What to know about the killing of a Border Patrol agent and ties to a cultlike group

The killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland near the Canadian border last month and five other homicides in Vermont, Pennsylvania and California have been tied to a cultlike group.

Interviews and online postings reveal how young computer scientists described by those who know them as highly intelligent appear to have become increasingly violent.

Maland, 44, was killed in a Jan. 20 shootout following a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont, a small town about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Canadian border. Washington state resident Teresa Youngblut, 21, faces two weapons charges in connection with the killing.

She was traveling with German citizen Felix Bauckholt, who is also listed in court documents as Ophelia. Both had connections to a cultlike group known in online communities as “Zizians" because of their affinity for a blogger who calls herself “Ziz.” The pair had been under the surveillance of authorities for several days after an employee at a hotel where they were staying reported seeing Youngblut carrying a gun.

Bauckholt died in the Vermont shootout. Authorities have not specified whose bullets hit whom. Youngblut's lawyer said through a spokesperson that they are not commenting. Youngblut pleaded not guilty in federal court on Feb. 7.

Jack LaSota, 34, of Berkeley, California, published a dark and sometimes violent blog under the name Ziz and, in one section, described her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and “often desire to kill each other.”

LaSota, who used she/her pronouns, and in her writings says she is a transgender woman, railed against perceived enemies, including so-called rationalist groups, which operate mostly online and seek to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge. Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

When LaSota left the rationalists behind, she took with her a group of “extremely vulnerable and isolated” followers, Anna Salamon, executive director of the Center for Applied Rationality, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

In North Carolina, a landlord told The Associated Press that he had been renting two condos to Bauckholt and Youngblut. LaSota also had been living with Bauckholt as recently as this winter, said the landlord, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns for his safety.

In November 2019, LaSota, Emma Borhanian, 31, Gwen Danielson and Alexander Leatham, 29 were arrested at a protest outside a Northern California retreat center where a rationalist group was holding an event. The group said they were protesting sexual misconduct inside the group.

In 2022, landlord Curtis Lind went to court to evict Borhanian, LaSota, Leatham and other tenants who had stopped paying rent at a Vallejo, California, property. Two days before the Nov. 15 eviction deadline, prosecutors say Leatham, Borhanian and Suri Dao attacked him.

Lind shot his attackers, killing Borhanian and wounding Leatham. He survived being impaled with a sword but lost an eye. Prosecutors concluded he acted in self-defense and charged Dao and Leatham with violent crimes.

On Jan. 17, the 82-year-old landlord was stabbed to death. Maximilian Snyder, 22, who applied for a marriage license with Teresa Youngblut in Washington state in November, is charged with murder.

On New Year’s Eve 2022, Rita and Richard Zajko were shot and killed in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania.

Police questioned the couple’s daughter, Michelle, at her home in Vermont, and a few weeks later, took her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel. She was not arrested or charged. LaSota was at the hotel, too, and was arrested after refusing to cooperate with officers, and charged with obstructing law enforcement and disorderly conduct.

Six months later, LaSota was released on bail but stopped showing up for court. LaSota’s attorney, Daniel McGarrigle, said last month his client was “wholly and unequivocally innocent of the charges filed in this case.”

LaSota, 34, has not responded to multiple Associated Press emails in recent week. She has missed court appearances in two states, and bench warrants have been issued for her arrest. Associated Press reporters have left numerous phone and e-mail messages with LaSota’s family and received no response.

Her whereabouts are unknown and McGarrigle declined to say whether he’s had recent contact with his client.

FBI agents search a neighborhood in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025 where Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt, who were involved in the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont, had been renting homes in the neighborhood, their landlord told The Associated Press. (WRAL-TV via AP)

Flowers sit outside the property where San Francisco Bay Area prosecutors say Maximilian Snyder killed landlord Curtis Lind in Vallejo, California, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Janie Har)

Maximilian Snyder, who is charged with allegedly killing an 82-year-old Vallejo landlord to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against his former tenants, walks into court with his hands up for arraignment Thursday, Feb 6, 2025, in Fairfield, Calf. (Chris Riley, Times-Herald via AP)/The Times-Herald via AP)

