CultNEWS101 Articles: 11/26/2025
Patrick Ryan
" ... LaSota was arrested in Maryland in February along with Zizians Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank following a nationwide manhunt. LaSota is considered a person of interest in the 2023 murders of Zajko’s parents, Richard and Rita Zajko.
Zajko is facing her own federal gun charges for allegedly buying the firearms used by Zizians Teresa Youngblut and Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt during a shootout with U.S. Border Patrol Agent David “Chris” Maland, 44. Bauckholt and Maland were killed in the exchange. Youngblut now faces the death penalty.
The shootout occurred near the Vermont border in the Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector, which includes all of New Hampshire’s boundary with Canada.
Proctor filed a motion Wednesday demanding a speedy trial, arguing that the government is violating LaSota’s constitutional rights by allowing the case to stagnate. Under the Sixth Amendment and federal law, a defendant is entitled to a trial within 70 days of indictment. Proctor said he has not even received the evidence the government is using to support the charge.
“The government is, in effect, thwarting this right. Had Ms. LaSota promptly appeared before this court, the 70 days mandated by the Speedy Trial Act would have already long since passed,” he wrote. 'Over the past five months government counsel have done nothing to ensure that Ms. LaSota appears before a judicial officer. The undersigned has received no discovery. The undersigned called one of the government’s counsel on Oct. 31, 2025, asking to discuss the case; almost two weeks later, no return call has been made.'"
"Public significance: When Prophecy Fails is one of the most influential case studies in 20th-century social science. It helped launch the theory of cognitive dissonance, shaped popular understandings of how belief survives disconfirmation, and became a touchstone for explaining the origins of religious movements—including Christianity. But the case was misrepresented. The cult did not persist, proselytize, or reinterpret its failure as a spiritual triumph. Its leader recanted, the group disbanded, and belief dissolved. This article shows that the authors of When Prophecy Fails misled their readers—and that scholars in psychology, sociology, and religious studies have been building theories atop a collapsed foundation."
Abstract: " ... In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. When neither arrived, she recanted, her group dissolved, and efforts to proselytize ceased. But When Prophecy Fails (1956), the now-canonical account of the event, claimed the opposite: that the group doubled down on its beliefs and began recruiting—evidence, the authors argued, of a new psychological mechanism, cognitive dissonance. Drawing on newly unsealed archival material, this article demonstrates that the book's central claims are false, and that the authors knew they were false. The documents reveal that the group actively proselytize well before the prophecy failed and quickly abandoned their beliefs afterward. They also expose serious ethical violations by the researchers, including fabricated psychic messages, covert manipulation, and interference in a child welfare investigation. One coauthor, Henry Riecken, posed as a spiritual authority and later admitted he had “precipitated” the climactic events of the study."
"Followers from around the world travel to Mount Carmel to hear the preaching of David Koresh, a local Texas working-class kid turned prophet of God and leader of the religious group The Branch Davidians. But as Koresh's teachings become more and more apocalyptic, members of the group question his motives, in this full documentary, 'Waco: Madman or Messiah.'"
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