Verdict watch in Navy optician's murder trial. Accused killer's ties to Zizians. Plus, AI scams.

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0:43Yep, even on weekends. That's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash Bank Guy. Capital One N.A. member FDIC. Hey, good morning. It's the start of another workday for the Dateline team. They press him pretty hard in this interrogation. Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news. There's always been a question of whether she would get some sort of new deal. It's a super high-profile case. Oprah gets involved. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's July 9th, and here's what's on our docket. In Pennsylvania, prosecutors connect a woman accused of murdering her parents to a cult-like group called the Zizians.

1:32They see themselves as people who can essentially save the world. In Dateline Roundup, a judge puts the attorneys on both sides of the Karen Reed wrongful death suit on blast. And the U.S. Coast Guard releases dramatic new video from its investigation into a woman who went missing in the Bahamas. Okay, any weapons on board? Okay, do not reach for them. Plus, NBC News chief consumer investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen will be here to tell us about AI-powered scams on social media and how to avoid becoming the next victim. In this era, remember that seeing is no longer believing. But before all that, we're heading back to San Diego County, where we're on verdict watch at the murder trial of Navy optician Larry Miliete.

2:19For seven weeks, jurors at the San Diego County Courthouse have listened to sensational testimony about infidelity, spell casters, and poison. Prosecutors have called on 66 witnesses to build their case against Larry Miliete, a man they say was so consumed by his wife Maya's desire to end their marriage that he murdered her and then dumped her body somewhere it's never been found. From day one of the trial, the defense has pointed to the lack of physical evidence that a murder even took place. But when it came time to present their case, The defense called just three witnesses offering their own surprising theory about what could have happened to Maya the night she disappeared.

3:02Then, on Wednesday, the jury finally got the case and started deliberating. Here to take us inside the final days of the trial is NBC7 investigative reporter Alexis Rivas. Welcome back, Alexis. Hi, Andrea. Always great to be here. Yes, we love having you on the podcast. I mean, it's almost like this trial felt like it just went on and on and on. It's been a long trial. I will say we were all gearing up for a three-month-long trial and were shocked watching the defense sum up their entire case in three hours. Who did they call as witnesses to make their case? So they just called three witnesses.

3:39They started with two canine officers. They said that their dogs didn't detect Maya's body inside of the Miliete house. And I think that really underscores a major point for this defense. There's no crime scene. None. There is no blood spat or nothing. No proof that homicide even happened. The defense did not stop at planting seeds of reasonable doubt. Their third witness was a private investigator who came up with a theory about where Maya may have gone that night. Tell us about that. This guy's really interesting. He's considered a pretty top-notch private investigator here in our legal community.

4:12and his main point was to refute one of the biggest, maybe more incriminating pieces of evidence from the prosecution that, hey, the last video we have of Maya alive, she's walking into her house and none of these surveillance cameras from any of her neighbors ever got her leaving her house. Well, he finds a way to essentially get in and out of the house without being caught on any of the cameras. He suggested for that to happen, you could hop over the fence and there's a drainage ditch. That ditch runs kind of right behind their backyard all the way to a hiking trail that's pretty popular here.

4:46And that trail also leads into kind of a neighboring suburb. So technically possible. Now, whether or not they actually wanted people to really believe that that's what happened, that's different. You know, it's a reasonable doubt case. They just need just enough. Yeah, absolutely. He's not trying to prove, you know, or say what happened. He's just trying to say, here's another possibility. Alexis, how did the prosecution handle this private investigator on cross-examination? Well, he had to speak about how he'd never tried doing this at night, and it would have had to happen at night. I think that stuck in a lot of people's minds, at least in the gallery.

5:21I overheard Maya's family talking about that same thing. When he had his chance to do this, it wasn't until a couple years after Maya had initially disappeared. So there might have been some changes. There could angles on these cameras that just wasn't true the night Maya was last seen. Larry, no surprise, decided not to testify. Well, I guess in this case, maybe I could backtrack that since he does talk a lot and he did a lot of interviews with you, including a phone call you got during the trial. So normally I would say murdered defendants don't testify. It's a surprise if they do, but maybe not in this case.

