On a California landlord’s fatal stabbing, a Border Patrol shooting, and a twisted transgender cult.

A landlord named Curtis Lind was fatally stabbed in Vallejo, Calif., on January 17, 2025. The Vallejo Police Department suggested that “anyone with information” should contact detective Daniel Callison by phone. I called three times to inquire about Maximilian Snyder, who I thought should be a person of interest. I never received a response. On Tuesday, January 28, I saw reports that Snyder had been arrested and charged with murder.

I’m in the U.K. working on my linguistics dissertation. Somehow, from thousands of miles away and with just my computer, I ended up identifying the same suspect as the detectives. How?

It started on Tuesday, January 21, as I performed the journalist’s morning ritual of slogging through the news. I came across a story that said two people were involved in a shooting with a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont during a “traffic stop” near the Canadian border. The agent and one suspect died. The FBI didn’t identify either suspect by name; it only disclosed that the living suspect went to the hospital for treatment, and the deceased suspect was “a German national in the U.S. on a current visa.” The FBI’s statement included the following: “This investigation remains extremely active.”

I became curious. If the investigation was “extremely active,” why didn’t the FBI disclose the names of the suspects and provide contact information for the authorities so that anyone with relevant information could be helpful? Aside from the cryptic announcement, the circumstances of the shooting were mysterious. After all, only a small percentage of traffic stops turn deadly. The timing was particularly troubling, since the shooting occurred on Inauguration Day. I wondered about the motive; perhaps, I speculated, the German suspect had qualms about Trump’s immigration policies, and the authorities wanted to avoid a political spectacle. Given the sheer weirdness of the tragedy and the FBI’s unusual secrecy, I decided to look out for any updates.

Later that day, the deceased suspect was identified as Felix Bauckholt. Although there wasn’t much information about Felix available online, he was clearly a smart guy. He had won a prestigious math competition and studied pure mathematics on a scholarship at the University of Waterloo in Canada. According to his (now unavailable) LinkedIn profile, he had graduated in 2019 and worked as a quantitative trader in the United States. If I had to guess what crime he committed solely based on his work portfolio, I would have imagined some kind of cybercrime or financial crime. This additional context only heightened my suspicion: Felix just didn’t have the damning background traditionally associated with violent criminals.

Then, on Thursday the 23rd, I was blessed by the algorithm on Twitter/X, perhaps because my internet searches had fed data to the social-media platform. A user posted about personally knowing Felix, claiming that he identified as a woman, went by “Ophelia,” and had been “somewhat of a Ziz fan” — a reference to a cult known for its violent history and its largely “trans women” members who have computer-science skills. That user also linked to an account with the name “Ophelia.”

For reporters, there is a pretty high evidence bar to clear before publishing. So I recruited the help of a technologically savvy co-worker at National Review, and we verified the claim. Felix Bauckholt created a personal Twitter account with the user name “@bauckholt” in April 2019, and the biography stated that he had studied pure mathematics at Waterloo and worked as a trader in Chicago. At some point, Felix changed the account’s user name to “@orellanin” and adopted the name “Ophelia.” (We matched the account ID numbers with archives.) The account remains active and publicly viewable; its posts mention a wide range of topics, including trading, mathematics, philosophy, and gender.

And I thought that this — verifying Felix’s alternative identity and account — was the story. We had essentially discovered a digital manifesto. No publication had confirmed that the account belonged to Bauckholt. So I started drafting an article.

But I still didn’t know how he went from an accomplished mathematician to dead suspect in a shooting. Some news reports suggested that the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security had been monitoring Felix and the other suspect — a woman — for a few days before the deadly traffic stop, a claim that naturally leads one to believe that the traffic stop wasn’t random. But why were they being monitored? A number of theories were gaining traction on social media, but nearly everything was grandiose speculation presented without much evidence.

