A member of the cultlike group known as the Zizians has been charged with murder in the 2022 deaths of her parents in Pennsylvania, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Michelle Zajko, 30, has been charged with murder, burglary, and conspiracy in the killings of Rita Zajko, 56, and Richard Zajko, 55, whose bodies were found in their home in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, on New Year’s Eve 2022. Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse announced the charges at a news conference, saying Zajko did not act alone. Online court records did not immediately indicate whether Zajko had an attorney in the Pennsylvania case as of Wednesday. An attorney representing her in Maryland did not respond to a request for comment, and the Delaware County public defender’s office declined to comment.
Authorities have previously said that a neighbor’s doorbell camera captured video of a car pulling up to the home, a voice shouting “Mom!” and another voice exclaiming, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!” The couple was shot to death inside their home.
Zajko has denied any involvement in her parents’ deaths. In an April 2025 “Open Letter to the World” she wrote, “I didn’t murder my parents.” In court filings, she suggested that her father might have killed her mother and then himself. Authorities have long described Zajko as a person of interest in the double homicide.
The deaths are two of six killings linked to the Zizians group, a loose network of young, highly intelligent computer scientists who share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity, and artificial intelligence, according to prosecutors and court records. Since 2022, members of the group 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, and a January 2025 highway shootout in Vermont that left a U.S. Border Patrol agent and another Zizian dead.
Zajko, who has been charged with providing the gun used to kill Border Patrol agent David Maland, was arrested in Maryland in February 2025 along with Daniel Blank and Jack “Ziz” LaSota, whom authorities describe as the group’s leader. Police responding to a landowner’s complaint about suspicious people parked in box trucks on his property said the group had “ties with the Zizians cult” and would be questioned about crimes across the country. All three face state charges of trespassing, illegal gun possession, and drug possession; LaSota also faces a federal charge of illegal gun possession by a fugitive. A judge recently granted a defense request for a competency evaluation in the federal case.
In court filings, LaSota’s attorneys said their client eschews the term “Zizian” and denies that she and her friends have formed a cult. Zajko has claimed that authorities arrested the group in Maryland to prevent them from exonerating Teresa Youngblut, who has pleaded not guilty in Vermont to murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Zajko was living in Vermont at the time of her parents’ deaths and was questioned by police there shortly after they died. A few weeks later, officers briefly took her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel but released her without charges. LaSota, who was staying at the same hotel, was charged with obstructing the homicide investigation and disorderly conduct.