One of the suspected cult members who is set to stand trial for the attempted murder of Curtis Lind and the murder of fellow Zizian Emma Borhanian in 2022, Alexander "Somni" Leatham, had another outburst in a court appearance Tuesday.

The January murder of Vallejo resident Curtis Lind brought to light the small but seemingly very violent Bay Area cult, the Zizians, and a path of destruction that allegedly led to the deaths of six people to date in four separate incidents across the country. And Lind's murder appears to be linked to his testimony in an earlier attempt on his life by three of the alleged cult members on his Vallejo property in November 2022.

Two of those suspects from the 2022 incident, Somni Leatham and Suri Dao, are still set to stand trial, and made a court appearance Tuesday morning in Solano County Superior Court in Fairfield. As SFGate reports from the courtroom, Leatham once again proved disruptive, having previously been handcuffed to a wheelchair for court appearances due to her earlier outbursts and at least one escape attempt.

The wheelchair and handcuffs were used again, and Leatham reportedly immediately began screaming upon being wheeled into the courtroom. In front of Judge John B. Ellis, per SFGate, Leatham repeated that a Solano County jail officer had told her she "deserved to be shot for being transgender while he had a gun and I was in chains."

Leatham also said, "The court has been hormonally detransitioning me for quarter of a decade as part of a state-sponsored conversion therapy program. I am not suicidal. I have never been suicidal."

The quarter decade appears to refer to the two-and-almost-half years that Leatham has been in custody for the attempt on Lind's life — which allegedly involved a samurai sword and knives — and the consequent killing of Emma Borhanian, who had allegedly taken part in the attack but who Lind said he shot in self-defense.

The third suspect in the attack, Suri Dao, also appeared via video in court Tuesday, per SFGate, and "politely" answered the judge's questions. Leatham and Dao are now scheduled to appear again on April 22. (The Chronicle reported last month that Suri Dao appears to be also known as Tessa Berns, a onetime National Merit Scholar from Denver who disappeared around 2022.)

The three suspects appeared to be taking revenge on Lind for trying to have them evicted, after he said they — along with purported cult leader Jack "Ziz" LaSota — had been living out of box trucks on his property without paying rent for over two years. A pandemic-era eviction moratorium in the county had just ended in late 2022 when Lind began taking legal action to have them removed.

The group, apparently inspired by LaSota's writings and theories, is an offshoot of the Bay Area-born Rationalist movement, and is deeply concerned with the rise of AI. But LaSota had also formed spurious theories about the functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain, and how this related to morality and gender identity, among other things. They are also all militantly vegan, and all but three of them identify as trans women.

Not long after the attack on Lind, which he survived, LaSota and two others, Daniel Blank and Michelle Zajko, were arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with the double-murder of Zajko's parents on December 31, 2022. After being jailed on obstruction and other charges, all three were released and subsequently missed court dates in Pennsylvania.

Then, in January 2025, a gun licensed to Zajko was allegedly used in a shootout with US Border Patrol agents in Vermont. The two suspects in that case were also suspected acolytes of LaSota, and 21-year-old Teresa Youngblut remains in custody on gun charges. Her alleged accomplice, 28-year-old German national Ophelia Bauckholt, was killed in the shootout.

In February, LaSota, Blank, and Zajko, who had been on the run for about 20 months, were arrested on some private property in rural Maryland, where they were living out of a box truck, and where the property owner had decided to evict them. Late last month, firearms charges were added to their list of felonies and misdemeanors, and they remain in custody in Maryland, likely awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania.

Also last month, the suspect in the January fatal stabbing of Lind, 22-year-old Maximilian Snyder, made a court appearance in Solano County and pleaded not guilty to the murder. Snyder has claimed to a reporter that he is not a follower of Ziz, though he appears to have a connection to Youngblut.