‘He was bleeding like a stuck pig': Key witness testifies in Zizian murder case

San Francisco Chronicle​

23-04-2025

A key witness in the murder trial of two Zizian associates testified in graphic detail Tuesday about the 2022 attack on his best friend, Vallejo landlord Curtis Lind, but acknowledged that multiple strokes and heart attacks have ravaged his memory.
Patrick McMillan, 81, who used to live in a mobile home on Lind's Vallejo storage yard, testified that around 7 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022, Lind knocked on his door and yelled, 'They are killing me! There's knives sticking out of me!.' When he opened the door, McMillan testified, Lind was sitting on a truck outside his front door with the tip of a samurai sword poking a foot out from his upper chest and blood pouring out from skin hanging above his right eye.
'He was bleeding like a stuck pig,' McMillan said. 'I mean it was gushing.'
Solano prosecutors have charged Alexander 'Somni' Leatham and Suri Dao with murder and attempted murder in the 2022 attack on Lind.
On Tuesday, Solano County Deputy District Attorney Ilana Shapiro played four 911 calls McMillan made early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2022, hours before and right after the attack. The calls had not been publicly reported before Tuesday.
'This man has been stabbed many times, he's bleeding to death,' McMillan told a Vallejo police dispatcher. 'You better hurry, he can die.'
In court, McMillan, who used a wheelchair and cane and needed assistance to climb one step onto the witness stand, testified about the dire condition of his 'best friend' that morning. The judge allowed McMillan to testify in a conditional hearing, a rare allowance, due to health and age concerns. Such a hearing allows prosecutors to film his testimony prior to the start of the trial in order to preserve his testimony should his health and memory further deteriorate. Prosecutors previously recorded Lind and McMillan's testimony once before in 2023.
Prosecutors allege Dao lured Lind to a purported water leak at the Zizian compound within his property where someone hit him over the head and knocked him to the ground. They allege Dao, Emma Borhanian, another Zizian associate, stabbed him with knives and Leatham impaled him with a samurai sword.
Lind survived, drew a handgun and opened fire, killing Borhanian and wounding Leatham. Lind lost his right eye in the scrum.
In January, Maximilian Snyder, another Zizian associate, stabbed Lind to death just outside the Vallejo property, prosecutors said. They charged Snyder with killing Lind to prevent him from testifying against Leatham and Dao.
Lind's homicide is one of six slayings across the country linked to the 'Zizians,' a radical group of computer geniuses who practice extreme veganism and a philosophy called rationalism. The group is named after Jack LaSota, who goes by Ziz in her many online writings about human cognition and the perils of artificial intelligence.
LaSota and two others are jailed in Maryland on trespassing and gun charges, but investigators have said they are linked to other killings. The group has been connected to an unsolved double slaying in Pennsylvania and the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont.
McMillan, wearing a grey hoodie and sweatpants testified for about seven hours, calmly answering questions, but often relaying to attorneys he struggled with his memory. He said he suffered eight strokes and nine heart attacks — 'After that last stroke, I lost everything.' He clarified that that most recent stroke happened before Lind's 2022 attack, and events after he could retain somewhat.
Still, McMillan, whose nurse sat behind him during his testimony, struggled to identify the defendants or any Zizian associates. Shapiro showed him multiple photos of the group and McMillan failed to properly identify most of them. At one point, he was asked if he recognized any Lind tenants in the audience, and he failed to identify Dao who appeared via Zoom from a Chino hospital. The judge also brought out Leatham, with her black hair astray, from a viewing cell and McMillan said he didn't not recognize her.
At the start of the hearing and when brought out for identification purposes, Leatham, as she has done at all Solano County court appearances, began chanting accusations of mistreatment by jail staff and wrestling with deputies.
Much of what McMillan said Tuesday mirrored his recorded testimony from December 2023. Around 1 a.m., the early hours on the day of the attack, McMillan said his friend called frantically that the group was throwing rocks at his trailer and trying to force his door open.
In his first 911 call he identified the assailants as 'some squatters that the sheriff was evicting' the next day. When police didn't arrive, McMillan called 911 again alerting police that Lind was afraid to call himself and alert his attackers that he was inside the trailer. He said he didn't remember the police coming after the second call either and he fell asleep.
Frantic knocks from Lind woke him up around 7 a.m., and he called 911 twice more as his friend sat critically wounded on a truck bumper outside his front door.
McMillan painted a wild image of his earlier life. For decades, he testified, he worked as a clandestine intelligence officer, contracting research work for the government. While he declined to offer details, citing confidentiality clauses, at one point, he testified that one man he was working for was the 'most-wanted Nazi war criminal.'
McMillan explained how most of the Zizian associates on Lind's property walked around 'stark naked.' He said he had only a few interactions with them. Only once, McMillan said, did he confront LaSota when he watched Ziz attempt to improperly hook up water equipment. LaSota only responded to him with one word when he asked for her name: 'Ziz.'
McMillan also answered questions about another tenant unrelated to the Zizians, who he and Lind nicknamed 'The Crazy Guy.' He said that man acted strangely and also occasionally threatened Lind.