A strange web stretching across the country, linked by a group of people known as the Zizians, has been tied to six homicides over the past few weeks. Seven members of the group, including its mysterious leader, “Ziz,” are now in jail, awaiting trial on charges that range from trespassing to murder. At least one other member is missing, possibly in hiding. The Zizians have been characterized as a cult by friends and family members who said they’ve lost loved ones to Ziz’s thrall. But what exactly is a cult, and do the Zizians qualify as one?

What is a cult?

There is no single definition of a cult, nor is there a legal one. Cults can have vastly different ideologies, but they share a few core similarities. Cults have strict rules and values. The most extreme beliefs — the ones they eventually become known for — are rarely presented early on to new members. They are led by a persuasive figure, like slick gospel leader Jim Jones or the wild-eyed hippie Charles Manson, and they are usually highly hierarchical.

Jones’ Peoples Temple, for example, began as a progressive church that celebrated all races during a time of segregation. Members were lured in with the promise of racial equality and free social services, and Jones normalized violence, coercion and subservience that ended in mass murder in Guyana. In Scientology, which some consider to be more like a cult than a religion, members aren’t introduced to the lore of extraterrestrial past lives until they’ve invested significant time and money — by which point, many members feel too invested in the ideology and distanced from loved ones to back out.

To control their members, cults also employ tactics to isolate and wear down the followers, such as drug use, sleep deprivation, cutting contact with loved ones and forced labor. Many cult leaders also exploit their members financially or sexually. Manson, for example, sexually abused some of the young women in the Manson Family, many of whom were also heavy drug users.

What do the Zizians believe?

We have a remarkably extensive paper trail of the Zizians: Almost all of the approximately 12 people connected to the group have large online footprints. The apparent leader of the Zizians, Jack “Ziz” LaSota, wrote long, rambling accounts of life in the Bay Area on her blog, elucidating some of the reasons why she broke apart from mainstream society.

Nearly all of the members are highly educated — Ziz interned at NASA — and many found work in the Bay Area tech sector. They were prolific coders and software developers; one member, Emma Borhanian, won awards at Google for her work. But, like many young people working in tech, the group became disillusioned by the industry and the high cost of living in the Bay Area. 

Their orbits crossed primarily through rationalism and effective altruism groups, both of which seek to create a higher moral compass through improved decision-making processes. For the Zizians, modern society felt irrevocably broken, and the rise of artificial intelligence only deepened their fears about the future. As part of their quest toward altruism, some became virulently against eating meat and embraced a radical vegan lifestyle. Ziz referred to non-vegans as “flesh-eating monsters” and likened animals to human babies. 

Part of the Zizians’ appeal may have been their tenet that people can be split into halves. That belief extended to gender — most members identify as trans or gender fluid — and even the brain itself, which some members argued could be turned on and off in sections. Like many trans people, the Zizians feared persecution and violence, and the insular nature of the group may have given them a sense of safety.

They feared the “singularity,” the biblical moment when AI rises up and becomes one, decimating the human race. Some wrestled with their role in the Bay Area tech scene in the face of a modern-day Book of Revelation: Destroy AI or help build it to save themselves? 

One of their driving forces appeared to be that concern of societal collapse brought on by AI. Members attempted living on boats and off the grid, seeking to buy property in rural Vermont. The presence of white box trucks, often kitted out with solar panels and high-tech equipment, at nearly every place they frequented spoke to a need to flee at a moment’s notice.

“If you keep the vehicle in good running condition, build amenities that approximate first-world living conditions, and keep financial buffer, it gives you a foundation to build on that is independent from the system of rent and social politics,” Zizian Gwen Danielson, who is currently unlocatable, wrote. It was in one of these trucks, referred to as “slackmobiles” by the group, that Ziz was finally found and arrested in Maryland last week.

Although pop culture tends to deride cult followers as weak-minded or stupid, it’s common for them to be well-educated, high-functioning members of society. The Order of the Solar Temple, which had hundreds of members worldwide, recruited from affluent circles. In the 1990s, over 70 members killed themselves or were slain as the cult collapsed; among the victims were business executives and politicians. Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese religious cult behind the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, primarily recruited elite university students who were disillusioned with the pressures of modern career culture. 

How cults work: Isolation 

Isolation is one of the first steps that cult leaders take to control their members. Cults may cross socioeconomic, gender and racial lines, but members almost always lack a strong support system. Once separated from family and friends — if they had them to begin with — members can be more easily manipulated. Cult leaders often have a keen ability to identify vulnerable people. NXIVM, for example, was established as a self-help group, giving leader Keith Raniere access to a steady stream of possible recruits.

Children of God, a religious sect established by David Berg in the 1960s, warned against sending children to school and told adults to work within the confines of the group as they waited for the end times. In reality, there was no apocalypse, and this isolation instead allowed for rampant sexual abuse, as children who grew up in the cult, like late actor River Phoenix, would later attest.

