A member of the cultlike group known as Zizians has been charged with homicide in the capturing of her parents at their Pennsylvania house on her thirtieth birthday, and a prosecutor mentioned Wednesday that authorities don’t imagine she was appearing alone.
Michelle Zajko, who has been jailed in Maryland on different fees since February 2025, has been charged with homicide, housebreaking and conspiracy fees in the deaths of Rita and Richard Zajko, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse mentioned at a information convention. The prosecutor mentioned she didn’t act alone.
Rouse mentioned that Zajko is identified to have been amongst those that killed her parents “to the extent that if she wasn’t the one who actually pulled the trigger, she was certainly aligned with those who did.”
Online court docket information didn’t instantly point out whether or not Zajko had an legal professional in the Pennsylvania case as of Wednesday. An legal professional representing her in Maryland didn’t instantly reply to a message looking for remark, and the Delaware County Public Defender’s workplace declined to remark.
The couple was shot to dying in their house on New Year’s Eve after police say a neighbor’s doorbell digital camera captured video of a automotive pulling as much as their house in Chester Heights, a voice shouting “Mom!” and one other voice exclaiming, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!”
Michelle Zajko has denied any involvement, and in court docket filings advised her father may need killed her mom after which himself.
“I didn’t murder my parents,” she wrote in an April 2025 “Open Letter to the World.”
Authorities, nonetheless, had lengthy described Zajko as an individual of curiosity in the double murder, two of the six deaths linked to a group of younger, very smart laptop scientists who seem to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender id and synthetic intelligence.
Since 2022, members have been tied to the dying of one of their very own throughout an assault on a California landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing, the Zajkos’ deaths in Pennsylvania, and a freeway shootout in Vermont that left a border agent and one other Zizian useless.
Zajko, who is charged with offering the gun used to kill US Border Patrol Agent David Maland in January 2025, was arrested in Maryland a few weeks later together with Daniel Blank and Jack “Ziz” LaSota, whom authorities describe as the group’s chief. Police who responded to a landowner’s grievance about suspicious folks parked in field vans on his property described them as having “ties with the Zizians Cult” and mentioned they might be questioned about crimes throughout the nation.
All three face state fees of trespassing and unlawful gun and drug possession, whereas LaSota faces a federal cost of unlawful gun possession by a fugitive. A decide just lately granted a protection request for a competency analysis in the federal case.
In court docket filings, LaSota’s attorneys mentioned their consumer eschews the time period Zizian and denies that she and her pals have shaped a cult. Zajko has claimed authorities arrested the group in Maryland to stop them from exonerating Teresa Youngblut, who has pleaded not responsible in Vermont to homicide and will face the dying penalty if convicted.
Zajko was dwelling in Vermont at the time of her parents’ deaths and was questioned there by police shortly after they died. A few weeks later, officers briefly took her into custody at a Pennsylvania lodge however launched her with out fees. LaSota, staying at the identical lodge, was charged with obstructing the murder investigation and disorderly conduct.
Zajko had been estranged from her parents in the 12 months main as much as their deaths, the prosecutor mentioned. They have been killed hours after Rita Zajko texted her daughter in an try to reconcile. “Her mother reached out and explained that she was sorry for the rift that had grown between them,” the prosecutor mentioned. “That text went unanswered.”
A few hours later, a minimum of two folks entered the house. “The lights go on in the home, and Richard and Rita Zajko are executed,” he mentioned.