‘Zizian’ suspect in attempted murder case claims officers are trying to kill her

FAIRFIELD, Calif. (CN) — Alexander Jeffrey Leatham, a 29-year-old transgender woman charged with the 2022 attempted murder of her Vallejo landlord, had to be forcibly restrained and removed after she disrupted courtroom proceedings on Tuesday, shouting what seemed to be a prepared statement claiming she fears for her life in police custody.

“I am not suicidal. I have never been suicidal. If I am killed in police custody, it was murder!” Leatham shouted.

Leatham — a reported member of the “Zizians,” a loose, cult-like organization of radical vegans and computer savants who claim artificial intelligence is a danger to humanity and are linked to six murders across the country — was led onto the courtroom floor in chains by multiple armed officers from the Solano County Sheriff’s Department.

After she was coaxed out from behind the inch-thick steel doors that separated her from the courtroom, she produced a piece of paper in her hands and began reading a statement laced with conspiracy and paranoia.

She claims that a specific officer has threatened her life and that her jail has been forcibly de-transitioning her with hormones as part of a “quarter century” long initiative, although it’s unclear what she was referring to.

Leatham’s statements appeared more prepared than her apparently impromptu outburst at her previous hearing in March. However, she was not able to elaborate on her claims, as she was removed from the courtroom shortly after by officers, though she was able to repeat them at least once.

Judge John B. Ellis appeared used to this kind of spectacle by now and handled it calmly.

“Because Ms. Leatham will not behave herself, we will have to remove her,” the judge said, almost bored, as Leatham was led out of the room and placed in an “isolation room” — an adjacent room connected to the courtroom by a large window where she could watch the proceedings.

Her muffled shouting could be heard in the next room for the rest of the hearing.

Courthouse News reached out to Leatham’s attorneys at the Solano County Alternate Public Defender’s Office to ask for a comment on her statements on police mistreatment in custody, but no one could be reached by press time.

Suri Dao, another Zizian charged in the same crime as Leatham, appeared before the court remotely via Zoom, wearing a light blue prison T-shirt. In stark contrast with Leatham, Dao was soft-spoken and cooperative with proceedings.

After Leatham’s outburst, the judge continued a motion to combine their cases, granting a request by a member of the defense counsel for more time after they sustained a broken foot just days before the hearing.

The judge continued the hearing by another two weeks, although he refused a request by Defense Attorney Carol Long of the Solano County Alternate Public Defender’s Office, who represents Leatham, for more time to respond to the motion.

“I’ve given her plenty of time at this point, so that’s denied,” he said.

Long was not present in the courtroom, so the request was communicated through her co-counsel Shelly Saini, also with the county.

Prosecutors argue that combining Leatham and Dao’s cases would be appropriate and efficient, seeing as how both cases will have similar charges and many of the same witnesses. However, Dao has opposed the motion, claiming that consolidating the two cases would “gravely prejudice” their case.

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 August 2022, LaSota faked her death and disappeared from the world. LaSota’s sister and her friend reported she fell overboard on her boat in the San Francisco Bay, and after a 30-hour search by the U.S. Coast Guard, she was assumed dead.

That is, until she was arrested in Maryland this February for trespassing and possession of a handgun in the vehicle.

Although “Ziz” has not been charged in any of the killings her followers have carried out, the group itself has been linked to several violent murders, including the one Dao and Leatham tried to carry out.

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. Two days before the sheriff’s office was scheduled to evict them, Dao approached landlord Curtis Lind for help repairing a leak on the property.

When Lind bent down to look at the problem, someone hit him on 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 the help of a neighbor, and authorities arrested the two surviving Zizians.

Prosecutors charged Dao and Leatham with attempted murder and murder under the theory that they were responsible for Borhanian’s death.

Lind was set to testify at Leatham and Dao’s trial until he was killed in January 2025 by another Zizian, Maximilian Snyder, who is now awaiting trial for murder.

The next hearing will be held on April 22, 2025, where the judge is expected to set a final date for the motion to consolidate, which he says must be dealt with before the trial can proceed.

This case was filed in Solano County Superior Court and heard at the Solano County Hall of Justice in Fairfield, California.