Since the investigation was ongoing, I knew the authorities weren’t going to tell me anything valuable. And because I’m based in England, I couldn’t just drive to find people who would chat with me. So I did my best to learn more about Felix. The plan was simple: conduct some interviews, get a better sense of who he was, and write a straightforward news story that might dispel some of the unsubstantiated claims. I contacted people on LinkedIn who had overlapped with Felix at the University of Waterloo. I also messaged social-media users who, in light of the news, had publicly posted about knowing Felix. What was Felix/Ophelia like in college? Did he have any reason to be in Vermont — family members nearby, or perhaps an upcoming university alumni event in Canada that wasn’t too far from the shooting? Was there any indication that his immigration status was in trouble? Had he recently been vocal about opposition to Trump?

Plenty of people who considered Felix (or Ophelia) a “friend” from either work or college were willing to chat. The responses didn’t vary much, and a portrait of Felix emerged: signs of autism, some kind of mathematics genius, and philosophically interested in moral questions. Sometime after university, Felix pursued gender transition. (According to the “Ophelia” account, he had begun hormonal treatments by April 2021.) Nobody had anything negative to say about Felix, and everyone seemed sad that he had died.

But every testimony from a “friend” shared this particular detail: Felix had suddenly cut off contact with everyone in late 2023. That was the same time the “Ophelia” account stopped posting online. I asked if there was any evidence that some personal drama had emerged. Yet nobody could recall having any kind of dispute with him. All of a sudden, Felix just stopped responding to everyone.

Then, things got . . . weirder.

I received texts. The people who messaged me didn’t reveal much about themselves — no full names, no willingness to chat on the phone, no identifying information other than having attended the University of Waterloo or worked in trading. And they told me things that concerned me.

Felix had supposedly been active in the “trans rat community,” a reference to social circles of largely transgender-identifying males who generally have computer-science backgrounds and an intellectual interest in the rationalist philosophy. The anonymous messengers claimed to be former members of the “broader cult” or “community,” and they suggested that Felix was affiliated with either the “Vassarite cult” (comprising those aligned with entrepreneur Michael Vassar), or the “Zizian cult.” I contacted one person on social media who recalled that Felix and Vassar didn’t exactly get along well. And it was clear from the “Ophelia” account that Felix had a working knowledge of Ziz, since he explicitly mentioned that person in a few posts. So I started digging into the Zizians.

“Ziz” — or Jack LaSota, a self-identified “trans woman” — had the blog Sinceriously, which is now available on various archives. An accomplished philosopher would struggle to understand Ziz’s ideas upon first reading, since the essays are filled with jargon such as “masochistic epistemology” and “dichotomy leakage.” Perhaps the most distinct feature of Ziz’s philosophy was that each person has two “cores,” which are basically independent people or personalities. A hierarchy emerges: “Double good” is when both cores are “good” and “both hemispheres have full control,” “single good” is when one core is “good” and each can overpower the other, and “double evil” is when both cores are bad. (If you’re double evil, Ziz says, “Just die.”) An individual could access each core by “debucketing,” which could be accomplished in part by unihemispheric sleep, a state in which only one half of the brain is asleep. (Normal people call this “sleep deprivation.”) Ziz, along with others in the broader rationalist movement, was concerned with AI alignment, or ensuring that AI maintained ethical and moral values. Like Peter Singer, the godfather of effective altruism, Ziz thought veganism was a moral imperative but considered it acceptable to kill some humans. The Zizian model of veganism was pretty extreme, deeming non-vegans “flesh-eating monsters.” Across the verbose pseudo-intellectual blog posts, a clear picture of Ziz emerged: He was a “transgender” vegan anarchist who cared about artificial intelligence and considered human beings disposable.

Ziz gained notoriety for leading a bizarre protest that attracted media attention. He was among individuals who accused the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) of blackmail, “transphobia,” and sexual misconduct, among other things. Ziz and three other “trans women” — Jasper “Gwen” Danielson, Amir “Emma” Borhanian, and Alexander “Somnulence” Leatham — all protested a CFAR event in 2019. The four arrived at the site dressed in black robes, black gloves, and Guy Fawkes masks. But there was a big problem: Instead of confronting the CFAR crew, the clan encountered a bunch of elementary-school children. Things got intense. The authorities arrived, but they had been (wrongly) informed that at least one protester had a gun, so the SWAT team treated the incident as though it faced an active shooter.

