A former Delco woman is sought for questioning in her parents’ murder and the death of a border patrol agent, police say

Law enforcement officials are seeking to question a former Delaware County woman about two murders 500 miles apart: her parents’ execution-style slaying two years ago and the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont last week, according to law enforcement sources and court documents.

Michelle Zajko, authorities said, has been identified as a person of interest in the investigation of the shooting deaths of her parents, Rita and Richard, in their Chester Heights home in December 2022. And federal investigators say they want to talk to her about two guns they say she purchased that were used in the shootout that killed the Border Patrol agent.

Zajko, 32, has not been charged with a crime, and efforts to reach her were unsuccessful.

Authorities say Zajko, who now lives in Vermont, is a member of the Zizians, a cultlike group of vegan, tech-centric activists whose members have been linked to violent crimes.

The two people involved in the Border Patrol agent’s death in Vermont belonged to the group, according to federal prosecutors. And the group’s leader, Jack LaSota, traveled with Zajko to Delaware County days after her parents were killed and was charged with obstruction of justice after he refused to answer questions from detectives investigating the crime.

State Police found the Zajkos dead in an upstairs bedroom of their home on Highland Drive on Jan. 2, 2023 during a wellness check — a friend had not seen them for days, and the couple had missed two appointments to care for Rita Zajko’s elderly mother, according to court filings.

Rita Zajko, 68, was shot in the back of the head. Richard Zajko, 71, was shot in the temple with a bullet that first passed through his right hand.

Two 9mm shell casings were found at the scene, but no gun was recovered, authorities said.

Ring doorbell camera footage obtained from a neighbor showed that the last activity at the couple’s home was on Dec. 31, 2022, when a car pulled up to the residence, police documents show. “Mom,” someone yelled about a minute later, followed by “Oh my God,” investigators wrote in an application for a search warrant.

Nine minutes later, the document said, two people were seen leaving the home. Officials have not described or publicly identified the two, but law enforcement sources say they believe Michelle Zajko, the couple’s only child, was at the Chester Heights residence that day.

In an interview with state police at her home in Orleans, Vt. days after the murder, Zajko said she had not visited Pennsylvania since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and had not spoken with her parents for at least 10 months, according to police documents. But investigators later learned that they had recently been in communication by text.

While visiting Zajko’s house, troopers found a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm handgun that authorities said she had purchased months before her parents’ deaths. She had also purchased ammunition of the same type as the shell casings found in her parents’ bedroom, according to court documents.

Two weeks later, as Zajko was in Delaware County to make funeral arrangements for her parents, state police detectives searched her car and the hotel room where she was staying at the Candlewood Suites in Chester. As Zajko was being questioned, authorities said, she asked detectives to tell her friends in another room nearby that she was being detained.

Inside that room, detectives said they found the Smith & Wesson handgun they had first seen at her home in Vermont and seized it as evidence. They also found LaSota, the Zizians group leader, hiding in the bathroom, police documents show. He refused to answer the detectives’ questions and had to be carried from the room as he was charged with obstruction of justice, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

LaSota was taken to the George W. Hill Correctional Facility, and later released on $10,000 unsecured bail. At a court hearing in December 2023, his attorney, Daniel McGarrigle, told Delaware County Court Judge Richard Cappelli that he couldn’t locate LaSota, and that the man’s family didn’t know where he was either.

Cappelli issued a bench warrant for LaSota for failing to appear at the hearing, and authorities say he has not returned to Delaware County.

In a statement, McGarrigle said LaSota is “not only entitled to this presumption of innocence, but is, in fact, wholly and unequivocally innocent of the charges filed in this case.”

While authorities continued to investigate the slaying of Zajko’s parents in Delaware County, two people prosecutors say are connected to the Zizians got into a shootout with U.S. Border Patrol agents in Vermont.

Felix Bauckholt and Teresa Youngblut were driving through a town near the Canadian border on Jan. 20 when a routine vehicle registration check revealed that Bauckholt, a German national, had an expired visa, and Border Patrol agents stopped them.

As agents approached, Youngblut, the driver, pulled out a handgun and fired at them, authorities said. Agents returned fire, and Bauckholt, who investigators say was also armed with a handgun, was killed in the crossfire.

Border Patrol Agent David Maland, 44, was wounded and died not long afterward at a nearby hospital. It was not clear which of the two suspects fired the shot that killed him.

Youngblut was taken into custody and charged with assaulting a federal agent with a deadly weapon. Her attorney, Steven Barth, declined to comment.

The weapons she and Bauckholt used in the shootout — an M&P .380 caliber pistol and a Glock .40 caliber pistol — had been purchased by Zajko, a fellow Zizian member, law enforcement sources said.

Federal prosecutors described Bauckholt and Youngblut as known associates of LaSota, whom police are also seeking to question about a murder on the West Coast days before Maland was killed.

Another of LaSota’s alleged associates has been charged with murder in Vallejo, Calif., near San Francisco, for stabbing a man to death in retaliation for his cooperation with police investigating an earlier assault.

Curtis Lind, 82, owned land that he allowed LaSota’s Zizian group to live on in box trucks. In November 2022, he sought to evict them, and members of the group attacked him with a samurai sword, authorities said, stabbing him in the chest and slashing his right eye.

Lind, in turn, shot and killed one of his assailants, police said. He was scheduled to testify against the surviving attackers when authorities say he was killed by another member of the group on Jan. 17.

Federal prosecutors say LaSota is now a person of interest in Lind’s murder. And detectives in Delaware County are still seeking to question him in the Zajko murder case.

Michelle Zajko, meanwhile, remains a person of interest in her parents’ murders, and law enforcement officials are seeking to question her about the weapons used in the Vermont shootout, unrelated killings hundreds of miles apart.