Daughter of Slain Delco Couple Facing Federal Gun Charges

CHESTER HEIGHTS, PA — The daughter of a slain Delaware County couple who was recently arrested and charged in Maryland and has ties to a deadly cultlike group has been federally charged with firearm violations.

Michelle Zajko, 32, of Media, was charged by federal authorities for making false statements to buy firearms. According to court documents, Zajko gave a false address when buying three guns at a Vermont business about a year ago.

Two of those firearms were involved in the Jan. 20 killing of Border Patrol Agent David Maland in Coventry, Vermont, court records show.

Zajko's parents, Rita and Richard Zajko, ages 69 and 72, respectively, were found dead Jan. 2, 2023 in their Chester Heights home. Authorities said they were fatally shot Dec. 31, 2022.

Pennsylvania State Police said an investigation into the shooting revealed that the weapon used in Maland's killing was purchased by a person of interest in the Delaware County killings. That person of interested was later identified as Zajko.

Zajko is associated with a violent cultlike group called the "Zizians" that is linked to several killings, including Rita and Richard Zajko, Maland, and a landlord in California.

Authorities in Maryland Sunday took Zajko, Jack Amadeus Lasota, 34, of Berkeley, California, and Daniel Arthur Blank, 26, of Sacramento, California into custody.

Zajko was charged with trespassing, obstructing and hindering, resisting arrest, and handgun on person. Federal authorities said in court filings that the third handgun she purchased was never found, but that she did buy another handgun a day before the three-gun sale.

Lasota and Blank were charged with similar crimes.

Lasota is the leader of the group and is known for his online blog, for which he uses the pen name "Ziz," hence the name "Zizians."

The Zizians are a focused on veganism, gender identity, rationalism, and artificial intelligence.

Lasota's ideologies are believed to have stemmed from his reading of a though experiment titled "Roko's Basilisk" that was made popular among online rationalist communities. The experiment states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development to incentivize said advancement.

LaSota was charged with obstruction of justice in Delaware County, just days after Rita and Richard Zajko were found dead, for refusing to answer detectives' questions. He was issued a bench warrant after failing to appear for court dates in Delaware County.

According to Zajko's LinkdIn profile, she graduated from Temple University's Bioinformatics Masters Program, with an undergraduate degree from Cabrini University.

She previously interned at NASA's GENELAB program, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and did a one-year internship in genome annotation.