5:57Normally I would agree with you. And yeah, in this case, I have to say I was surprised. I mean, he has been saying for years, but especially in just like the weeks before this trial, how much he was looking forward to telling his side of the story. You know, he said in his own words, he was not going to take the stand. I could tell you people gasped in the courthouse when that happened. Yeah. Well, before they got to closings, the attorneys had a sidebar with the judge. This sidebar seemed like it's going to be important in this final stage of the trial, they argued about the charges the jury should consider on the verdict form.

6:29What charges are we talking about? From the get-go, prosecutors have wanted first-degree murder. But before the jury got their instructions, we found out from the judge they're going to include everything from first-degree murder, second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter to involuntary manslaughter. That is a huge array of selections. I mean, involuntary manslaughter is only two years in a state prison. He's already got more time served than that. So that's definitely a victory for the defense. Closing arguments began on Tuesday. What was the atmosphere like in court? You know, this has been a very emotional trial for a lot of people.

7:04Yeah, I mean, we had hundreds of people out here that hiked trails for months looking for Maya's body. So there's a lot of people that were just heavily invested in this case. And we expected a lot of them to turn out they did. The entire left side of the courtroom was the color green, which is Maya's favorite color. So there's no mistaking the amount of support that we saw in the courtroom there. And it got a little emotional. There were definitely times where even Prosecutor Chrissy Bowles was like gulping. You know, it's hard to know if it's emotion there, but she quivered her voice. Maya's family and friends started crying as well.

7:36And it was clear by the end of the day, even though Larry didn't cry, he asked for a box of tissues. And when he stood up, his face was red. And he did not nod at his family like he usually does. And the prosecutor, Christy Bowles, really sort of went for those heartstrings. Talking about Maya as a mom, missing her kids' birthdays. That can really weigh on a juror when they're faced with something like that. Yeah, that was a huge part of the closing, that Maya was human. She talked about the fact that, yeah, we know she lied, right? She had this affair. She was a flawed person, but she was a human being.

8:08a human that sadly is probably no longer alive. And they really wanted to remind this jury that she was a mom. And that's so important to this case, not just because of, you know, maybe her character and wanting that to carry some weight in deliberations, but because, again, there's no body. We have to really make it clear that this is someone who never, ever, ever would want to leave her children. And in their words, it was unfathomable to think that she would. And also the prosecutor reminded jurors about Maya's own words that she wrote in her journal. She was afraid of Larry. She told her therapist she was afraid of Larry and others.

8:44And that's really important. Yeah, as she said, there's a theme here of this control and this fear of violence regarding Larry. Yeah, and as outlandish as the spellcasters, you know, Larry trying to cast spells on Maya seems, the prosecution said there was something deeper to it. And it was part of that coercive control you're talking about of Maya. And it gave us a really rare look at something, the inner workings of his mind. He's saying, you know, in all of these vulnerable moments, exactly what he wants, that he wants her to be submissive, that he wants Maya to obey, that he wants Maya to stay in a bed and never leave a bed.

9:23It got very dark and it got, they would argue, state-of-mind evidence that he was willing to pay a stranger to hurt his wife. And arguably, so the biggest hurdle for the prosecution is this lack of physical evidence. But the prosecutor pushed back on that and said, and basically, you know, use your common sense. She really wanted the jury to remember they don't need a body and they don't need to know how. They just need to believe Larry did it. The defense went next with their closings. And again, this was, there just is not enough for you to put Larry away. Yeah, she said, you basically only heard all of this evidence within a framework where Larry is a murderer.

10:03If you remove that framework and you just take a look at a man who was heartbroken because his wife is having an affair, he suspects that, and she's telling him she's not. And she even went in to say, you're not going to like me saying this, but Larry was abused too. She basically is arguing Larry was gaslit by Maya, who was telling him she wasn't having an affair when he was. Maya was kind of making him crazy. And if you think about that and the shame that accompanies that, all of his actions could easily be explained by all of these other things going on in his life. Yeah, the defense said there's no playbook for heartbreak.

