The lawyer for Jack Ziz LaSota, the transgender cult leader whose group has been linked to eight violent deaths, is asking a federal judge to free LaSota from custody ahead of trial.
According to The Post Millennial, defense attorney Teresa Whalen argued in an Oct. 21 motion filed in Maryland federal court that LaSotas continued detention violates his constitutional rights. LaSota is federally charged with being a fugitive in possession of firearms and ammunition.
Whalen proposed releasing LaSota into the custody of fellow cult member Daniel Hastur Blank, who was arrested alongside LaSota and Michelle Zajko in rural western Maryland last year. The motion describes Blank as a friend with no prior criminal record, but it does not mention the pairs shared history in the group or their years evading authorities as persons of interest in multiple murder investigations.
As an alternative, the lawyer proposed releasing LaSota on electronic monitoring with no third-party custodian at all. Related Maryland state firearms cases, meanwhile, were abruptly suspended in August for unknown reasons.
LaSota founded a radical vegan group known as the Zizians. The group has been linked to the January 2025 fatal shooting of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland in Vermont and the killing of 82-year-old Curtis Lind in California, a key witness in a separate Zizian murder case.
Zajko was charged in June in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, with the 2022 murders of her parents and is awaiting extradition. Prosecutors there say evidence indicates she did not act alone, though LaSota has not been charged in connection with any of the killings.
The release request comes despite LaSotas long record of evading law enforcement. He first became a fugitive over a 2019 California felony case tied to a confrontation at a Sonoma County rationalist retreat, and in 2022 he faked his own drowning in San Francisco Bay.
In January 2023, LaSota was arrested in Pennsylvania during the investigation into the Zajko murders, pretended to be unconscious to resist officers, and later skipped his trial. He remained on the run until his February 2025 arrest in Maryland.
Whalen characterized the 2023 arrest as evidence of LaSotas lack of violent conduct. She also argued his roughly 20 months in pretrial detention nearly matches the sentence she expects he would get if convicted.
The lawyer claimed LaSota has been attacked twice in a male federal detention facility in Philadelphia. She [LaSota] has incurred harassment from guards and other inmates; has been the victim of numerous thefts; and has endured periods of time when the facilities fail to provide vegan food a necessity not only for her health, but for her religious tenants, Whalen wrote.
LaSotas jury trial is scheduled to begin March 8, 2027. The court has not yet ruled on the request for release.
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