All four were arrested, and they later filed a civil-rights lawsuit. But eventually, in 2023, the case was dropped for failure to prosecute. Court documents dated November 2022 suggested that Danielson and Ziz had died; an obituary announced that Ziz had passed away in a “boating accident.”

Despite the reports that Ziz had died, the Zizians continued causing trouble. In November 2022, three Ziz associates — Leatham, Borhanian, and “Suri Dao” — allegedly attacked their landlord, Curtis Lind, in Vallejo, after facing eviction because they reportedly hadn’t paid rent for years. Lind was summoned to the rental for a purported water leak, then was stabbed with knives and a sword. Lind shot at the offenders, killing Borhanian. (Since Borhanian was a “trans woman,” he was portrayed as a saint: A 2023 bill in Congress to honor “Transgender Day of Remembrance” recognized him as someone “tragically lost in acts of violence.”) Leatham and Dao were arrested. Lind survived, albeit losing sight in one eye.

Not much later, even more disturbing news emerged in 2023: Landlords Richard and Rita Zajko — whose child “MJ” Zajko knew Ziz — were found dead in Pennsylvania in what did not appear to be a “random act of violence.” And then something damning happened: Ziz — under his real name, Jack LaSota — was arrested and charged in Pennsylvania for obstruction and disorderly conduct, thereby proving that he was alive and the boating-death story was fiction. A 2023 document showed that he was held on bail for $50,000, and then the bail was lowered to $10,000. He was out of custody by late June 2023.

And where he went or what he did remains a mystery.

As I was reading through the Zizian lore, the second suspect in the Vermont shooting was identified: Teresa Youngblut, a 21-year-old with a driver’s license from Washington State. An affidavit dated January 22 states that a “concerned citizen” in Vermont, who worked at one of the hotels where Teresa and Felix stayed, had contacted law enforcement to report concerns when the pair appeared to be dressed in “all-black tactical style clothing,” and Teresa carried a firearm. Beginning around Tuesday, January 14, the two were monitored by the authorities, including Homeland Security Investigations. Investigators attempted to initiate a conversation, but Teresa and Felix simply claimed they were in the area looking for property.

On January 20, the United States Border Patrol pulled them over around 3 p.m. on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vt., supposedly for an “immigration inspection” because Felix “appeared to have an expired visa in a Department of Homeland Security database.” Within about 15 minutes, Teresa allegedly started shooting toward at least one agent, and Felix attempted to draw a firearm. At least one Border Patrol officer shot at the two. Border Patrol Agent David Maland, Felix, and Teresa were all hit. Maland and Felix died, and Teresa recovered in the hospital.

Although Teresa and Felix claimed to just be looking for property, their possessions weren’t what most people bring for house-hunting trips: Evidence collected from the car included pistols, magazines, ammunition, cellphones wrapped in foil, a ballistic helmet, a night-vision-goggle monocular, a tactical belt with holster, full-face respirators, shooting range targets, handheld two-way radios, and roughly a dozen electronic devices. Less ominous items were found, including identification documents, lodging information for multiple states, and an apparent journal.

As I had done for Felix, I began looking into Teresa. She had attended Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle, then studied computer science at the University of Washington. An Instagram account under her name referenced her university and advertised “talk to me about being vegan and ai alignment” — both topics consistent with the broader Zizian philosophy. And, like Felix, Teresa had disappeared: In May, her parents reported her missing to the police and stated that she had suddenly cut off contact.

