Pennsylvania charges daughter in three-year-old double murder cold case

Pennsylvania authorities charged Michelle Zajko, 33, in the 2022 killings of her parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, a case that had stayed open for more than three years in an affluent Chester Heights neighborhood about 30 miles west of Philadelphia. Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said investigators built the case from incriminating text messages, ballistics analysis and enhanced audio pulled from surveillance footage.

Rouse said the evidence shows Zajko did not act alone. Surveillance video captured a second person entering the home before the killing, and enhanced audio from that footage captured someone yelling “Mom” around the time of the murders. Prosecutors are still working to identify that person.

Richard and Rita Zajko were found dead during a wellness check on Jan. 2, 2023, after they missed scheduled caretaking duties. The Delaware County medical examiner’s office ruled both deaths homicides. Rita Zajko, 69, had been shot in the back of the head. Richard Zajko, 71, had been shot in the right hand and right temple. The killings occurred on New Year’s Eve 2022 and were not a random act of violence.

Michelle Zajko was questioned in January 2023 and later fled from a Pennsylvania State Police barracks near the Philadelphia airport area. She left behind her car and $40,000 in cash. She was arrested in Maryland in February 2025 along with Jack LaSota and Daniel Blank, two people tied to the Zizians, the cultlike group linked to six deaths across Pennsylvania, California and Vermont.

In April 2025, Zajko released a handwritten letter denying that she killed her parents. Prosecutors have also tied her to the broader Zizians investigation, including allegations in the January 2025 killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland in Vermont.