sprawling web of violence across America, which has left at least six dead, has been linked to a fringe group of radical Berkeley pseudo-intellectuals known as the Zizians. Investigators across the country are piecing together connections between the double homicide of a wealthy married couple in Pennsylvania, a deadly shootout in Vermont and two brutal knife attacks on a landlord in Vallejo. Four people who are allegedly Zizian cult members are in custody facing homicide charges, despite multiple escape attempts. Three members of the fringe group are missing and wanted, including the leader, Jack “Ziz” LaSota, who faked their death in the San Francisco Bay.

Around a dozen individuals appear to have in-person links to Ziz, some of whom worked at NASA and Google before the arrests began. Many of them advocate for veganism and identify as transgender. Some met through the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a Berkeley nonprofit buoyed by Peter Thiel and Sam Bankman-Fried and associated with the rationalist movement; MIRI warns about the dangers of AI and studies the “mathematical underpinnings of intelligent behavior.”

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The FBI declined to comment on its investigation into the Zizians for this story but pointed toward the wider conspiracy in a statement issued after Teresa Youngblut’s arrest.

“Teresa Youngblut is believed to have associations with other individuals suspected of violent acts in multiple states, to include Pennsylvania and California,” Sarah Ruane, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Albany, New York, office said in a statement. “The FBI is coordinating information sharing on any case related details with our partners from various law enforcement agencies to effectively follow every lead and aggressively investigate these connections.”