Member of cultlike Zizians group charged with murder of her parents

Michelle Zajko is escorted into court for a pretrial hearing on trespassing, gun and drug charges in Cumberland, Maryland on 16 January 2026. Photograph: Mark Scolforo/AP View image in fullscreen Michelle Zajko is escorted into court for a pretrial hearing on trespassing, gun and drug charges in Cumberland, Maryland on 16 January 2026. Photograph: Mark Scolforo/AP Member of cultlike Zizians group charged with murder of her parents Michelle Zajko, in jail since February 2025 on other charges, has been charged in 2022 Pennsylvania killings of parents A member of the cultlike group known as Zizians, who has denied killing her parents in Pennsylvania in 2022, has been charged with murder, a prosecutor said Wednesday. Michelle Zajko, who has been jailed in Maryland on other charges since February 2025, has been charged with murder, burglary and conspiracy charges in the deaths of Rita and Richard Zajko, Delaware county district attorney Tanner Rouse said at a news conference. The prosecutor said she did not act alone. They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed Read more Online court records didn’t immediately indicate whether Zajko had an attorney in the Pennsylvania case as of Wednesday. An attorney representing her in Maryland did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment, and the Delaware county public defender’s office declined to comment. The couple was shot to death in their home on New Year’s Eve after police say a neighbor’s doorbell camera captured video of a car pulling up to their home in Chester Heights, a voice shouting “Mom!” and another voice exclaiming, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!” Michelle Zajko has denied any involvement, and in court filings suggested her father might have killed her mother and then himself. “I didn’t murder my parents,” she wrote in an April 2025 “Open Letter to the World.” Authorities, however, had long described Zajko as a person of interest in the double homicide, two of the six deaths linked to a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists who appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence. Since 2022, members have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing, the Zajkos’ deaths Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left a border agent and another Zizian dead. Zajko, who is charged with providing the gun used to kill US border patrol agent David Maland in January 2025, was arrested in Maryland a few weeks later along with Daniel Blank and Jack “Ziz” LaSota, whom authorities describe as the group’s leader. Police who responded to a landowner’s complaint about suspicious people parked in box trucks on his property described them as having “ties with the Zizians cult” and said they would be questioned about crimes across the country. All three face state charges of trespassing and illegal gun and drug possession, whi