An alleged member of the Zizians, a cult-like group of political radicals, had to be forcibly removed from a California courtroom following an outburst in which she repeatedly claimed that an officer had told her that she should be killed for being transgender.
Alexander “Somni” Leatham, a 29-year-old trans woman from Agoura Hills, was one of five alleged members of the group of radical vegans, many of whom are trans, who were in court Tuesday. Several of them, including Leatham, face charges in connection to a string of killings across the country.
As Leatham was led into Solano Superior Court in Fairfield, California, in chains and flanked by multiple armed officers from the Solano County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday, she loudly spoke over the judge, reading what appeared to be a statement from a piece of paper, SFGate reported.
Leatham said that a specific officer had threatened her life, telling her that she “deserved to be shot for being transgender while he had a gun and I was in chains.”
“The court has been hormonally detransitioning me for quarter of a decade as part of a state-sponsored conversion therapy program,” she told the court. “I am not suicidal. I have never been suicidal.”
“If I am killed in police custody, it was murder!” Leatham shouted as the courtroom descended into chaos.
The judge quickly had Leathaman escorted to an isolation room where she could appear over camera but also be muted if needed.
Leatham and Suri Dao face murder charges after a confrontation with their landlord Curtis Lind in 2022 about unpaid rent. The incident left fellow Zizians follower Emma Borhanian dead — shot by Lind in alleged self-defense — and Lind himself injured, stabbed by a samurai sword.
Both Leatham and Dao are charged with murder, attempted murder and aggravated mayhem in the death of their friend Borhanian, with prosecutors arguing that their actions that day in 2022 led to her death.
During the attack, Leatham allegedly impaled Lind with a samurai sword. The 82-year-old was the only remaining eyewitness to that attack.
In a horrifying twist, Lind was killed in a separate knife attack in January 2025, just weeks before he could testify in this case.
Maximilian “Audere” Snyder, an Oxford University graduate and fellow Zizian, was later arrested and charged with Lind’s murder and is currently awaiting trial.
Also on Tuesday morning, 3,000 miles across the country, three more alleged members of the so-called Zizians appeared for their hearings in a Maryland courtroom.
Jack “Ziz” LaSota, the group’s namesake was arrested in February, along with Michelle “Jamie” Zajko, 33, who is a person of interest in a Vermont shooting that left a U.S Border Patrol officer dead, and a Pennsylvania shooting where her parents were killed, and Daniel Blank, 26, who was charged with trespassing and possession of a handgun.
LaSota and Zajko were charged with additional gun crimes on March 19, including possessing a loaded handgun and attempting to buy or sell an assault weapon, both misdemeanors.
A judge ordered all three held without jail, describing them as dangerous flight risks, despite LaSota asking for pretrial release, saying she was homeless with no means of traveling.
While wanted in two states, LaSota, who allegedly faked her own death in 2022, has not been charged or deemed a person of interest in connection to any of the killings.
The bizarre saga emerged following the deadly shooting at a traffic stop that left a border patrol agent and a car passenger dead, leading to a cross-country investigation that has revealed a series of violent incidents that started years earlier.
Alleged members of the Zizians have since been linked to the death of a woman during an attack on a California landlord in November 2022, the landlord’s subsequent slaying in January, and the December 2022 deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania.
Tuesday’s incident was not the first time Leatham has disrupted court proceedings. In March, she struggled with court officers from her wheelchair as she repeatedly yelled: “This is a show trial to coordinate the genocide of transgender people.”