Was this yet another event that could be catalogued in the lost list of violent events that circle back to Ziz? I thought so. Certainly, it wasn’t possible to just ask the suspects whether they were cult members: Teresa was tucked away somewhere, and Felix was dead. But, to me, the circumstantial evidence was strong: Both shared some ideological overlap with Ziz, both seemed to identify as “transgender,” both had computer-science backgrounds, and both had gone off the grid. Moreover, the solid-black outfits and weapons seemed consistent with previous accounts of Ziz-related activity, like the strange theatrical protest against CFAR in 2019. And I couldn’t concoct any innocent explanation for why two individuals would have that much suspicious gear. However, when I contacted some of the anonymous individuals who had ties to the “trans rat community,” they expressed disagreement. To them, it just seemed like two fringe individuals who had some familiarity with the blog.

I wasn’t convinced. So I kept looking. Then, I found another record of Teresa: In late 2024, she had applied for a marriage license in Washington State to someone named “Maximilian Snyder.”

I quickly learned a bit about this Max guy. His LinkedIn profile said he had attended the same private school in Washington as Teresa. Somewhat predictably, Max also had a computer-science background and an interest in artificial intelligence. Like Felix, Max appeared to be smart, since he had won $11,000 in an artificial-intelligence research competition. But one feature of his profile made me panic: He had studied at the University of Oxford from 2019 to 2024, and his location still stated Oxford — possibly just blocks away from me.

Was this guy who apparently wanted to marry Teresa any threat? I wanted to arrive at the answer “no.” Max was definitely a student at Oxford, since a document from Lady Margaret Hall college mentions that he enrolled as an undergraduate in 2020. But his LinkedIn profile didn’t confirm that he had actually graduated, nor could I find a record of his doing so. I reached out to some people in the computer-science department here, but nobody recognized his name. I contacted someone who ran a discussion group on rationalism, which Max had once indicated he would attend, but that group’s leader didn’t have any memory of Max. The only useful information I could determine was that Max maintained the alias “Audere” on several platforms; a Twitter/X account with the user name “@audereaudere” and the biography “vegan transmortalist” had frequently interacted with an account that internet sleuths had identified as Teresa’s. Max too appeared to self-identify as “trans.”

At this point, court documents provided a better understanding of the Vermont shooting. But another story was getting attention: Curtis Lind, the landlord who had previously been attacked by the Ziz associates, had been stabbed to death in California just days before the deadly Vermont traffic stop. The news reports were quite vague, and the suspect was still at large. One relevant detail was disclosed: The attacker was an Asian male.

I got somewhat conspiratorial. What are the odds that an elderly landlord is stabbed more than once? And what are the odds that a now-deceased man previously attacked by Zizians has no connection to another January homicide case where the perpetrators have at least some tenuous connection to Ziz? Despite his barren LinkedIn page, I thought Maximilian Snyder looked like an Asian male, evidenced by videos of him singing. And he further listed working ability in Asian languages on his profile.

So I called the lead detective in the Lind investigation to ask for further information about the suspect, thinking Max might be a possible person of interest. I left a voicemail. I called again. And then I called again. And then I stopped calling. On Tuesday, January 28, I saw the news: Maximilian Snyder had been arrested and charged with the murder of Lind.

When I started reporting on the Vermont shooting, the draft was a simple news piece about verifying one suspect’s social-media account, but the story led me somewhere else entirely. I didn’t just go down the rabbit hole; I ended up at a chaotic tea party sitting beside former cult members and talking about murder.

Now, plenty of other people have jumped on the topic. As court documents about Teresa’s case become public and information about Max is revealed, the allegations of cult ties become stronger. For example, a motion in Teresa’s case vaguely references a “dual-homicide investigation” in Pennsylvania as well as an individual previously “detained by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during that homicide investigation” who was also a “person of interest in a homicide investigation in Vallejo, California” — all consistent with the known details about Ziz, the murder of Zajko’s parents, and the landlord Curtis Lind. It turns out that Zajko owned property in Vermont; now, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives believes that Zajko bought the guns used in the Vermont shooting, and the agency sent a bulletin to gun dealers requesting information about him. With respect to Max’s case, it appears that the landlord was set to testify soon about the previous stabbing, and he was the only witness.

I’m not sure if I’m done following this story. To be honest, I’m not sure this story is done following me. In the meantime, I’ll say a prayer for all the lawyers who have to defend these people.