Chapter 4: Connie & Sam

On January 20, 2025, a Border Patrol agent pulled over a blue Toyota Prius on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vermont. Within seconds, Agent David Maland was dead, one of the two women in the car was dead, and the other, Teresa “Milo” Youngblut, was in handcuffs. This episode traces how two strangers in head-to-toe black tactical gear ended up on that road, from a motel in Lyndonville, VT, to a rental in Chapel Hill, NC, to a Vermont realtor who knew them only as “Connie” and “Sam” and listened to a cash offer on a snowed-in property that couldn’t wait until spring. Along the way, we meet Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt, a math prodigy and Wall Street quant trader who gave away much of her salary before vanishing from her friends’ lives. We also find: a federal database error, a journal entry about a “high vibrationy” LSD trip, and a surprising amount of aluminum foil. From there, the trail of gun purchases leads back to Michelle Zajko and on to a Maryland campsite, where police found two box trucks, a loaded Sig Sauer, and Ziz LaSota herself. We also read from a sprawling jailhouse “Open Letter to the World,” including its four-paragraph complaint about...margarine. Six deaths, three states, and one question nobody has answered yet. This episode asks what actually connects these killings, and why the answer has so little to do with artificial intelligence. Sources: Border Patrol agent from Minnesota fatally shot in Vermont traffic stop, family says Border Patrol agent killed in Vermont worked at the Pentagon during 9/11, family says US Border Patrol Agent David ‘Chris’ Maland laid to rest with military honors at Fort Snelling Troopers searched Vermont home in connection with Delco murders: Court docs How did a German math genius get drawn into a 'cult' accused in coast-to-coast killings? Federal officials link 3rd 'person of interest' to Vermont border patrol agent’s shooting Before the shooting of border patrol officer, visitors took interest in a remote Northeast Kingdom property Prosecutor says woman charged in fatal border agent shooting had ties to people of interest in other homicides Washington state woman denies charges related to fatal shooting of border patrol agent in Vermont Former Vermont resident faces federal firearm charge related to killing of border patrol agent Timeline of the violence surrounding the so-called Zizians Inside the Zizians, a radical California-based vegan cult now linked to 6 violent deaths Who is 'Ziz'? How a mysterious group with roots in the Bay Area is linked to six deaths Suspects in killings of Vallejo witness, Vermont border patrol agent connected by marriage license, extreme ideology Michelle Zajko's 'Open Letter to the World'