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On New Year’s Eve, 2022, terror strikes the “stately” home of Richard & Rita Zajko. A neighbor’s doorbell cam will capture the scene (sort of).
It records an “unknown” car pulling into the Zajkos’ driveway. One minute later, it records a shout, then a higher-pitched voice shouting, “Mom!” There is silence for 30 seconds, & then the higher-pitched voice breaks out: “Oh my God. Oh God, God!” “Subjects” then enter the front door. An upstairs light turns on, & nine minutes go by. Two ppl then leave thru the front door, get back in the car, & drive away.
Two days later, the bodies of Richard & Rita will be found in Jamie’s childhood bedroom, shot thru the heads w/ a 9mm handgun.
January 31st had been Jamie’s 30th birthday.
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The Zajkos’ home showed no sign of a forced entry, & cops conclude the assailant must have been someone the couple knew. This, combined w/ the doorbell cam recording*, gives them grounds to schlep up to Vermont, where they find Jamie at home w/ a fellow Rationalist named Daniel Blank.
*This is peculiar, since the recording does not show the couple opening the door for the assailants: the assailants seem to just walk in. Now, does it stretch our minds to believe that Richard & Rita would leave their *schmancy* home unguarded? Yes, but that is what the footage appears to show— that, or one of the assailants had a key.
They ask whether Jamie has any guns, & Jamie hands over a 9mm Smith & Wesson- which the cops, lacking a warrant to confiscate, hand right back.
O…k, this looks… not good for Jamie. But to be fair: 9mm is one of the most popular handgun calibers in the world! Light googling found no exact stats, but most handguns produced in the US are 9mm; 9mm guns “dominate the market”. This suggests that a majority or near-majority of handguns in civilian ownership are 9mm. Perhaps it’s just an unfortunate coincidence.
Also, as our v. wise gf says: why would you drive nearly 8 hours from VT to PA, commit a murder, & not throw the gun off a bridge into a ravine on the nearly-8-hr drive back?
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Jamie & Daniel claim they spent New Year’s Eve together in Vermont. It's hard for the cops to verify this one way or the other, bc both happen to have had their phones turned off in the hours surrounding Richard's & Rita's murder.
This is another… unfortunate coincidence. Tho, as our v. wise gf says: “if you were gonna commit a murder, wouldn’t you leave your phone at home playing Pandora?”
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About a week later, the cops get a call from the local medical examiner: Jamie, who is in town for their parents’ funeral, has stopped by to request their parents’ death certificates.
Now, this frankly sounds innocuous to us: standard post-mortem affairs.
True: light googling (LG) has revealed that, typically, funeral homes are the ones to order death certificates; but LG has also revealed that there are times when one might want to directly request certified copies— ie, for the handling of estates.
Jamie certainly did need to handle an estate: the Zajkos are reported to have had “at least several million dollars worth of assets, & Jamie was their only child.” Rita had texted Jamie, on the day of the murders, abt savings bonds which they were set to receive.
While this may set *other* armchair sleuths a-buzzing— did Jamie kill for money?— to this armchair sleuth, it simply speaks to one totally normal reason that Jamie could've had to request death certificates.
We & the cops, however, disagree on this point: they use this opportunity to track Jamie to a nearby hotel, &, 3 days later, to get a warrant in order to search their room for that 9 mm.
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Btw, why does Jamie have a 9 mm? Well, as they have written abt on their tumblr, trans self-defense is v. important to them.
They’re not kidding! 2021 & 2022 did indeed see a *surge* of violence, hostile rhetoric, & discriminatory legislation against trans ppl.
2022's Trans Day of Remembrance marked 47 ppl killed by November- most of whom lived in states w/ aggressive anti-trans laws.
November was also the month of the Club Q shooting, in which 5 ppl were killed and 19 injured- the shooter was eventually subdued by patrons, including a trans woman named Drea Norman, who stomped on his head until police arrived.
Never ones to fan the flames, our elected officials responded by... oh, uh, actually by continuing to pass laws which led to an atmosphere of hostility & discrimination.
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Jamie has been taking this all in, & writing on their tumbir- w/ careful links to news sources:
We're looking at a future of nationwide registries of all trans people, nationwide bans of trans-affirming care for children and adults, and potentially state or district-wide support for the policing of social transition, which will translate not only to harassment, kidnapping, jailing, and killings of trans people, but to the harassment, kidnapping, jailing, and killing of people whose gender expression looks even a little queer or nonconfirming.
When I say this is genocide, I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm not joking. I'm not exaggerating.
The GOP is spending $50 million dollars in ads to specifically spread anti-trans propaganda across TV, radio, and digital sources. Multiple hospitals have received threats, including a bomb threat, because they provided gender-affirming care to children and teens.
Fascists are threatening schools that protect trans kids, resulting in more bomb threats.
One candidate for office is currently suggesting that "sharing LGBT ideology" is an "un-american activity" punishable by death & calls for a revival of the house committee on un-american activities (HCUA) for the single purpose of hunting down and killing queers. He's not getting any pushback from his fellows on the right.
Other legislators and AGs are generally. supportive of similar schemes to enforce the criminalization of sodomy and ban queer life from public life. And their pastors are calling for the mass genocide of queer people.
So no, it's not hyperbole. We're already past the start of a trans genocide.
So if you don't own a gun, consider getting one, learning to shoot it, and investigating community self-defense.
Fascist militias are an arm of the anti-trans genocide who are acting as low-level enforcers, and significantly disrupting their activities is effective self-defense.
Astute analysis, & we support self-defense in this household!
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Our old foe Wired Mag (OOFWM) does not agree. W/ both its eyebrows raised, Wired will quote from Jamie’s tumblr in order to reinforce a narrative that Jamie is… a little paranoid; a little unstable, extreme, & histrionic. We don’t know why Wired would have it in for Jamie— who, as of this writing, is still not on trial for anything murder-related!
Wired will point out two more “suspicious” things that Jamie does at their parents’ funeral: first, they arrive wearing a mask, explaining that they’ve been sick. Second, they point to some men whom they don’t know, & ask, “Who are those men?”
🙄 Wired is sounding a bit over-wired to us. It is not extremely ~suspicious~, in 2022, to wear a mask— esp. not when one is attending the funeral of 2 older ppl, whose friends & fam. are prob.... older ppl! It is also not inherently suspicious to point to unknown men and ask, “Who are those men”— however much Wired tries to frame this as Jamie quote “seeming paranoid”.
😑 We have some more choice words for OOFWM, but this 😮💨 may require its own post.
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Next: Why, Evan Ratliff?
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