A Vermont border agent’s death was the latest violence linked to the cultlike Zizian group.
In the wooded outskirts of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a perplexed landlord noticed odd sights at two of his rental properties.
Tenants wore long black coats and parked box trucks outside the duplexes. They ran an electrical cord from one box truck into one of the condos, and kept a stretcher inside another.
A neighbor remembers similarly dressed figures walking around at night holding hands. They never spoke a word.
By the time the FBI searched the property last week, one of the most recent tenants had been killed in a shootout with U.S. Border Patrol agents in Vermont, and a second was under arrest. A third, a shadowy figure known online as “Ziz,” remains missing after authorities linked their cultlike group to six deaths in three states.
Officials have offered few details of the cross-country investigation, which broke open after the Jan. 20 shooting death of a Border Patrol trooper in Vermont during a traffic stop. Associated Press interviews and a review of court records and online postings tell the story of how a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, met online, shared anarchist beliefs, and became increasingly violent.
Their goals aren’t clear, but online writings span topics from radical veganism and gender identity to artificial intelligenIn the wooded outskirts of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a perplexed landlord noticed odd sights at two of his rental properties.
Tenants wore long black coats and parked box trucks outside the duplexes. They ran an electrical cord from one box truck into one of the condos, and kept a stretcher inside another.
A neighbor remembers similarly dressed figures walking around at night holding hands. They never spoke a word.