10:36The case now is in the hands of the jurors. This is such a hard jury to read. You know, they don't react very often. They haven't for the last two months. But we know that they get along. I mean, one of the days they asked if they could have permission to play tennis together. So this is a group. The jurors? Yeah. What? Yeah. The judge said, sure, as long as you don't talk about the case. It is San Diego. Yes. So we really just, we'll have to wait and see. Thank you, Alexis. We will wait and see what the jury decides. Thank you for having me. coming up a double murder in Pennsylvania with possible ties to a cult-like group of AI obsessed vegans

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12:53On New Year's Eve 2022, 69-year-old Rita and 71-year-old Richard Zyko were fatally shot in their bedroom in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia. Now, three years later, prosecutors have finally charged someone with their murders. Their 33-year-old daughter. Today, Michelle Zyko, who has been linked with a cult-like group, was officially charged with killing her parents inside their home. At a recent press conference, prosecutors said they believe she didn't work alone and raised questions about her ties to a group known as the Zizians, who have been connected to several other violent deaths across the country.

13:31NBC News investigative reporter Rich Shapiro has been trying to piece it all together and is here today to bring us the latest. Rich, thanks for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. Okay, so Rich, give us some background on the Zyko family to start. Sure thing. They lived in a nice home about 30 miles west of Philly in a town called Chester Heights. Rita and Richard adopted Michelle as a baby. And Michelle was a bright and high-achieving student in college. But Michelle had been estranged from her parents leading up to their death. And on the day they were killed, which was Michelle's 30th birthday, Rita texted her daughter, hoping to repair the rift between them.

14:13That message was never answered. What do prosecutors say happened to Rita and Richard? The couple was found shot to death in an upstairs bedroom on January 2nd, 2023. But police think they were actually killed a few days before on New Year's Eve. An autopsy report revealed that Rita had a gunshot wound in the back of her head and Richard had been shot in his temple. According to investigators, there were two 9mm shell casings left behind at the scene. So where did they go from there? And what made them start to suspect that the Zyko's own daughter might have been involved in this? Yeah, they tracked down surveillance footage from the night of the murder.

14:58and in it you can hear someone say mom, according to investigators. Michelle was the Zyko's only daughter. Investigators went to visit Michelle at her home in northern Vermont. She confirmed to them that she owned a 9mm gun, the type used for the murders, and investigators later linked her to the purchase of ammunition that matched the casings found at the murder scene. Michelle has denied any involvement in the crime. Did she provide a solid alibi to investigators as to where she'd been on the day of the murders? Michelle told investigators she was in Vermont on the day her parents were killed and that she hadn't spoken to them since January 2022.

15:38Okay, so they went to interview Michelle again about a week after this. And this time she's at a Pennsylvania hotel where she was staying for her parents' funeral. And it sounds like a wild interaction took place, Rich. Yes, it was a strange sequence of events. So police arrived with a search warrant and found her with two other people at the hotel. The investigators took her to their state police barracks for questioning, but she refused to cooperate and left. The police had seized her car, so they told her to wait in the lobby of the police barracks so they could return the vehicle to her. But according to the affidavit, she just fled, leaving behind her car.

16:28And get this,$40 ,000 in cash that was inside of it. That is a lot of money. That was January 2023. 23, Michelle, as you said, fled and was missing for over two years. Police had no idea where she was until February of 2025. That's correct. And Michelle surfaced in rural Maryland in 2025 after a man called local police to say three people were on his property without his permission. Police arrived to find Michelle and two other people. They were arrested on trespassing and weapons charges, pleaded not guilty, and have been in custody in Maryland since then. Why are we just seeing murder charges now in connection to her parents' deaths?

17:18So at a press conference, the prosecutor, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse, said that it took time to gather evidence and build a case. He talked about digital clues investigators had pieced together, including some text messages Michelle allegedly sent after the killings. He also referenced a note investigators say she wrote on her phone listing all the ways they, quote, effed up the murder. This included not getting rid of the shell casings that were found at the scene. This included not getting rid of the ammunition that was later recovered from her Vermont home that matched the shell casings found at the scene.

17:55It goes on and on and on. Something else the DA said, Rich, in his presser, that he does not believe Michelle acted alone. That's right. He said that a car can be seen on surveillance camera footage arriving at her parents' home on the day of the murders, and that two people got out of the car and entered the house. Prosecutors believe one of the individuals was Michelle, but couldn't clearly identify either person solely from that footage. Although prosecutors have not identified this possible co-conspirator, at the press conference, the DA did mention a group that Michelle Zyko has ties to called the Zizians.

