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  "path": "/2026/06/25/member-cultlike-zizians-group-charged-murdering-parents-28917192/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-25T07:30:41.000Z",
  "site": "https://metro.co.uk",
  "tags": [
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    "check our news page",
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  "textContent": "Michelle Zajko, who is associated with a cultlike group known as Zizians that is linked to several deaths across the US, is escorted into court (Picture: AP Photo/Mark Scolforo)\n\n**A member of the** ‘cult’**group known as Zizians has been charged with murdering her parents.**\n\nMichelle Zajko, 33, is facing trial over the killings of Rita and Richard Zajko, who were shot dead at their Pennsylvania home on her 30th birthday on New Year’s Eve 2022.\n\nTheir bodies were found in Zajko’s childhood playroom surrounded by her old dolls and toys.\n\nProsecutors said they are ‘very certain that Michelle Zajko was in the home and arranged for the death of her parents’, but do not believe she acted alone.\n\nZajko denies charges of murder, burglary and conspiracy, and suggested in court findings that her father may have killed her mother and then himself.\n\nIn an April 2025 note titled ‘Open Letter to the World, she wrote: ‘I didn’t murder my parents.’\n\nThe deaths of Mr and Mrs Zajko are among six linked to the Zizians, a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists who appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence.\n\nVictims Richard Zajko, left, and his wife Rita Zajko, who police say were shot to death in their home in suburban Philadelphia (Picture: Pennsylvania State Police via AP)\n\nZajko is further charged with providing the gun used to kill US Border Patrol Agent David Maland in January 2025.\n\nShe was arrested in Maryland a few weeks later along with Daniel Blank and Jack ‘Ziz’ LaSota, whom authorities describe as the group’s leader.\n\nPolice who responded to a landowner’s complaint about suspicious people parked in box trucks on his property described them as having ‘ties with the Zizians Cult’ and said they would be questioned about crimes across the country.\n\nAll three have pleaded not guilty to charges of trespassing and illegal gun and drug possession, while LaSota also has pleaded not guilty to a federal charge of illegal gun possession by a fugitive.\n\nA judge recently granted a defence request for a competency evaluation in the federal case.\n\nIn court filings, LaSota’s attorneys said their client shuns the term Zizian and denies that she and her friends have formed a cult.\n\nZajko has claimed authorities arrested the group in Maryland to prevent them from exonerating Teresa Youngblut, who has pleaded not guilty to murder in the Vermont shooting and could face the death penalty if convicted.\n\nThe Zajkos home in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, where they were killed in 2022 (Picture: AP Photo/Matt Rourke)\n\nZajko was living with Blank in Vermont at the time of her parents’ deaths and was questioned there by police shortly after they died.\n\nA few weeks later, officers briefly took her into custody at a hotel while she was in Pennsylvania for the funeral but released her without charges.\n\nLaSota, staying at the same hotel, was charged with obstructing the homicide investigation and disorderly conduct. Her attorney at the time has said she is innocent of those charges.\n\nZajko had been estranged from her parents in the year leading up to their deaths, the prosecutor said.\n\nIn a January 2022 text message to her father, she complained that her mother had ‘assumed the worst’ about her since she was a child.\n\n‘Every time I interact with mom in a non-superficial way she spends the time insulting a life she knows nothing about,’ Zajko wrote.\n\nHours before her death, Rita Zajko apologized to her daughter and wished her a happy birthday.\n\n‘That text went unanswered,’ Delaware county district attorney Tanner Rouse said.\n\nRichard Zajko’s sister-in-law, Roseanne Zajko, thanked police and prosecutors Wednesday, saying that her family has endured ‘countless days of darkness and despair’ waiting for justice.\n\n‘We don’t know yet if the trial will begin to heal the void in our lives and the ache in our hearts, but we do know that the detectives, the DA’s office, and we, the family, have done everything possible to achieve justice for Rick and Rita,’ she added.\n\nThe prosecutor described their deaths as a crime that ‘goes beyond comprehension’.\n\n‘I can’t wrap my mind around or figure out what led to this point,’ he said.\n\n‘We are clearly talking about someone that has gone down an unimaginably dark road and has led to a tragedy that just defies any sort of description.’\n\n******Get in touch with our news team by emailing us atwebnews@metro.co.uk.******\n\n**For more stories like this,** check our news page.\n\nComment now Comments \nAdd Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source\n",
  "title": "Member of Zizians ‘cult’ group charged with murdering her parents"
}