In the most extreme cases, members may be physically isolated as well. Peoples Temple members were ordered to hand over their passports when they arrived at Jonestown, cutting off any hope of escape. Eventually, concerned family members in California began lobbying politicians to investigate why they couldn’t reach their loved ones. That request turned into the fateful trip where Congressman Leo Ryan flew to Guyana and was gunned down on the tarmac, kicking off the events that led to the deaths of over 900 people.

Friends and family of the Zizians have told remarkably consistent stories about what they say happened to loved ones after meeting Ziz. Daniel Blank had a promising career coding at a startup in Oakland in 2019 after graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in bioengineering, when he fell in with the group. By Thanksgiving 2022, he became secretive before cutting off his parents completely. In his last contact with them, he sent a gruesome video of farm animals being slaughtered alongside the message, “Look what you’ve done.”

Ophelia Bauckholt had a robust circle of friends and was making $500,000 a year at a New York trading firm. Two years ago, though, friends told NBC News, she became tight-lipped about her phone calls and weekend trips. In November 2023, she reportedly took a flight out of Newark Liberty International Airport and never contacted her old friends again. In January, they learned on the news that Bauckholt had died in a shootout with Border Patrol agents.

In Gwen Danielson, Ziz found a person vulnerable to manipulation. “I liked this person,” Ziz wrote of their first meeting at a rationalist meetup. “I told them that if they could be turned to the dark side, they would make a powerful ally.” She later suggested “we make Gwen the ‘dictator.’”

Danielson left behind a full academic scholarship at Rice University to join Ziz on a doomed rusty tugboat in San Francisco Bay, where the group imagined a rent-free life as part of Silicon Valley’s intellectual rationalist scene.

“I’m a tugboat captain trying to save the world,” Danielson wrote on an online profile. But life on the boat soon turned into a nightmare. One dark night, Ziz felt threatened by Danielson and fantasized about violence. “We might as well try to kill each other right then and there,” she wrote.

Not long after, Danielson disappeared. For a time, her parents thought she had taken her own life. “This is something that’s been scary,” her father Brett Danielson told the San Francisco Chronicle of the group. “Hopefully, they will spend a fair amount of time behind bars.”

Sleep deprivation 

Extreme sleep deprivation is considered by some experts to be a form of torture due to the physical and psychological stress it elicits. As anyone with an infant can attest, sleep deprivation can lead to cognitive issues like memory loss, mood swings and depression and to physical symptoms like fatigue and headaches. It’s no surprise that cult leaders liberally use sleep deprivation as a means of control. Aum Shinrikyo’s leader Shoko Asahara restricted followers’ sleep, as did Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate.

Ziz practiced “unihemispheric sleep” or “partial sleep,” a scientifically dubious technique apparently developed by Danielson, in which one half of the brain rests while the other is active. An anonymous blog post accused Ziz of using the technique as a form of sleep deprivation to manipulate followers. The post alleged partial sleep was used on a Zizian in Poland named Maia Pasek, who was born Chris Pasek and transitioned later in life. A post from Pasek’s online alter ego, Squirrel in Hell, titled “Decision Theory and Suicide” has been referenced as a possible suicide note. A 28-year-old named Chris Pasek died in Slaskie, Poland, a few weeks later, although SFGATE could not confirm this was the same person.

According to Michelle Zajko’s LinkedIn page, while working at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, she conducted research regarding “sleep deprived individuals.” Zajko is a person of interest in the double homicide of her parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, who were killed in their home in late 2022.

Physical abuse

While psychological abuse is near-universal in cults, direct physical abuse is not always present. At the Peoples Temple, Jim Jones cultivated an aura of fear by ordering boxing matches between followers. He also directed children to be spanked or beaten as a form of punishment. “Many onlookers cheered,” Jeff Guinn wrote in “The Road to Jonestown.” Dissenters often found they didn’t have the financial means to leave, as they’d already turned over their assets to the church. In NXIVM, the initials of cult leader Keith Raniere were branded near the genitals of female members with a hot cauterizing iron.

Allegations of sexual abuse within the Zizians are littered throughout the lengthy blogs written by its members. Much of this abuse allegedly occurred at a Bay Area home referred to as “guilt” or “guilty house.” One anonymous commenter referred to the home as a “brothel.”

Alex “Somni” Leatham, who is facing homicide charges in Solano County for the 2022 samurai sword attack on Curtis Lind that left Borhanian dead, wrote darkly about a house member repeatedly beating another “with a stick.” Danielson also described the “many months long abusive living situation” in a post titled “Fighting Abuse.”

Leatham’s posts from the time also allege that someone in the house offered a member of the group up as “a ‘toy’ I could have sex with.” 

Creating enemies

Enemies, both real and imagined, are critical tools for cult leaders. By creating a narrative of persecution, loyalty to the leader is strengthened. Enemies are often a product of their time: In the 1960s and 1970s, Jim Jones leveraged the very real fight for racial equality for his own purposes. Jones told his followers that the American power structure would fight their quest for equality and they would only survive by creating a utopian society abroad.

