Teresa Youngblut, a 21-year-old member of a cultlike group known as the Zizians, is scheduled to be arraigned Friday on a new federal indictment charging her with the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent during a traffic stop in Vermont earlier this year. Federal prosecutors notified a judge last month they intend to seek the death penalty.
Youngblut, of Seattle, is accused of fatally shooting Agent David Maland on Jan. 20 when Border Patrol agents stopped the vehicle she was occupying on Interstate 91. An agent returned fire, killing the vehicle’s driver, Felix Bauckholt, and wounding Youngblut, authorities said. The stop followed reports from a hotel employee that the pair had been carrying firearms and wearing black tactical gear.
Youngblut was initially charged with using a deadly weapon against law enforcement and discharging a firearm during an assault with a deadly weapon — offenses that did not carry capital punishment. A grand jury returned a superseding indictment last month charging her with murder of a federal law enforcement officer, assaulting other federal agents with a deadly weapon and related firearms offenses, making the death penalty a possible punishment under federal law.
The killing occurred the same day President Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term and issued an executive order lifting the longstanding federal moratorium on executions. The Justice Department under the Trump administration has signaled an expanded use of federal capital punishment, and prosecutors in the Vermont case said earlier this month they will seek the death penalty in the new indictment.
Youngblut and Bauckholt were followers of Jack LaSota, a transgender woman who uses the name Ziz, whose online writing and social media presence drew a group of young, highly educated computer scientists with shared anarchist beliefs. Law enforcement officials and prosecutors have linked members of that circle to multiple killings in at least three states.
Members of the group have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord in 2022, the landlord’s later killing earlier this year, and the deaths of the parents of one group member in Pennsylvania. One person charged with the California killing reportedly had applied for a marriage license with Youngblut.
Jack LaSota and two others were arrested in Maryland in February on weapons and drug charges; LaSota faces additional federal charges alleging she was an armed fugitive. Michelle Zajko, whose parents were killed in Pennsylvania, was arrested with LaSota in Maryland and has been charged with providing weapons to Youngblut in the Vermont encounter, authorities said.
Federal investigators say they had been monitoring Youngblut and Bauckholt for several days before the stop on Interstate 91 after the hotel employee report. The encounter escalated when agents approached the vehicle and an exchange of gunfire occurred, killing Maland and Bauckholt and wounding Youngblut.
Vermont abolished capital punishment at the state level in 1972, meaning any federal death penalty in the case would be imposed under federal statutes. The last person to be sentenced to death under federal charges in Vermont was Donald Fell, convicted in 2005 in a kidnapping and slaying case; his death sentence was later overturned because of juror misconduct and he ultimately pleaded guilty in 2018 and was sentenced to life in prison.
The case has drawn attention because of the mix of federal capital charges, the ideological profile of the Zizians group, and the broader push by federal prosecutors to resume and expand executions. Youngblut’s arraignment on the superseding indictment is set for Friday afternoon in federal court in Burlington.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.