Zith, Sith and the Fringe Bay Area Murder Gang

California suspects in the Vermont Border Patrol murder

Editor’s note: When I heard about the bizarre news out of Vallejo, California, about a stranger-than-fiction murder “cult,” I knew we had to get our contributor Lloyd Billingsley on the story, and add it to his inventory of true-crime stories that you can’t make up.

To paraphrase Inspector “Dirty Harry” Callahan (Clint Eastwood), in all this excitement people may have lost track of that shooting of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont. As it turns out, suspects in the killing are not Mexican drug cartel hit-men, Iranian terrorists, or unemployed carnival workers from Guatemala.

Here’s the scoop from Open Vallejo on January 27.

“Suspects in killings of Vallejo witness, Vermont border patrol agent connected by marriage license, extreme ideology.”

And the subhead adds, “both suspects attended the prestigious Lakeside School in Seattle, studied computer science, and appear to sympathize with fringe Bay Area group described as a ‘murder gang.’”

The suspects are Maximilian Snyder, “a 22-year-old data scientist arrested in Northern California on Friday on suspicion of murder,” and “Teresa Youngblut, the 21-year-old computer science student charged last week in connection with the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol agent David Maland.”

The suspects “appear to follow a fringe, self-described ‘vegan Sith’ ideology that started in the Bay Area and has connections to violence.” Acts of violence included in the report include the gunshots that took down Maland and Vallejo resident Curtis Lind, who was “impaled with a sword and blinded in one eye during an attack by several young people.”

Snyder and Youngblut are also connected with the “Zizian” group, described as an offshoot of the Rationalist movement, based on the belief that “human decisions and their effects are mathematically quantifiable.” The Zizians also believe “that because there are two hemispheres in the brain, individuals can split their consciousness between two personalities by waking one side at a time.” Veganism and animal rights” are also “central to the ideology,” along with something called “decision theory,” so things can get “really weird.”

Steve suggests I add this case to my series of crime books, all about cases stranger than fiction. In Shotgun Weddings, for example, a woman murders two husbands, some 30 years apart, in the same house, in the same room, and both times with a shotgun. Run the odds on such a thing happening, and guess whether the shooter gets away with it twice.

Canadian nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer thought she could get away with killing elderly nursing home residents by overdosing them with insulin, which fellow Canadian Frederick Banting invented to save lives. I tell the story in Lethal Injections, and invite readers to judge whether this serial killer got what she deserved. Other killers sure didn’t.

Back in 2013 in Davis, California, 15-year-old Daniel Marsh murdered Oliver Northup, 87, and Claudia Maupin, 76. An early police report said the victims had been killed with “exception depravity,” which was no exaggeration. The autopsy report runs 16 pages and more than 6,000 words. After viewing the crime scene photos some members of the jury needed counseling.

As I explain in Exceptional Depravity, Marsh admired serial killers, who helped rid the world of useless old people. He planned the murders for months but his attorneys tried to blame it on the medication Zoloft and a “dissociative dream-like state.” In 2014 Marsh drew a sentence of 52 years to life, but that did not end the story.

For the relentless efforts to free this psychopath, see A Shut and Open Case, which may need a sequel. Marsh is now inmate AW0819 at the Raymond Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego, but don’t be surprised if he gains paroles at first opportunity. As Orwell said in Animal Farm, rats are comrades, and that rule applies in California. For example, under Senate Bill 1391, signed by recurring Gov. Jerry Brown in September 2018 during an appeal hearing for Daniel Marsh, anybody under age 16 can murder and mutilate 2, 5 or 17 people, be tried only in juvenile court, and gain release at age 25.

We’ll see how things work out with those Siths and Zizians in that fringe Bay Area group described as a murder gang. As Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) said, the people might like a story like that. In the meantime, I’ll be adhering to my Second Amendment rights.