Friend of slain landlord in Zizian case testifies ahead of trial

FAIRFIELD, Calif. (CN) — Curtis Lind was an 82-year-old landlord and grandfather of four with a deep love of the ocean. And to one witness in Solano County Superior Court Tuesday, he was a best friend.

A Solano County judge heard testimony from Lind’s friend Patrick McMillan ahead of the trial of two defendants who belong to a group called the “Zizians,” a loose, cult-like organization of radical vegans and computer savants who claim AI is a danger to humanity and are linked to six murders across the country. Members Alexander Leatham and Suri Dao are due for trial soon for the attempted murder of Lind, their former Vallejo landlord, in 2022.

McMillan occupies an important niche in the case, albeit unexpectedly. Originally, Lind was set to testify at Leatham and Dao’s trial until Lind was killed in January 2025 by another Zizian, Maximilian Snyder, who is now awaiting trial for murder.

In the wake of Lind’s death, McMillan could be one of the best witnesses to tell a jury what life was like at the Vallejo property that he, Lind and the group of Zizians lived at — a place where the group’s members walked around topless and worked intermittently with power tools around the property.

“Most of the time they were stark naked,” McMillan testified.

Despite his importance to the case, some of the finer details evaded McMillan during his testimony. By his own admission, the 81-year-old has had eight strokes and nine heart attacks and testified he lost “most of his memory” after the last stroke, in addition to other cognitive issues.

“I can’t do math. I can’t add. I have difficulty reading. Names are hard for me. And sometimes I can’t pick up the right word,” McMillan told the court.

But he was adamant that events like the 2022 attack on Lind were firm in his mind.

The court set up a conditional examination before trial so McMillan could record his testimony in open, since his health could prevent him from attending trial.

McMillan met Lind in the late 2000s. “He had a ship I was trying to buy," he said. Although McMillan didn’t buy the boat, the interaction led to a strong friendship and let McMillan eventually rent a spot for his mobile home on a plot of land Lind owned at 633 3rd St. in Vallejo, California.

“We talked sometimes every day,” McMillan said.

Prosecutors used McMillan’s testimony to paint Lind’s attempted murder in gruesome detail for the future jury, including descriptions of the landlord arriving on McMillan’s doorstep, screaming, with a samurai sword sticking out of his torso and a semi-automatic handgun in his hand. McMillan said skin was hanging off the right side of Lind’s face in a large flap, and that his face and hands were covered in blood.

“He was bleeding like a stuck pig. It was just gushing,” McMillan testified.Although McMillan generally kept his distance from the Zizians, he testified that the group threatened Lind more than once. In the weeks before his stabbing, Lind told McMillan that the renters had thrown rocks at the roof of his home following an argument.

At one point, when the Zizians requested a meeting asking to stay another two months for free, Lind told McMillan he refused. According to his account, Lind claimed one of the renters took out a knife, started patting the blade and smiling.

“He thought they were going to hurt him right then,” McMillan said. “He was afraid.”

McMillan was adamant that his friend buy a firearm.

“I told him he oughta start carrying a gun. I told him ‘you don’t take a knife to a gun fight,’” he said.

In the dark hours of the morning on Nov. 13, 2022, McMillan said he got a call from his friend who told him in hushed tones that the enigmatic renters were trying to force his door open. McMillan called the police, but he claimed no one showed up.

Five hours later, his best friend was standing on his doorstep with a samurai sword sticking a foot’s length out of the front of his chest, just a few inches above his heart.

However, defense attorneys were quick to call McMillan’s reliability into question on cross-examination, going as far as implying that prosecutors were speaking through him, or otherwise influencing his testimony by meeting with him outside of court and repeatedly providing him a transcript of a previous hearing when he couldn’t remember certain details.

“Do you notice that your answers are shifting depending on if Ms. Shapiro is asking them versus when someone else is asking them?” attorney Brian Ford, who represented Suri Dao, asked McMillan.

“That’s argumentative,” Judge John B. Ellis said, sustaining an objection to the question.

Ford was referencing prosecutor Ilana Shapiro of the Solano County District Attorney’s Office, who previously questioned McMillan.

The defense further highlighted that many of McMillan’s answers were different than at a previous hearing in December 2023. When given a map to identify certain features of the property, the former resident incorrectly marked key areas with a sharpie, like the mobile home he lived in.

The defense also pounced on McMillan’s 30-year career as an intelligence officer for the FBI, and possibly other unnamed government agencies. McMillan testified that from 1975–2005, he participated in multiple undercover operations, sometimes involving high profile targets like war criminals.

This resulted in a previous criminal record with everything from counterfeiting money to assault with a deadly firearm. McMillan claims those crimes were committed in the course of his employment as an agent of the government and that he had to “go down with the arrestees a few times,” resulting in his decorated rap sheet.

However, certain federal charges from 1963 and 1964 seemed less likely to be employment-related, and he was called on to explain them to the court.

“I kept running across things in my life. So, I’d call the FBI and tell them. And as a result, they recruited me in 1975,” McMillan explained.

The defense characterized him as an opportunistic criminal who sold out others for his own benefit and safety.

“I imagine you were pretty good at your job. I imagine people didn’t discover you lying to them,” Ford asked.

“Yes,” McMillan responded.

“So you’re good at lying then?” Ford continued.

McMillan also appeared confused at times with some questions, especially those that featured multiple parts or were complex in wording.

Leatham made a brief appearance in court but ultimately had to be removed after she refused to stop shouting the following statement:

“The police have repeatedly sexually assaulted me! Officer Eric Wood said he could do this to me because I was not a real woman! My naked breasts are not for officers to touch! Officer Larry Duckfield said I deserve to be shot for being transgender while he had a gun and I was in chains!” Leatham said.

Leatham repeated the last sentence several times until she was removed from the courtroom. As with previous incidents, she could be heard faintly from the next room for several minutes.

“Ms. Leatham has absented herself for the courtroom by refusing to comport with the decorum consistent with these proceedings,” Judge Ellis said.

Dao and Leatham are two of roughly 10 known members of the Zizians — a group dedicated to the ideas of blogger Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a 34-year-old transgender woman who came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016. A former aspiring tech worker, LaSota came to the tech-saturated region to study the dangers that AI could pose to humanity and developed a following among AI theorists and tech bloggers for her radical and rigorous ideas on AI, veganism, and gender.

In 2022, prosecutors claim Dao, Leatham, and fellow Zizian Emma Borhanian faced eviction from a Vallejo lot where they rented space for the retrofitted box trucks they lived in. On Nov. 13, 2022, around 7:00 a.m., Dao approached landlord Curtis Lind for help repairing a leak on the property. The sheriff’s office was scheduled to evict them in two days’ time.

When Lind bent down to look at the problem, someone hit him over the head, and he blacked out. He woke up to the three renters standing over him with knives drawn. The right side of his skull was shattered, and his torso was impaled with a samurai sword.

Lind drew his gun and shot, killing Borhanian and wounding Leatham. He survived by flagging down McMillan’s help, and the authorities arrested the two surviving Zizians.

Judge Ellis plans to resolve several motions at the next hearing on May 2, 2025, including a long-continued motion to consolidate the defendants’ cases, which Dao has opposed.