Rich Shapiro
speaker
44 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Rich Shapiro’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
My pleasure.
It wasn't violent, but this wasn't your typical police encounter. First off, according to the probable cause statement, these people were all dressed in black and they were well-armed. In one of the trucks, police found a rifle and a handgun. Two of the Zizians were wearing ammo belts, and one of them had another gun in her waistband.
And all three resisted arrest by refusing to tell the police their names and not giving them their IDs.
There were two other people. There was a person named Michelle Zajko and a man named Daniel Blank. Now, Michelle's parents were murdered in their home about two years ago. And according to the probable cause statement in the Maryland arrest, Daniel is under investigation for their homicide.
According to the Pennsylvania State Troopers, Michelle owned a gun and ammunition of the same type that was used in the murders. And they actually tracked her down to a hotel looking for that gun. They served her with a search warrant for that gun, but she didn't have it. And they instead found it in a different room in the hotel. And that room was occupied by Daniel Blank and Ziz Lasoda.
They didn't charge anyone with the homicide, although Ziz was so uncooperative that she was arrested on charges of obstructing the investigation. She essentially played dead, one of the troopers said in court. She wouldn't tell the troopers her name or even get up off the ground. So they had to physically carry her out of the room. And she even kept her eyes closed in the mugshot.
Ziz ultimately made bail, but then skipped town and a bench warrant was issued.
There's still a lot we don't know about this group, but what we do know is they're really concerned about AI, about artificial intelligence. Of course, ChatGPT and companies like OpenAI are full steam ahead now on artificial intelligence and are worth billions of dollars. But about 10 to 15 years ago, there were some very smart people who thought AI could turn against humans eventually.
almost like a Terminator storyline. And these people took it really seriously, congregating online and in the Bay Area. And these Zizians, they splintered off from this broader group. They seem to have taken these concerns about AI destroying humanity to a different level.
And they seem to have believed that basically anything that would stop this threat from becoming real was justified, even violence. And they saw themselves as being potential heroes in the future for being ones who could prevent that.
Yeah, the box truck lifestyle, it's really related to how insanely expensive housing is in the Bay Area. These young people moved there to be part of this AI-focused community that But not all of them could get jobs in the field or make enough money. So there's a lot of group houses, there's roommates, some squatting.
And Ziz came up with the idea of living on a boat to try to avoid the high rents. She and some compatriots bought a tugboat in Alaska and piloted it down to the San Francisco Bay. But the plan ultimately fell apart. The tugboat sank and Ziz moved the group to box trucks.
Yeah, so Ziz spoke and spoke out of turn quite frequently.
And her concern was the diet that the jail had been giving her. She said it wasn't vegan. And so she was starving, essentially.
And she also talked about being almost delirious and that that made it such that she couldn't really help in her defense.
They were not released. The prosecutor had pointed out Ziz's flight from prosecution in Pennsylvania. And a footnote in this story that we haven't even talked about.
Ziz's hometown paper in Alaska actually published an obituary for her. And that isn't even the only fake death in the group. Several years ago, on the same day in August 2022 that the Coast Guard was searching the bay looking for Ziz's body, a lawyer told the California court that he believed his client, Gwen Danielson, had died by suicide. Ziz and Gwen, they stayed on the tugboat together.
Now, as in last month, Gwen's father has spoken to some media outlets saying that Gwen left the Zizians but is alive and maybe now will come forward and talk about what the group is trying to do or has done now that Ziz is in custody.
Yeah, that's right. On Monday. We hope to hear more. It will also be interesting to see if another law enforcement agency will try to take them into custody to get some answers about what happened to Michelle's parents.
Thank you so much.
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