FBI agents search a neighborhood in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025, where Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt, who were involved in the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont, had been renting homes in the neighborhood, their landlord told The Associated Press. (WRAL-TV via AP)

Maximilian Snyder appears in court for arraignment on Thursday in Fairfield, Calif. Snyder is charged with allegedly killing an 82-year-old Vallejo landlord to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against his former tenants. Snyder asked for additional weeks to find proper counsel, moving the case back to Vallejo. (Chris Riley/Times-Herald)/The Times-Herald via AP)

FILE - In this undated and unknown location photo released by the Department of Homeland Security shows Border Patrol Agent David Maland posing with a service dog. (Department of Homeland Security via AP, File)

Maximilian Snyder, who is charged with allegedly killing an 82-year-old Vallejo landlord to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against his former tenants, walks into court for arraignment Thursday, Feb 6, 2025, in Fairfield, Calf. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

In this combination of undated photos provided by the Pennsylvania State Police, Richard Zajko, left, and his wife Rita Zajko, who police say were shot to death in their home in suburban Philadelphia on Dec. 31, 2022, are shown. (Pennsylvania State Police via AP)

FBI agents search a neighborhood in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025., where Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt, who were involved in the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont, had been renting homes, their landlord told The Associated Press. (WRAL-TV via AP)

FILE- Cars are backed up at the US-Canada border in Stanstead, Quebec, after a shooting involving a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Coventry, Vt., on Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Chloe Jones, File)

FILE - This Jan. 29, 2025 photo shows a Chester Heights, Pa., home, the scene of the 2022 killing of Richard and Rita Zajko, (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

FILE - This image taken from video provided by WCAX shows police cars closing off a road after a shooting involving a U.S. Border Patrol agent on Interstate 91 near Coventry, Vt., on Jan. 20, 2025. (WCAX via AP, File)

FILE - Law enforcement follow a hearse carrying fallen border patrol agent David Maland from the UVM Medical Center morgue to a funeral home in Burlington, Vt., Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (WCAX via AP, File)

In this Jan., 2023 booking photo provided by the Delaware County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney's Office, Jack LaSota refused to speak and kept her eyes closed while being photographed after being detained in a hotel in suburban Pennsylvania on Jan. 23, 2023. (Delaware County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney's Office via AP)

Flowers sit outside the property where San Francisco Bay Area prosecutors say Maximilian Snyder killed landlord Curtis Lind in Vallejo, California, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Janie Har)

MUTTENZ, Switzerland (AP) — Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini won again in court Tuesday and now lead 2-0 in trial verdicts against Swiss federal prosecutors.

Once soccer’s most powerful men, former FIFA president Blatter and former UEFA president Platini were acquitted for a second time in a case now in its 10th year on charges of fraud, forgery, mismanagement and misappropriation of more than $2 million of FIFA money in 2011.

Blatter, now aged 89, gave little reaction listening to the verdict of three cantonal (state) judges acting as a federal criminal appeals court. Sitting in the row in front of Platini, Blatter alternately tapped his fingers on his desk or held his left hand over his mouth.

Only when the 55-minute verdict statement was over did Blatter smile before reaching across to shake his lawyer's hand. Blatter then shared a long hug with his daughter, Corinne.

“You have seen my daughter was coming with tears because she believed in (her) father and I believed in myself,” said Blatter, who spoke of a sword of Damocles being removed from over his head. “To wait such a long time affects the person and my family was very much affected."

Platini sat with his arms folded or rubbing his hands as he listened to a translator sitting beside him relating the court's verdict in German into his native French.

“This persecution by FIFA and some Swiss federal prosecutors for 10 years is now finished, is now totally finished," Platini said leaving the court, insisting his honor was restored. "So I’m very happy.”

The attorney general’s office in Switzerland had challenged a first acquittal in July 2022 and asked for sentences of 20 months, suspended for two years. The indictment alleged the payment “damaged FIFA’s assets and unlawfully enriched Platini.”

“Michel Platini must finally be left in peace in criminal matters,” his lawyer Dominic Nellen said in a statement. ”After two acquittals, even the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland must realize that these criminal proceedings have definitively failed."

A further appeal to the Swiss supreme court can be filed by the prosecutors' office, which said in a statement it “will decide about how to further proceed.”

