Matt Simons
Courthouse News Service
June 6, 2025
After a nearly ten-minute verbal stand-off with one of the defendants at the hearing, a judge has confirmed a trial date for two transgender defendants charged with the 2022 attempted murder of their Vallejo landlord.
FAIRFIELD, Calif. (CN) — A judge on Friday confirmed the trial of two defendants in Solano County for the attempted murder of their Vallejo landlord in 2022 and the resulting death of their friend, who died of a gunshot wound during the incident.
Defendants Alexander Leatham and Suri Dao belong to a group called the “Zizians,” a loose, cult-like organization of radical vegans and computer savants who see artificial intelligence as a danger to humanity. The group has been linked to six murders across the country.
Their trial is set for October 21, 2025, in Solano County Superior Court.
The solid trial date comes after months of continued hearings and delays in the case, due in part to Leatham’s lack of cooperation with court proceedings.
During Friday’s hearing, as Leatham was led to the courtroom — as she has many times before, by multiple armed officers from the Solano County Sheriff’s Department — She shouted more than 20 times: “I waive my right to a speedy trial!”
Solano County Judge John B. Ellis addressed the interruption from the bench with a mixture of boredom and indifference that has come to define their in-court interactions.
The judge gave the order to place her in an “isolation room,” a room adjacent to the courtroom with a window where she could watch the proceedings.
“Apparently, she’s fairly insistent on waiving the trial,” Ellis quipped.
Leatham’s outbursts have become a common occurrence at these hearings, though this one was notably more subdued than usual, and Leatham barely struggled with the guards.
The pre-trial proceedings reached a fever pitch when Leatham was brought out to be re-arraigned after the judge approved a motion to consolidate Leatham and Dao's cases.
Leatham began repeating a new statement as soon as the judge brought her back to the courtroom so she could be read her charges.
“Someone, please help me! I am surrounded by trans misogynists! Someone, please help me! They are torturing me for being transgender!” Leatham shouted.
In a herculean display of willpower by both parties, Leatham and Ellis spoke at the same time, uninterrupted, for nearly ten minutes while Ellis read her charges for the record.
“Subject to penal code section C...”
“Someone, please help me!”
“...intentionally causing permanent damage or disfigurement...”
“I am surrounded by trans misogynists!”
“...It’s also alleged aggravating factors under 4.21A1, that…”
The judge entered a plea of not guilty for the defendant, lacking an answer from Leatham during their verbal stand-off.
However, Leatham stopped her repetitive statements with the only words she’s traded with the judge in open court in several months when the judge suggested he would set the trial sooner without her input. Without waiving her rights, the judge would be required to set a trial within 60 days.
“Unless you enter a plea, I’m gonna set it sooner rather than later. Alright, we’ll set the trial with no time waiver,” Ellis said.
“What the hell! I didn’t say that!” Leatham shouted.
“Well then, would you like to waive the time?” the judge asked.
“I said that like 100 times! What the hell!” Leatham said, referring to her earlier repeated statement.
Leatham was then removed from the courtroom by officers.
Dao, Leatham’s co-defendant, was much tamer by comparison. They appeared before the court remotely via Zoom, wearing a blue prison shirt. Dao was soft-spoken and cooperative with the proceedings.
The judge also granted a motion to consolidate the defendants’ cases, despite Dao’s opposition that combining the two would “gravely prejudice” their case.
In his decision, the judge referenced past attempts by Dao and Leatham to escape police custody, including attempts before and after they were sent to prison. Ellis said that he doesn’t see Leatham’s escape attempts being used against Dao at trial.
Prosecutors said that Dao gave several false names to police upon their arrest, including “Joshua of Nazareth,” and once pretended to have a seizure so they could try and escape their jail cell. There are also doubts whether “Suri Dao” is the defendant’s real name or merely one they invented on-the-spot after their arrest.
Attorney Brian Ford, who represented Dao, said Leatham’s statements were “deeply, deeply troubling.”
“I get concerned every time I hear what she’s saying, because it’s consistently about discrimination and being tortured on the basis of their gender identity,” Ford told Courthouse News.
Ford added that Leatham's claims should be investigated.
Courthouse News reached out to Leatham’s attorneys at the Solano County Alternate Public Defender’s Office to ask for a comment on her statements about police mistreatment in custody in April, but has not yet received a response.
Attorneys Shelly Saini and Carole Long of the Solano County Alternate Public Defender’s Office, who represented Leatham, declined to comment.
The Solano County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The next hearing will be on Aug. 22, 2025, when the court will hear a motion to dismiss the charges.
Dao and Leatham are two of roughly 10 known members of a group called the Zizians — a group dedicated to the ideas of blogger Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a 34-year-old transgender woman who came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016. A former aspiring tech worker, LaSota came to the tech-saturated region to study the dangers that artificial intelligence could pose to humanity and developed a following among AI theorists and tech bloggers for her radical and rigorous ideas on AI, veganism and gender.
In August 2022, LaSota faked her death and disappeared from the world. She was later arrested in Maryland this February for trespassing and possession of a handgun in the vehicle.
Although “Ziz” has not been charged in any of the killings her followers have carried out, the group itself has been linked to several violent murders, including the one Dao and Leatham tried to carry out.
In 2022, prosecutors claim Dao, Leatham, and fellow Zizian Emma Borhanian faced eviction from a Vallejo lot where they rented space for the retrofitted box trucks they lived in. In an attack, the right side of his skull was shattered, and his torso was impaled with a samurai sword.
Lind ending up shooting and killing Borhanian and wounding Leatham. Though he survived, and was set to testify at Leatham and Dao’s trial, he was killed in January 2025 by another Zizian, Maximilian Snyder, who is now awaiting trial for murder.
Categories / Criminal, Regional
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