed in cases linked to the group are U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland, who was fatally shot during an ambush, and 82-year-old Curtis Lind, a key witness in a California Zizian murder prosecution who was assassinated in a brutal knife stabbing attack before trial.
“When I found out that Tuesday morning [about the murders], the first thing I thought was: Michelle did it,” a family friend of the Zajkos told this journalist.
Federal investigators also focused on Zajko after determining that firearms allegedly used in the killing of the Border Patrol agent had been purchased by her. In addition to the Pennsylvania and Maryland cases, she also faces federal charges alleging she lied on firearms purchase forms.
“It was an exhaustive investigation that took years to pull together,” Rouse said, “but we are finally at the point where we can say, beyond any doubt, that Michelle Zajko was at least in part responsible for the death of her parents.”
“At this time, we do not know who her co-conspirators were.”
No one else has been charged in the Pennsylvania case, but the criminal complaint offers a significant clue.
On Dec. 3, 2022, just weeks before the murders, Zajko was stopped during a routine traffic stop in Rawlins, Wyo. Police body camera footage revealed LaSota sitting in the front passenger seat. Zajko was driving east after what investigators believe was a trip to California, where members of the Zizians had been living.
“She did not act alone,” Rouse said before ending the press conference.
Andy Ngo is author of the forthcoming investigative true crime book, The Zizians: Inside a Trans Death Cult.
