Chapter 2: The Landlord

In Chapter 2, we follow the Zizians from a rusted-out tugboat to an even stranger address: an 82-year-old landlord's trailer yard in Vallejo, California.

Curtis Lind was a retired crane operator with a soft spot for outcasts. He didn't seem to mind that most of his new tenants were transgender women. But once COVID hit and the rent stopped coming, in Lind's eyes, they weren't tenants anymore - they were squatters. When California's eviction moratorium finally lifted and Lind moved to reclaim his property, the arrangement collapsed into something out of a horror movie: a pre-dawn ambush, a samurai sword, and a landlord who lost an eye but somehow lived to tell about it.

We untangle two irreconcilable versions of that November morning, trace Ziz LaSota's audacious reappearance under a new alias, and follow two Zizians into a legal system unprepared for gender-identity disputes, faked seizures, and jailhouse escape attempts. Then, more than two years later, Curtis Lind is targeted again - this time by a stranger with no apparent ties to the group, in an attack investigators say was designed to silence him for good.

Curtis Lind survived the first attack. He didn't survive the second. This episode asks who's willing to do the dirty work for the Zizians, and why.

Sources:

• Danielson v. Sonoma County
• ‘Rationalist Fleet’: Before killings linked to fringe group, ‘Ziz’ led fateful tugboat voyage to California
• Who is ‘Ziz’? How a mysterious group with roots in the Bay Area is linked to six deaths
• A person linked to the cultlike ‘Zizians’ stands accused of murder. Their identity remains a mystery
• Witnesses describe shocking stabbing of Bay Area landlord now linked to five other deaths
• ‘Death upon death’: Defendant in killing tied to cult-like ‘Zizian’ group dictates 1,500-word letter over jail phone
• Associate of cultlike ‘Zizians’ hums song as he enters plea in Vallejo slaying
• ‘He was bleeding like a stuck pig’: Key witness testifies in Zizian murder case
• The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians
• Washington students named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists; Seattle’s Lakeside once again tops list
• Vegan computer savants with Bay Area ties linked to deaths across U.S., authorities say
• Zizian cult defector believed to have died in 2022 has been in hiding, fearing maniac vegan group’s revenge
• Man killed in Vallejo was main witness in upcoming murder trial
• Suspects in killings of Vallejo witness, Vermont border patrol agent connected by marriage license, extreme ideology
• Defendant linked to ‘Zizians’ pleads not guilty to capital murder
• Suspect In Vallejo Murder Distances Himself From 'Zizian' Cult, Suggests He Is Primarily Motivated By Veganism
• Ex-Vallejo tenant testifies in detail about sword stabbing incident
• The Zizians’ murder trial is as turbulent as you’d expect