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A Bay Area group described as a "death cult" is reportedly responsible for a recent string of killings that took place across the United States, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
A fringe online community known as the "Zizians" is believed to have committed multiple attacks on Curtis Lind, an 82-year-old landlord in Vallejo, California, the latter of which resulted in his death on January 17, as well as the killing of David Maland, a U.S. Border Patrol Agent in Burlington, Vermont, on January 20, according to an Open Vallejo investigation.
Maximilian Snyder, 22, a data scientist, and Teresa Youngblut, 21, a computer science student, were both charged in relation to Lind and Maland's deaths, respectively. The two suspects, who applied for a marriage license in King County, Washington, in November, reportedly followed a fringe, self-described "vegan Sith" ideology stemming from the Bay Area.
The Zizians, who get their name from a person known as "Ziz," are described as being a radical offshoot of the Rationalism movement. Emma Borhanian, 31, one of two assailants in the initial 2022 samurai sword attack on Lind, was fatally shot in self-defense at the time.
Lind, survived despite losing an eye, before allegedly being stabbed to death by Snyder on the same property earlier this month. Youngblut is accused of pulling a gun on U.S. Border Patrol agents during a traffic stop, which resulted in a shootout that left Maland and Felix Baukholt, a German citizen who was a passenger in Youngblut's Toyota Prius, dead.
A prosecutor in Vermont alleged in a court filing that the weapons supplied to Youngblut and Baukholt were also distributed in the attacks on Lind, as well as an unspecified double homicide incident that took place in Pennsylvania. An anonymous post shared on the Rationalism forum LessWrong.com in 2023 warned that violence was coming to the Zizian community, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Over the past few years, Ziz has repeatedly called for the deaths of many different classes of people,” the post stated.
Additionally, Jessica Taylor, a friend of Baukholt's, shared a post on her X account claiming she previously warned him that the Zizians "were a death cult with a high local death rate."