A month-long national search is over with the arrest of a Vermont woman, who authorities believe provided handguns to two suspects involved in a deadly shootout in January that took the life of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent in Orleans County and one of the suspects.

Michelle Zajko, 32, of Derby and formerly of Chester Heights, Penn. is wanted for questioning in connection with providing the two firearms carried by Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt during the traffic stop by the U.S. Border Patrol on Interstate 91 in Coventry about 3 p.m. Jan. 20.

No known criminal charges have been filed in Vermont against Zajko, but she was arrested on Sunday night in Maryland on new unrelated charges.

Maryland State Police in Allegany County said they arrested Zajko and Jack “Ziz” LaSota, 33, on Sunday on charges of gun possession, trespassing and other misdemeanor counts unrelated to the Vermont case. 

Both are due in criminal court for a bail hearing on Tuesday.

It appeared that Zajko’s roommate in Orleans County two years ago may also have been arrested in Maryland over the weekend.

WPVI-TV in Philadelphia reported Daniel Arthur Blank, 26, now with a hometown of Sacramento, Calif. is facing charges of trespassing, obstructing and hindering. 

LaSota, who police have said faked his own death at least twice, is the leader of a cult that call themselves “Zizians” and appear to be vegans and highly educated, officials reported.

Pennsylvania State Police have said Zajko also is a person of interest in the double homicide of her parents at their home on New Year’s Eve 2022.  Her driver’s license was found in the home, police said.

Vermont State Police and the Pennsylvania State Police had conducted a search at Zajko’s Orleans County residence two years ago to try to locate a firearm that might have been used in the fatal shootings of her parents in Delaware County, Penn.

A police bulletin maintained Zajko was believed to be “armed and dangerous.”

The gun used to kill her parents was believed purchase at Green Mountain Sporting Goods in Irasburg on Feb. 3, 2022, records show.    

Youngblut is in federal custody in the Vermont case, while a Border Patrol Agent and Bauckholt died in the shootout.

Since Vermont News First initially broke the Vermont double homicide story on Jan. 20, Youngblut and Bauckholt are now linked to a radical leftist transgender militant cult believed involved in at least five homicides sprinkled across the United States, according to news accounts about the various killings. 

As the convoluted case plays out, the ongoing criminal investigations become more and more bizarre each day.  There are now links to Vermont, Washington State, California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland and possibly other states.

Many of the main figures are part of the cult that call themselves “Zizians,”  according to law enforcement authorities in Vermont and elsewhere, along with various out-of-state media reports.

The case has so many twists and turns that scorecards are helpful in trying to keep all the players straight.

Among the major players are:

— Teresa Youngblut, 21, formerly of Seattle, Wash., who has been charged in Vermont with two felony assault charges in connection with the Jan. 20 fatal shootout in Orleans County that left U.S. Border Patrol Agent David “Chris” Maland, 44, of Newport dead.  News accounts indicate Youngblut claims to be transgender and uses the name “Milo.”  However she did not use that name in federal court proceedings in Vermont and was jailed in a women’s prison in South Burlington until her recent transfer to a New Hampshire jail.

Youngblut disappeared from her Seattle home in May 2024 and became estranged from her parents, who reported her missing, the Seattle Times said.  She had been a computer science major at the University of Washington.  Her social media account indicated she followed some Antifa-aligned far left accounts, the New York Post reported.

— Felix Bauckholt, 22, a German National, who was killed by the Border Patrol during the shootout on Jan. 20.  He also is listed as transgender by news accounts and went by the name “Ophelia.”

Bauckholt attempted to pull a handgun for the Vermont shootout, but was fatally wounded by the Border Patrol before he could get any shots off, the FBI has said.   Bauckholt is from Freiburg, Germany and later graduated from the University of Waterloo in Ontario.  There was conflicting information as to whether he was an illegal immigrant, or whether his work Visa had expired.  Bauckholt had worked earlier as a quantitative trader at Tower Research Capital in New York making more than $500,000 a year, records show.

— Maximilian Bentley Snyder, 22, formerly of Seattle is facing a murder charge in California for the death of Curtis Lind, a Solano County, California landlord.  Lind had tried to evict a group of transgender squatters from his property, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.  Lind was stabbed with a samurai sword and also lost his right eye during a 2022 attack by three members of the fringe group, officials have said.

Lind was due to testify against two of them in a trial this April.  However on Jan. 17, Lind was stabbed and had his throat slit on the street outside his Vallejo, Calif. home reportedly by Snyder, who is facing a homicide charge.

Snyder and Youngblut had obtained a marriage license in King County Washington on Nov. 5, 2024, but the Seattle Times and other media members have been unable to find that it was ever used.

