[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
A California man who killed his wife has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the case — and now, he faces a mandatory life sentence when he returns to court at the start of 2026.
You might recall the awful case of Rachel Castillo. We reported on her death back in November of 2022. Well, her estranged husband Zarbab Ali was the person cops suspected of killing her at the time. And now, after his trial and subsequent guilty conviction this month in a Ventura County courthouse, we have heard the terrible story of how it all went down.
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During Ali’s trial last week, prosecutors played a tape of a confession the 28-year-old man made to investigators after he was first arrested following the discovery of Castillo’s body three years ago. Per the Ventura County Star, which was in court at Ali’s trial, the jurors heard Ali say this to police after his arrest:
“I found Rachel, she was alone and I killed her.”
When asked why, he responded:
“There was no reason.”
But that wasn’t true.
See, he went on to detail Castillo’s final day alive in November of 2022. It started when he picked up their two young boys from her apartment and took them to his parents’ house. When he got back, he noticed that Castillo’s door was unlocked. He was going to go in and murder her right then, he told cops, but initially backed off after seeing an older couple walk by. He told detectives:
“I really didn’t want to do it. Everything in my body was telling me not to do it.”
So, he sat in his car for ten minutes before ultimately deciding to return to the apartment. There, he said that he turned off the lights in the living room and waited for Castillo to come out of the bedroom. Once she did, he told cops that he pushed her to the ground and stabbed her three times with a knife he’d taken from the kitchen.
Castillo died in less than a minute, he told cops. At that point, he wrapped the body in a blanket and attempted to clean up the blood before driving her corpse out to a remote area of Southern California’s Antelope Valley. When he got to a place that he figured nobody would find, he dug a shallow grave and buried the body.
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But things get way, way, WAY worse from there.
Ali said he first went back to his parents’ house after that. But well after midnight, he returned to the grave, dug up the body, and… raped Castillo’s corpse. Seriously.
Ali told investigators in his taped confession:
“Just to confirm that I am a monster, I raped her. If I didn’t commit to being a monster, then she would have died for no reason.”
What. The. F**k.
Also in the interview, Ali said he had been unhappy with their divorce and estrangement, his living situation and apartment, and their child custody agreement and child support payments. So, he killed her. His rationale was:
“I thought something in my life would change. I kind of blamed her for all my problems.”
Wild…
So, that was his taped confession from after the murder. But Ali took the stand last week, too.
During his testimony, he said his confession was not coerced and that he really did kill Castillo. It all started after he became convinced a while back that she was having an affair with a childhood friend. That was made worse after she told him that she wanted a divorce because she had fallen in love with someone else.
He said on the stand:
“She was my entire world at this point, and it all just crashed around me.”
Ali said on the stand that he and Castillo lived together for a while, even though she started dating other men. He eventually moved out, though he said on the stand that he wanted his wife to suffer for the pain she’d caused him, per the Star.
He also testified that he asked his father for advice about what to do. His father, in turn, said that he should look out for himself. But somehow, Ali interpreted that to mean he should eliminate Castillo altogether. Which, uh, WTF?!
Per the New York Post, he said on the stand:
“This is the only way I could escape. I wanted her dead. I was angry that she just wouldn’t let me move on.”
Sorry, what part of any that was her not letting you move on again??
FWIW, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office said Castillo’s divorce from Ali was nearly complete when she was killed, so Ali’s testimony would seem to be flat-out wrong in that regard.
Ali also told the jury that he did lie at one specific point in his taped confession with cops: that Castillo didn’t die fast. On the stand, he said:
“In reality, she put up a fight. I was a brute. I pushed her down, and it was gory beyond belief.”
It took the jury three hours to find Ali guilty of first degree murder, use of a deadly weapon, and murder by means of lying in wait.
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The jury found him not guilty of murder for financial gain, which had been a separate charge he was facing. But on the stand, Ali said he was actually financially better off after their separation, and insisted that child support was not a factor in the killing.
Oh, and BTW, Ali pleaded guilty to felony sexual contact with human remains in a separate court appearance prior to his trial for raping Castillo’s corpse after she was killed.
Like we said up top, he now faces a mandatory life sentence in prison when he next returns to court in January. What a horrible, horrible story…
For resources on mental health, visit https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help.
For more information on violence against women, go to https://www.justice.gov/ovw/resources-for-survivors
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Consider calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233, or text START to 88788, or go to https://www.thehotline.org/.
[Image via Ventura County Sheriff’s Office/Robyn Castillo]
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