A 22-year-old Kirkland, Washington, man charged with a fatal Jan. 17 knifing in Vallejo pleaded not guilty Wednesday to the allegation in Solano County Superior Court and faces more proceeding in the coming months.
Shackled and dressed in a gray-stiped jail jumpsuit, Maximilian Bentley Snyder, his long train of black hair in ponytails off to each side of his head, entered his plea with his attorney, Terry A. Ray, by his side in Department 23 in Vallejo. He also denied a special allegation of using a deadly weapon and also committing the crime to silence a witness or in retaliation for testimony by someone who witnessed a crime.
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Ray told John B. Ellis that she needed “more discovery,” or information and evidence related to the case, before she could adequately prepare her defense.
Judge John B. Ellis then ordered Snyder, a follower of the cult-like Zizians, its members charged with a series of crimes across the United States, to return at 8:30 a.m. June 16 for a preliminary hearing setting in the Justice Building.
Snyder’s latest court appearance comes as the high-profile case has attracted media attention from the Bay Area and Seattle to Pennsylvania and Vermont, where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot and killed in January.
Investigators believe the series of crimes are linked because of Snyder’s relationship with a woman charged with the Vermont killing and also because they are believed to be connected to other killings by Zizian members.
The group’s namesake, Jack LaSota, 34, aka Ziz, and two others with her, appeared Feb. 18 in a Cumberland, Maryland, courtroom. A judge ordered all three held without bail, describing them as dangerous flight risks.
Members of the group have been tied to the death of a woman, Emma Borhanian, that occurred during an attack on a Vallejo landlord, Curtis Lind, in November 2022. Lind survived the attack but was slain later in January, a crime investigators have linked to Snyder, who they say killed Lind with a knife.
Also, the Zizians have been linked to the deaths of a Pennsylvania couple and a highway shootout in Vermont that left the Border Patrol agent and a car passenger dead.
Deputy District Attorney Ilana Shapiro leads the prosecution against Snyder.
Snyder, who remains without bail in Solano County Jail in Fairfield, is charged with killing Lind, 82. The prosecution alleges Lind was killed to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against former tenants, Suri Dao, 23, and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham, 29.
On March 14, Ellis ordered Dao and Leatham to return at 9 a.m. April 8 for a “conditional exam,” a trial setting, the setting of a motion to amend the criminal complaint, and to consolidate the pending trial.
Dao is represented by defense attorney Brian Ford, Leatham by the Solano County Public Defender. Deputy DA Shapiro also leads the prosecution in the case. Attorneys estimate the trial will last five weeks, according to court records.
Court documents, including the complaint filed on Nov. 15, 2022, show Dao and Leatham are charged with first-degree murder, with enhancements, attempted murder and aggravated mayhem. According to media reports, the pair, along with Borhanian attacked Lind, impaling him with a sword and partially blinding him. During the attack, Lind shot and killed Borhanian. Police ruled he acted in self defense and arrested Dao and Leatham.
As previously reported, jail records show Vallejo police officers arrested Snyder in the early hours of Jan. 24 in Redding, where he was detained by police. Snyder was taken into custody on a Ramey warrant, a type of warrant issued by a judge that allows law enforcement to arrest a suspect before formal criminal charges are filed by a district attorney.
The Solano County DA’s office filed its complaint against Snyder on Jan. 27, charging him with first-degree murder with use of a dangerous weapon, a knife. The charging document included alleged special circumstances that Lind was a witness to a crime who, according to the complaint’s wording, “the defendant intentionally killed for the purpose of preventing his testimony in a criminal proceeding or the victim was a witness to a crime and defendant intentionally killed him in retaliation for his testimony in a criminal proceeding” and did so “by means of lying in wait.”
A Washington state woman linked to Snyder was ordered held without bail in January in connection with the death of the Border Patrol agent, as the case grew to encompass killings in multiple states.
According to a Jan. 30 Associated Press report, Teresa Youngblut, 21, faces federal firearms charges in the Jan. 20 death of Agent David Maland. She’s accused of opening fire on agents during a traffic stop in northern Vermont, sparking a shootout that also left her companion, Felix Bauckholt, dead.
Pennsylvania state police said on Jan. 29 that the gun used in the Vermont shooting was purchased by a person of interest in the Dec. 31, 2022, killings of Richard and Rita Zajko, who were shot to death in their Chester Heights home. Both Youngblut and the buyer were in frequent contact with someone who was detained as part of the Pennsylvania investigation and is a person of interest in the Vallejo killing of Lind, U.S. Attorney Michael Drescher said in a court filing.
In the meantime, police and court records have shed some light on the connections, according to the AP.
LaSota is currently facing charges of obstructing law enforcement and disorderly conduct in Pennsylvania. Authorities did not indicate whether those charges are related to the Zajko deaths, but court records show that police were searching for a gun used in two killings when they arrested LaSota 12 days later at a hotel about 10 miles from the scene of the killings.
LaSota also has connections to some of the key players in the Vallejo case, investigators say.
In 2019, LaSota and three others were arrested while protesting an event hosted by the Center for Applied Rationality at a camping retreat in Occidental, in Sonoma County, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report. In 2022, two of the others, Borhanian and Leatham, were accused of using a sword to attack Lind.
In November, someone with the same name as Maximilian Snyder applied for a marriage license with a Teresa Youngblut in Kirkland.
LaSota may have been present during the 2022 landlord attack, according to court documents that also suggest LaSota had been falsely reported dead three months earlier.
On Aug. 19, 2022, the U.S. Coast Guard responded to a report that LaSota had fallen out of a boat in San Francisco Bay and conducted a search but didn’t find a body, according to documents included in a civil rights lawsuit LaSota and others had filed after their 2019 arrest. An obituary was published, and LaSota’s mother confirmed the death to LaSota’s criminal defense attorney.
But months later, a prosecutor emailed the attorney and said LaSota was contacted by police in Vallejo and was “alive and well” at the site of a crime on or about Nov. 13, the date Lind was attacked.
Information from The Associated Press was used to compile this story.