FAIRFIELD, Calif. (CN) — The longer you look at the case of Alexander Leatham and Suri Dao, the more strange it becomes.
A judge ruled Friday to continue the trial of the two defendants who belong to a group called the “Zizians,” a loose, cult-like organization of radical vegans and computer savants who claim AI is a danger to humanity and are linked to six murders across the country. Leatham and Dao were due for trial in early April for the attempted murder of their former Vallejo landlord in 2022.
Although the in-court proceedings themselves were tame, excitement was in no short supply. Leatham barely made it through the courtroom doorway before officers from the Solano County Sheriff’s Department had to remove her for raising her voice and resisting officers.
When officers tried to usher her into the room via wheelchair, Leatham began wrestling with them and repeating a single phrase until she was removed:
“This is a show trial to coordinate the genocide of transgender people!” she stated over and over, wrestling with officers in her gray and black-striped prison uniform.
Leatham’s noncooperation with the court is almost commonplace at this point, and Judge John B. Ellis’ response was calm.
“Ms. Leatham, I want to have you present, but I can’t have you interrupting the court,” he said.
Leatham continued to repeat her phrase at a legible volume until the judge gave the order to place her in an “isolation room” — a room adjacent to the courtroom with a window where she could watch the proceedings.
Although Leatham didn’t appear in the window by the time the court adjourned, her chant could be faintly heard for the rest of the hearing.
“Apparently, the audio [in the room] works because I can still hear Ms. Leatham,” Ellis said.
Dao, Leatham’s co-defendant, appeared before the court remotely via Zoom, wearing a blue prison shirt. In stark contrast with their co-defendant, Dao was soft-spoken and cooperative with proceedings.
The judge also continued a motion to combine their cases, which prosecutors argue would be appropriate and efficient, seeing as how both cases will have similar charges and many of the same witnesses. However, Dao has opposed the motion, claiming that consolidating the two cases would “gravely prejudice” their case.
Dao and Leatham are two of roughly 10 known members of a group called the Zizians — a group dedicated to the ideas of blogger Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a 34-year-old transgender woman who came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016. A former aspiring tech worker, LaSota came to the tech-saturated region to study the dangers that artificial intelligence could pose to humanity and developed a following among AI theorists and tech bloggers for her radical and rigorous ideas on AI, veganism, and gender.
In August 2022, LaSota faked her death and disappeared from the world. LaSota’s sister and her friend reported she fell overboard on her boat in the San Francisco Bay, and after a 30-hour search by the U.S. Coast Guard, she was assumed dead.
That is, until she was arrested in Maryland this February for trespassing and possession of a handgun in the vehicle.
Although “Ziz” has not been charged in any of the killings her followers have carried out, the group itself has been linked to several violent murders, including the one Dao and Leatham tried to carry out.
In 2022, prosecutors claim Dao, Leatham, and fellow Zizian Emma Borhanian faced eviction from a Vallejo lot where they rented space for the retrofitted box trucks they lived in. Two days before the sheriff’s office was scheduled to evict them, Dao approached Curtis Lind for help repairing a leak on the property.
When Lind bent down to look at the problem, someone hit him on the head and he blacked out. He woke up to the three renters standing over him with knives drawn. The right side of his skull was shattered, and his torso was impaled with a samurai sword.
Lind drew his gun and shot, killing Borhanian and wounding Leatham. He survived by flagging down the help of a neighbor, and authorities arrested the two surviving Zizians.
Prosecutors charged Dao and Leatham with attempted murder and murder under the theory that they were responsible for Borhanian’s death.
Lind was set to testify at Leatham and Dao’s trial until he was killed in January 2025 by another Zizian, Maximilian Snyder, who is now awaiting trial for murder.
Attorneys for Dao and Leatham declined a request to comment.
The next hearing will be held on April 8, 2025, where the judge is expected to set a final date for the motion to consolidate, which he says must be dealt with before the trial can proceed.
This case was filed in Solano County Superior Court and heard at the Solano County Hall of Justice in Fairfield, California.