Enemies can also come from within. L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of Scientology, coined the term “suppressive persons” to label people who went against his church. The term came about after the defection of Hubbard’s son from the group, necessitating an explanation for why a high-profile member would suddenly depart. “Suppressive persons” are destructive personalities who are capable of harming others, Hubbard explained. People who have left Scientology often say they were labeled as “suppressive” and cut off from contacting their loved ones still in the church.

Among the Zizians, the concepts of “single good,” “double good” and “nongood” became ways to categorize people. Nongoods were described as “neutral and evil when referring to a human.” In one of her final posts, Ziz characterized them as “a cancer and willful embrace of death.”

The fractures created in the group culminated in Ziz ordering one member to kill another, according to a blog post written by Zajko.

The alleged kill order was made against a fringe figure in the group named Alice Monday, whom Ziz once referred to as “sort of a mentor” but later became an enemy. As allegations of abuse within the group increased, Monday and Zajko appear to have left the Bay Area and moved to the East Coast, where they lived as a couple.

A police charging document against Zajko for gun charges in Vermont mentions a “romantic partner” of Zajko’s. Voter registrations for the property at 1300 Webster Road in Coventry, Vermont, show both Zajko and Alice Monday living there. Around this time, Zajko wrote on her blog that Ziz had ordered her to kill Alice.

“During our last phone call, Ziz informed me that the only way I could gain her trust and make up for what I did to her was to murder Alice, preferably sometime soon,” Zajko wrote, “... then told me that after I should video call Ziz and show her the body before I destroy it so she could get proof positive that I’d really done it. And if I didn’t do it, Ziz planned to drive across the entire continental United States to murder me.”

Monday’s footprint online is sporadic. She once worked for the Oregon startup Beeminder. Her bio for the company described her as “an autodidactic student of mathematics and applied rationality.” She went by the pronoun “Ze/Zir,” but the bio said, “The linguistically less radical can by all means call her she.” In various profile pictures of Monday, she can be seen smiling, often wearing glasses, with curly strawberry blond hair.

As far back as 2014, she interacted with rationalist thinker Scott Alexander on his influential Slate Star Codex blog. In 2017, she signed up to attend a violin concerto in a home in the Lower Haight in San Francisco. But around the time the alleged threats came from Ziz, she appears to have left the country.

In 2022 a profile that matches her email address wrote of living in Chile on a Workaway trip, where she helped build homes in San José de Maipo with a man named Leo, in exchange for lodgings and food. “Leo made us a large, excellent vegan lunch every day, and in the evenings we often cooked together and getting to know each other,” Monday wrote.

Monday did not return a request for comment for this story. 

At the top, a godlike leader

Although not all cult leaders liken themselves to religious figures, most have intense, grandiose beliefs about themselves. Asahara told Aum Shinrikyo followers that, like Christ, he could take on their sins. Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate convinced his followers that he was chosen to help them ascend to the next life. David Koresh proclaimed himself the new messiah.

In her own writings, Ziz described how she viewed herself as a “Double Good” figure — the highest designation in her hierarchy — and often wrote as if her words were a gift to be studied.

“I want people to be able to extract the updates that I made by understanding what algorithms I ran,” Ziz wrote. In one post, she fantasized about a road-rage killing, framed in “Star Wars” lore. “Imagine an enraging road situation, that gets stronger. …” she wrote. “The Sith do what they want deep down. They remove all obstructions to that and express their true values.”

Other Zizians acknowledged the scale of Ziz’s ambitions, even in sometimes mocking comments. “You are not innocent, Ziz,” Zajko wrote in response to one of Ziz’s posts. “You are afforded no protection from the hammer of justice because what have you done, exactly? Made a religion? Who cares.”

The abruptness with which the Zizians cut ties and became enveloped in a new ideology convinced loved ones that they were under the influence of a cult. Alexander Blank, whose son Daniel is in jail in Maryland, called him “a victim of the cult.” A friend of Bauckholt’s referred to the Zizians as a “death cult.” A classmate of Suri Dao, who is facing trial in Solano County, worried the friend he knew as Elizah was lost forever.

“My belief about cults is that there is a cult for everyone,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I just knew that this was the cult for Elizah.”

What happens next to the Zizians is now largely in the hands of the justice system. Seven members — Dao, Leatham, Ziz, Zajko, Blank, Maximilian Synder and Teresa Youngblut — are in custody across the country, awaiting trial for charges ranging from trespassing to murder. Ziz faces some of the lightest charges of the bunch: trespassing, obstruction and illegally possessing a handgun in her vehicle. Law enforcement agencies in California and Pennsylvania have not said if she will eventually face any charges there.

Like many cult leaders, Ziz had long prepared for the day that law enforcement caught up with her. In a 2019 blog post titled “Punching Evil,” she made an egomaniacal prediction: “There are more people who would probably actually avenge me if I was killed or unjustly imprisoned than almost anyone in the modern era.”