A member of the cultlike Zizians group is charged in the killings of her parents in Pennsylvania | CNN

A member of the cultlike group known as Zizians has been charged with murder in the shooting of her parents at their Pennsylvania home on her 30th birthday, and a prosecutor said Wednesday she wasn’t acting alone. Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said evidence from a neighbor’s doorbell camera, ballistics and analysis of cellphone records have left investigators certain Michelle Zajko is at least partly responsible for the deaths of her parents, Rita and Richard. They were shot in her childhood playroom on New Year’s Eve 2022, surrounded by her old dolls and toys. “At this time we do not know who her co-conspirators were, but we are very certain that Michelle Zajko was in the home and arranged for the death of her parents,” Rouse said. The new charges against Zajko, who has been jailed in Maryland on other charges since February 2025, include murder, burglary and conspiracy charges in her parents’ deaths. She has denied killing them, and in court filings suggested her father might have killed her mother and himself. “I didn’t murder my parents,” she wrote in an April 2025 “ Open Letter to the World” that her attorney sent to The Associated Press.

Jun 24, 2026 → Jun 24, 2026