Blatter and Platini have consistently denied wrongdoing in a decade-long case that ultimately came to nothing in court yet totally altered world soccer body FIFA.

The legal case swung on their claims of a verbal agreement to one day settle the money in question.

Blatter approved FIFA paying 2 million Swiss francs (now $2.21 million) to France soccer great Platini in February 2011 for supplementary and non-contracted salary working as a presidential advisor from 1998-2002.

The latest win for Blatter and the 69-year-old Platini came exactly 9½ years since the Swiss federal investigation was revealed and kicked off events that ended the careers of the two men.

That September 2015 day in Zurich, police came to interrogate them at FIFA after an executive committee meeting when Platini was a strong favorite to succeed his one-time mentor in an upcoming election.

With Platini soon suspended and banned by FIFA, European soccer body UEFA ran his long-time secretary general Gianni Infantino as its election candidate. Infantino was a surprise winner in February 2016 and is set to lead FIFA until at least 2031.

Though federal court trials have twice cleared their names, Blatter’s reputation likely always will be tied to leading FIFA during corruption crises that took down a swath of senior soccer officials worldwide.

Platini, one of soccer’s greatest players and later Blatter’s protégé in soccer politics, never did get the FIFA presidency he often called his destiny.

Neither Blatter nor Platini has worked in soccer since they were suspended by the FIFA ethics committee in October 2015. They were later banned and failed to overturn the bans in separate appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2016.

”The criminal proceedings have had not only legal but also massive personal and professional consequences for Michel Platini, although no incriminating evidence was ever presented," Nellen said, suggesting further legal action "against those responsible for the criminal proceedings.”

Platini’s ban expired in 2019 and Blatter was given a subsequent ban by FIFA in 2021 months before his first was due to end.

Blatter is exiled from soccer until late in 2028 — when he will be 92 — because of an ethics prosecution of alleged self-dealing in eight-figure management bonuses paid for successfully organizing the men’s World Cup in 2010 and 2014.

The verdict was given Tuesday in a low-key provincial courthouse where a four-day trial was held three weeks ago.

Blatter and Platini have claimed at five different judicial bodies — twice at FIFA, then the Court of Arbitration for Sport and now two Swiss federal criminal courts — that they had a verbal “gentleman’s agreement” to one day settle the unpaid and non-contracted salary.

Platini was a storied former captain and coach of the France national term when he worked to help Blatter get elected to lead FIFA in Paris on the eve of the 1998 World Cup he organized.

The two men said Platini agreed to be a presidential adviser on an annual salary of 300,000 Swiss francs (now $340,000) through 2002. They claim there was a verbal deal to later get the balance of 1 million Swiss francs for each year that FIFA could not pay at the time.

Platini started asking for the money early in 2010, citing seven-figure payments made to senior Blatter aides who left FIFA which showed the soccer body could afford to pay him. The payment was finally made in February 2011.

Details of the payment only emerged in the crisis that hit FIFA in May 2015 when U.S. federal investigators unsealed a sweeping investigation of international soccer officials. Swiss authorities made early-morning arrests at hotels in Zurich before seizing FIFA financial and business records.

In 2015, Swiss federal prosecutors already were handling a criminal complaint filed by FIFA. That was about suspected financial wrongdoing linked to votes in December 2010 that picked Russia and Qatar as future World Cup hosts.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Former UEFA President, Michel Platini after the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former UEFA President, Michel Platini after the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former UEFA President, Michel Platini after the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former Fifa President, Sepp Blatter, centre, and his lawyer Lorenz Erni, right, after the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former Fifa President, Sepp Blatter, centre, and his lawyer Lorenz Erni, right, after the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former UEFA President, Michel Platini, after the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, arriving to the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former Fifa President, Sepp Blatter, arriving to the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former UEFA President, Michel Platini, arriving to the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former UEFA President, Michel Platini, arriving to the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former UEFA President, Michel Platini, centre, and his Lawyer Dominic Nellen, left, arriving to the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former Fifa President, Sepp Blatter, arriving to the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former UEFA President, Michel Platini, centre, and his Lawyer Dominic Nellen, left, arriving to the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)

Former Fifa President, Sepp Blatter, arriving to the verdict at the special appeals court, in Muttenz, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)