He and Youngblut both attended the swanky private Lakeside School in north Seattle, but it was unclear if they ever knew each other at the time. 

— Michelle Zajko, 32, of Derby and formerly of Chester Heights, Penn., as noted earlier, is wanted for questioning in connection with providing the two firearms carried by Youngblut and Bauckholz during the Jan. 20 traffic stop in Coventry by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. David Robillard helped secure the January 2023 search warrant for the single-family residence shared by Zajko and a man listed as Daniel Blank, 26, at 1300 Webster Road in Coventry, Vermont Superior Court records show.  The court records also claim the house is in Orleans.

Investigators were seeking a Smith & Wesson M&P model 9-mm handgun and some “Sig 9-mm” ammunition possibly used in the double homicide in Pennsylvania, court records show.

— Richard Zajko, 72, and Rita Zajko, 69, whose home was not far from the state of Delaware, were found shot to death in their upstairs bedroom at 18 Highland Drive in Chester Heights, Penn. on Jan. 2, 2023, state police said.  They believe the couple was killed late on New Year’s Eve.  Both were shot in their head.

Officials have said Bauckholt flew back into the United States just hours before Zajko’s parents were killed.  Snyder was “in contact” with Youngblut and Bauckholt before the double homicide in Pennsylvania, records show .

— Jack “Ziz” LaSota, 32, who also has claimed to be transgender, had been listed as the leader of the cult, and was missing until Sunday, according to authorities. LaSota faked his own death by a bogus boat accident in August 2022, but he later resurfaced as law enforcement investigated the double homicide case a few months later, according to police.  The brief obituary posted by his mother remains online.

LaSota also played dead when he was found hiding with Zajko in a hotel near the Philadelphia International Airport a few days after her parents were killed.  He was charged with obstruction and disorderly conduct and eventually released on bail.  LaSota was eventually a no show at subsequent court hearings and a warrant was issued.  

LaSota, who was born a biological male, now wants to be identified as a woman, according to news accounts.  LaSota has used the name “Andrea Phelps,” The New York Post reported.  The newspaper said the Zizians “are highly educated trans vegan ‘rationalists’ who hold fringe, esoteric ideological beliefs about transhumanism and animals rights.” 

The Boston Globe has reported there is a pending arrest warrant in Delaware County, Penn. for LaSota after he skipped court hearings in his case for obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct related to the double homicide.

The news story has been hard to piece together because various segments are spread across the country and most of the national media outlets have ignored the story.

The day after the double homicide in Orleans County, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued an alert to federally licensed gun dealers in Vermont seeking information about Zajko and gun sales.

Vermont News First obtained from a licensee the alert that said in part, the “ATF is asking for your assistance in identifying any firearms purchases made by Michelle Jacqueline Zajko, a person of interest in the shooting of a Customs and Border Protection Officers on January 20, 2025.”

The ATF asked the licensees to check their records and notify the ATF immediately by phone if they had information on gun transfers or attempted transfers involving Zajko.

The New York Post said Zajko is a trans non-binary adult child of the two victims in the unsolved double homicide in Pennsylvania.

Members of the “Ziz group are known to live together often times in box trucks, including at the Lind property in California.” 

There is no known criminal charge against Zajko in the Vermont case and officials have said she is only a person of interest that they hope to interview.

The first known law enforcement contact with  Youngblut and Bauckholt came with the Vermont State Police and Homeland Security Investigations on Jan. 14.

The staff at the Colonnade Inn in Lyndonville reported seeing the couple check in with black tactical clothing and Youngblut with a handgun and holster on her hip, officials said.   They offered few comments to police, but said they were in the area to scout out possible real estate, federal court records note.     

They immediately checked back out of the inn on Back Center Road later that day and were believed to have headed to the Newport City Inn and Suites, about 35 miles north on Interstate 91.  They were spotted on Main Street in Newport on Sunday Jan. 19.

The FBI in Vermont has provided few details in the case.  Most of the details in the two FBI news releases had been reported earlier. Officials have not said who shot the Border Patrol Agent during the gunfire exchange.

Maland was a popular Border Patrol Agent and K-9 handler who colleagues said went the extra mile when called in to help with his K-9 Cora.  He was engaged to be married to a woman, who also worked along the International border in an undisclosed job.

The Lind homicide came in retaliation for him fighting back during the 2022 attack on his life, police said.  As he was attacked, Lind opened fire on two of the “Ziz” group, killing one, Amir “Emma” Borhanian and wounding a second person, police in California said at the time.

Two purported members of the cult, Suri Dao and Alexander “Somni” Leatham, both transgenders, were due for an April trial on charges of attempted murder of Lind, causing the death of their colleague and other charges, news accounts noted.  Both of them have tried to escape from custody and face other charges, the Post reported.