A woman tied to a transgender cult with a cross-country trail of violence has been charged with conspiring to murder her own parents — a case that sat cold for three years while the ideology that fueled it got a pass from the press.
Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse announced Wednesday that Michelle Zajko, 33, faces first-degree murder and conspiracy charges for the shooting deaths of her parents, Rita and Richard Zajko, in their Chester Heights, Pennsylvania home on New Year's Eve 2022. Rita, 69, was shot in the back of the head. Richard, 71, took a bullet to the hand and another to the temple. Their bodies were found in an upstairs bedroom. Two 9mm shell casings were left at the scene. No gun.
Rouse said prosecutors believe Zajko helped plan the killing even if she didn't pull the trigger. "We know Michelle Zajko was with the killers, killer," he said. "To the extent that she wasn't the one that actually pulled the trigger, she was certainly aligned with those that did." Ballistic analysis linked the shell casings to a firearm used at Zajko's backyard shooting range in Vermont. A neighbor's doorbell camera caught two individuals approaching the house and audio of someone yelling "Mom!" right before the shots. Zajko's mother had texted her hours earlier apologizing for their broken relationship.
The gun Zajko purchased before the killings was later found in the hotel room of Jack "Ziz" Amadeus LaSota — the leader of the Zizians, according to HotAir. Ten days after the murders, Zajko and LaSota were found together in that same hotel room. Zajko refused to cooperate with police, fled when they tried to return her car, and skipped her court date.
The Zizians are a cult-like group of highly educated, vegan, AI-obsessed transgender radicals that formed in Berkeley around LaSota and another trans woman named Gwen Danielson. They believed trans women were intrinsically gifted. The group's rap sheet reads like a crime blotter: they squatted on boats, refused to pay rent, and when landlord Curtis Lind tried to evict them from his Vallejo, California property, they ran him through with a samurai sword. Lind survived, shot two of them dead in self-defense — but was murdered before he could testify. Last January, two Zizians opened fire on U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland near the Canadian border, killing him. The guns in that attack came from Zajko.
That's at least four dead tied to this group in under four years. The Daily Caller noted the Zizians have been "linked with a number of violent deaths throughout the country." HotAir laid out the full trajectory from Berkeley rationalism to samurai swords to assassinated federal agents. Both outlets named the ideology. Most of the establishment press won't.
Zajko has denied the charge. "I didn't murder my parents," she wrote. She and LaSota were finally picked up in Maryland in February 2025 on trespassing and weapons charges. Rouse acknowledged the case is circumstantial: "We don't have a smoking gun. It is piece after piece after piece of evidence that has been collected painstakingly over years."
Three years for charges in a double homicide where the suspect was found with the cult leader days after the killing and the murder weapon turned up in his room. The question isn't just why it took so long. It's why a movement this violent got this far before anyone in power treated it like what it is.
