Annie Elise

So anyway, in the hotel room that day, Michelle and Daniel were detained, but not arrested.

Ziz, on the other hand, she refused to cooperate, and she was arrested on charges of obstruction and disorderly conduct.

She was taken to jail, and she actually stayed there for almost six months, until June of 2023 when she posted bail.

Now, once Ziz got out, she just completely stopped showing up for court.

And because of that, a bench warrant was issued for missing a scheduled court appearance.

She also apparently had another open warrant from California that had been tied to that 2019 protest, which I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.

Now, when they were searching the hotel room itself, the cops didn't exactly find what they were hoping for.

However, they did find that Michelle had about $40,000 worth of cash on her, which, let's be honest, that's not exactly just like spare change that you would have lying around.

But it didn't really prove that she was involved in killing her parents, even though it certainly was weird and maybe even looked like she was planning on going on the run, yes, but there was no real evidence.

So with no real leads or evidence that placed any of the Zizians at the scene of the crime, the case into Richard and Rita went cold.

But the questions surrounding what happened that night and who might have been involved, that never went away.

Because if it wasn't Michelle, if it wasn't a part of her group, who would have wanted this couple dead and why?

And why would her ID have been left at the scene?

Why would the bullets coincidentally match?

I mean, there's just so much circumstantial evidence, right?

But after Richard and Rita were killed, the Zizian group and like the chatter within it started to die down for a little while, but not for long.

Just a couple of years later, by January 2025, the group was about to be right back smack in the headlines, this time connected to two more very intense, deadly situations.

Now, remember that first case that we talked about, the one in Vallejo, where Siri, Alexander, and Emma tried to kill their landlord, Curtis, with the samurai sword, but Curtis ended up surviving and then shooting and killing Emma in self-defense?

Well, by the start of 2025, that case still hadn't gone to trial yet, but it was moving through the court system, and it looked like the trial was getting ready to start.

So that meant that Curtis, who was now 82 years old, was going to be a key witness in this.