Michelle Zajko, a member of the cultlike group known as Zizians, has been charged after she allegedly murdered her parents at their Pennsylvania home on her 30th birthday, and prosecutors believe she may not have acted alone.
Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said that authorities looked at footage from a neighbor’s doorbell camera, used ballistics and cellphone records to determine that Zajko, 33, is at least partly responsible for killing her parents, Rita Zajko and Richard Zajko, according to ABC 7 New York.
Rita and Richard were fatally shot in Michelle’s childhood playroom on New Year’s Eve in 2022.
“At this time we do not know who her co-conspirators were, but we are very certain that Michelle Zajko was in the home and arranged for the death of her parents,” Rouse said in a statement obtained by the outlet on Thursday, June 25.
Zajko, who has been in custody in Maryland on other charges since February 2025, has newly been charged with murder, burglary and conspiracy charges in connection to her parents’ deaths.
She has denied killing her parents, and court filings indicate that she suggested her father might have killed her mother as part of a murder-suicide.
“I didn’t murder my parents,” she wrote in an April 2025 letter, which her attorney sent to The Associated Press.
While Michelle wasn’t charged until four years after the killings, authorities have viewed her as a person of interest for years.
Rita and Richard’s deaths are among six that have been linked to the Zizians.
The Zizians are a cult-like group that consists of young, highly intelligent computer scientists that seemingly share radical beliefs regarding veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence.
Members of the group were previously tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord, as well as the landlord’s killing, the Zajkos’ deaths and a highway shootout in Vermont that resulted in the deaths of a border agent and another Zizian member, per the outlet.
Michelle was previously charged with providing the gun that was used to kill U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland in January 2025.
She was arrested alongside Daniel Blank and Jack “Ziz” LaSota, whom authorities believe is the group’s leader.
All three of them have pleaded not guilty to charges of trespassing and illegal gun and drug possession, while LaSota had also pleaded not guilty to a federal charge of illegal gun possession by a fugitive, per the outlet.
LaSota’s attorneys said in court filings that their client does not agree with the term Zizian and denied that the group is a cult.
Online court records did not indicate if Zajko has retained an attorney in the Pennsylvania case. It is not immediately clear if she has entered a plea regarding her latest charges.
