The Phantom Trail: A Border Agent’s Murder and the Web of Death That Spans a Nation
By Zane Reddick
Good evening, friends of the unknown. Tonight, we unravel a story that stretches from the frozen forests of Vermont to the sunbaked streets of California—a tale of shadowy connections, eerie synchronicities, and a string of murders that may be more than mere coincidence. The mainstream press will tell you it’s a crime spree, but here, we know better. Patterns emerge, and the deeper you look, the stranger it gets.
Our journey begins in the early hours of January 20, along a lonely stretch of road just twenty miles south of the U.S.-Canada border. Swanton Sector Border Patrol Agent David Maland, a 44-year-old veteran of the force, pulled over a Prius—just a routine stop, or so it seemed. Moments later, gunfire erupted, and Maland lay mortally wounded. One of the occupants, a German national named Felix Bauckholt, was shot dead on the scene. The other, a 21-year-old woman from Washington state named Teresa Youngblut, survived the firefight and was rushed to the hospital. The motive? Unknown. The connections? Disturbing.
Authorities are now linking Youngblut to not just this shooting, but to multiple homicides across the country. A double murder in Pennsylvania. A brutal stabbing in California. An expanding web of death, with eerie coincidences binding them together.
Let’s rewind to November 2024. Youngblut files for a marriage license with a man named Maximilian Snyder, a 22-year-old data scientist. That name will resurface soon enough. But first, consider what happened just days before Maland’s murder. On January 17, an 82-year-old landlord named Curtis Lind was found stabbed to death in Vallejo, California. A criminal complaint suggests Lind was killed to silence him—to prevent his testimony in an upcoming trial.
This trial, as it turns out, was tied to a bizarre case from 2022, in which Lind had survived an attack involving a sword. He had shot one of his attackers dead in self-defense—Emma Borhanian, 31. The remaining assailants, Suri Dao and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham, were charged with murder and were set to face justice on February 19. But now, the key witness—Lind—is dead.
And what of Maximilian Snyder, Youngblut’s fiancé? He was arrested and charged with Lind’s murder just days later. Could it be that this is all coincidence? Or is there something far deeper—a hidden hand orchestrating these events?
Youngblut’s trail doesn’t end there. She may also be tied to the deaths of Richard and Rita Zajko, a married couple in Pennsylvania found dead in their home in early 2023. Investigators revealed in court that someone connected to the Zajko murders allegedly purchased the weapons used in the Vermont border agent killing. A web of death, linked by shadowy transactions and cryptic relationships.
And then, there’s the strangest part of all—the artifacts recovered from the scene of the Vermont shooting. The evidence list reads like a page out of a covert ops thriller: two pistols, two cell phones wrapped in aluminum foil, a ballistic helmet, night vision goggles, a tactical belt, respirators, bullets, radios, electronic devices, travel documents—and a journal. A journal filled with “cipher text” and scattered references to LSD trips. Was this merely the ramblings of a disillusioned mind, or was something more sinister encoded within those pages?
Before the shooting, Bauckholt and Youngblut had checked into a Vermont hotel, dressed all in black. A witness recalled seeing Youngblut’s gun—casually exposed. Their excuse for being in Vermont? They claimed they were looking for property. They checked out the day before the shooting and were last seen in a Walmart, where Bauckholt bought aluminum foil and methodically wrapped items in it—an old counter-surveillance trick.
Friends, this is where the story leaves the realm of simple crime and ventures into something more unsettling. Two young people, seemingly ordinary, suddenly enmeshed in a transcontinental killing spree. A murdered landlord silenced before he could testify. A border agent gunned down under mysterious circumstances. Cryptic journals, coded messages, and deep, unresolved connections.
Was this the work of lone-wolf killers, or did they belong to something larger, something hidden from public view?
And if so… who—or what—is pulling the strings?
The answers may not be in the official reports. But you and I both know that the truth is often far stranger than fiction.
Stay vigilant. And keep watching the skies.