18:34And in fact, this isn't the first time we've talked about this group on the podcast. Who are these Zizians? The Zizians have been described by various news outlets and prosecutors as a cult-like group headed by someone named Jack Lasota, who identifies as a woman and calls herself Ziz. Now, the group originated in Berkeley, California. Its members are very high IQ individuals, most of whom are vegans, who share an obsession about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Many of the members are trans women, and they see themselves as people who can essentially save the world. Some of them have lived off the grid in California and elsewhere.

19:20Rich, prosecutors say Michelle had ties to the Zizians, but is there anything else connecting the Zizians to the Zyko's deaths? So the Delaware County DA said in his press conference that Michelle was in contact with a member of the Zizians both right before and after her parents' murders on New Year's Eve 2022. But that's not all. Remember, there were two other people in the Pennsylvania Hotel when police went to talk to Michelle about the murders. One of them was Ziz, the leader of the Zizians. That doesn't mean Ziz had anything to do with the Zyko's murders. but it does suggest Michelle was very close to the group.

20:01Prosecutors also allege that Michelle bought the guns used by two other Zizians in a shootout with Border Patrol agents in Vermont in January 2025. In that case, Agent David Mayland was killed during the shootout along with one of the Zizians. The surviving Zizian is facing two federal weapons charges. And it should be clear that Michelle has not been charged in connection to that case. And there's one more case out of California that has been connected to the Zizians. Rich, what's that one all about? Yeah, and this one is also pretty wild and ultimately tragic. In 2022, members of the group were accused of assaulting an elderly man whose name is Curtis Lind.

20:45He owned the property where Ziz was living at the time. and prosecutors allege group members attacked him with a samurai sword and actually impaled him. He survived that attack but lost an eye. Now, the alleged attackers were set to go to trial in the spring of 2025. But in January of that year, Curtis Lind was fatally stabbed. Police arrested a group member named Maximilian Snyder and charged him with murder. Snyder pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and is awaiting trial. Is there any sense by law enforcement or prosecutors that these alleged murders have anything to do with the Zizian's ideology if they're trying to stop or save the world from artificial intelligence?

21:35Yeah, that's a tough one. When it comes to the murders of Michelle's parents, prosecutors allege it had something to do with the fraught family dynamic between Michelle and her parents. When it comes to the other deaths, nobody is saying they were part of any program by the Zizians to kill anyone. What is next for the Zizians and also for Michelle Zyko? Michelle is still in jail in Maryland awaiting trial on trespassing and weapons charges, as is Ziz, the group leader who was arrested with her. Michelle has still yet to be arraigned on the murder charges. And it sounds like the Delaware County DA is continuing to work on identifying the other person they think was involved in her parents' deaths and whether or not that person is a Zizian remains to be seen.

22:22Rich, good job untangling all of this for us. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We're inside the courtroom for an emergency hearing in the Karen Reed wrongful death suit. And we've got the latest on the trial of the Colorado man accused of murdering his wife with animal tranquilizers. Plus, AI-powered scams are flooding social media. Vicky Nguyen shares how to protect yourself and your wallet.

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24:31Welcome back. Joining me for this week's Roundup is Dateline's supervising digital producer, Veronica Mazzaca. Hey, Veronica. Thanks for being here. So we are starting off in Massachusetts with an update in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against Karen Reed. As our listeners know, Reed was acquitted last summer for the murder of her police officer boyfriend, John O 'Keefe. Not long after that, O 'Keefe's family filed that lawsuit against her, which she is fighting. Here is the big development. The Plymouth Superior Court judge presiding over the case recently ordered an emergency hearing. Veronica, tell us, what is this emergency hearing about?

25:10So last Wednesday, Judge Mark Gilday demanded attorneys in the case for both the state and the defense gather for an in-person hearing. 18 attorneys in total were present, including Reed's celebrity defense attorney, Alan Jackson, who flew in from California to be there. Karen Reed was also there. And the judge made it clear that this was no ordinary hearing, setting a very serious tone right off the bat. I find the quiet solemnity of the courtroom is a good reminder of the dignity by which courts are supposed to function. The judge went on to say that someone had leaked, quote, sensitive and private medical information from confidential court filings to a third party, which had then been posted on social media.