Around 9 pm of January 12, 2023, a couple of soldiers from the state of Pennsylvania were presented at a hotel near the Philadelphia airport.
Ten days before, a married couple, Richard and Rita Zajko, had been shot dead inside her home in Chester Heights, a suburb of accommodated Philadelphia. The soldiers arrived at the hotel in search of the murderer. They had a raid order addressed to a person close to the Zajkos: their daughter, Michelle.
The soldiers found Michelle Zajko, then 30, and took her to their barracks to interrogate. But she refused to cooperate and allowed her to leave, according to an affidavit of the law.
Then something strange happened.
The soldiers told Zajko to wait in the lobby so that they could return his car. Instead, he ran, leaving behind his vehicle and $ 40,000 in cash that was found inside him, according to the affidavit.
The murder case cooled over the next two years. But he caught the renewed attention in January after prosecutors linked a person of interest in the murder, now known for being Zajko, with other suspects of violent crimes in California and Vermont, people who are members of a group of cult of highly educated vegans and obsessed with the Cañinos known as the Zizians.
Zajko’s whereabouts had remained a mystery after she fled from the state police barracks. But last month, she and two associates who had also been interrogated in the murder of her parents were arrested in Maryland for transferring and charges of weapons.
The trio was ordered to remain behind bars after a prosecutor said in court that they were part of a group “linked to multiple homicides that have occurred in the United States.”
Neither Zajko nor anyone else have been accused in the murder of their parents, but the family and friends say that they now have hope for the first time there will be a break in the case.
“Hopefully, there will finally be justice for Rich and Rita,” said a family friend who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A brilliant future
The Zajkos lived in a neighborhood of majestic houses and well -designed Céspedes located about 30 miles west of Philadelphia.
Michelle was his only son. It was adopted as a baby and raised in the house in Chester Heights.
He then studied biology at the now missing Cabrini University in Pennsylvania before obtaining a mastery in bioinformatics at the University of Temple, according to his LinkedIn page.
She was a high -performance student with high goals. Michelle Zajko worked as a research intern at the Dear Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. He also entered NASA’s AMES Research Center in California, studying how space flight emphasizes the human body.
“I want to help save people for my career,” the Cabrini University told the student newspaper.
His parents had several rental units in a development in the nearby city of Aston. In the years before the murders, Richard Zajko spent much of his time registering his tenants and fixing what is necessary to be fixed, two of the tenants said in the interviews.
“If there was a problem, he was Johnny on the spot,” said one who asked to remain in anonymity.
But Richard Zajko was not just a receptive owner. He took his tenants much less than other units and repeatedly encouraged them to save enough so they could buy their own houses, according to the two old tenants.
“He really worried about people,” said the other tenant, who also asked to remain anonymous.
When he discovered that a couple renting one of their apartments was having a baby, Zajko lit up. He talked about how excited they were and his wife when they adopted their daughter.
Michelle was about 20 years old and had left home a long time ago. But Zajko made an offer to the tenants who left them stunned: would they have Michelle’s baby clothes?
A shocking crime
The researchers determined that the Zajkos were killed on December 31, 2022, the same day that Michelle turned 30.
Rita, 69, had a gunshot wound on the back of her head, found her autopsy. Richard, 71, had taken a bullet to his right hand and another to his right temple, according to his autopsy.
Their bodies were discovered in a room above. No weapon was found on the scene, according to judicial records, but there were two 9 mm housings, each with a “9 mm luger +p sig” print impression.
Three days later, the investigators of the state police of Vermont and Pennsylvania traveled to the house of Michelle Zajko in Coventry, Vermont, a remote city to about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. Zajko confirmed to researchers that he owned a firearm, a semi -automatic gun that triggers 9 mm ammunition, according to judicial records.
She allowed the investigators to sustained the weapon, but did not have an order to seize him.
“When handling and observing said firearm, it was discovered that it was free of dust, dirt or debris, which seems to be well saved and recently cleaned and/or attended,” said a affidavit of the search warrant of the Vermont state police.
Zajko told the soldiers that he was in Vermont in the previous days and after the eve of the New Year, says the Affidavit, and that he had not spoken with his parents since January 2022.
Later, the researchers learned that Zajko had bought the weapon in a local sporting store, along with a box of ammunition of the same manufacture and type as the guts found in the scene of the murder in Pennsylvania, says the affidavit.
They sought a search warrant for the weapon and the ammunition that believed that it was still inside Zajko’s house. But on the same day he appeared, on January 12, 2023, Zajko was really in Pennsylvania for the funeral of his parents. It was then that Pennsylvania State Troopers, with a separate search warrant, went to the Candlewood Suites hotel in search of Zajko and her weapon.
There were no weapons or ammunition inside the Hotel de Zajko room. But after supposedly he ran out of the Penylvania State Police barracks, the soldiers returned to the hotel and found the weapon in a room where two of their associates stayed, says the Affidavit of the Vermont State Police.
The researchers tried to get to Zajko again, but they had no luck. She was, at that time, in the wind.
Six deaths in three states
Two years passed without developing in the case. Then, on January 20 of this year, a Border Patrol agent, David Maland, was killed in a pinch in northern Vermont. The shooting exploded after Maland and other agents stopped a car that was occupied by two people: Ophelia Bauckholt and Teresa Youngblut.
Federal prosecutors say that Youngblut opened fire after leaving the car, which led at least one agent to shoot. Bauckholt was deadly shot when he took a gun, prosecutors say, and Youngblut also shot, but survived.
