A Maryland court ordered a blogger known as Ziz, who leads a cult-like group connected to six killings, to be held without bail.
The blogger, whose real name is Jack LaSota, 34, of Berkeley, California, was arrested Sunday along with Michelle Zajko, 32, of Media, Pennsylvania; and Daniel Blank, 26, of Sacramento, California.
They face charges including trespassing, obstructing and hindering and possession of a handgun in a vehicle.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested in Frostburg, Maryland, on Sunday afternoon. A judge ordered all three held without bail, describing them as dangerous flight risks.
Allegany County State prosecutor James Elliott said LaSota has faked her own death in the past.
But LaSota asked for pretrial release, saying she was homeless with no means of traveling. Speaking haltingly, she also requested a vegan diet and said she was “in a mild state of delirium” due to lack of food.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” she told the judge.
Prosecutors said LaSota “appears to be the leader of an extremist group known as Zizians”, which has been linked to the killing of US Border Patrol Agent David Maland near the Canadian border in January and five other killings in three states.
The Zizians have been tied to the death of a woman during an attack on a California landlord in November 2022, the landlord’s subsequent slaying in January, the December 2022 deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania and a highway shootout last month in Vermont that left US Border Patrol Agent David Maland and a car passenger dead.
Mr Maland, 44, was killed in a January 20 shoot-out following a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont, a small town about 20 miles from the Canadian border.
Officials have offered few details of the cross-country investigation, but 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 included topics such as radical veganism, gender identity and artificial intelligence.
At the middle of it all is “Ziz”, the leader of the group whose members are sometimes called “Zizians” in online forums.
LaSota published a dark and sometimes violent blog under the name Ziz and, in one section, described her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and “often desire to kill each other”.
LaSota, who used she/her pronouns and in her writings says she is a transgender woman, railed against perceived enemies, including so-called rationalist groups, which operate mostly online and seek to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge.
Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
She has not responded to emails from the Associated Press in recent weeks, and her attorney Daniel McGarrigle declined to comment on whether she is connected to any of the deaths.
She is wanted for arrest in two states for missing court appearances.
Mr McGarrigle would only confirm that he has represented LaSota and would not confirm her arrest or any details of the latest case.
Attempts to reach attorneys for Zajko and Blank were not successful.