Man Tells Police He Dug Up Wife's Body After Killing Her: 'Just to Confirm That I Am a Monster, I Raped Her'

Zarbab Ali, 28, will now face a mandatory life sentence in prison at his sentencing on January 12 after he was found guilty of first-degree murder on Friday, according to a press release from the Ventura County District Attorney's Office.

"As soon as I saw the blood, that's when I realized something wasn't right," the victim's sister told KABC after Rachel Castillo, 25, was first reported missing on November 10, 2022. She said she first called their mom to tell her to come over and then called 911.

"I was running around the house trying to see if I could find her somewhere," the sister told the news station. "I checked her bathroom, under her bed, her closet, my closet, the laundry room, my bathroom and my bedroom but she wasn't anywhere in there."

What she was able to find was her sister's keys, phone, and vehicle. Police also detailed finding "a significant amount of blood" in the residence, as well as evidence that "a struggle occurred inside," according to a probable cause affidavit reviewed by Law&Crime. It was three more days before her body was found in a remote desert area in the Antelope Valley.

On November 14, 2022, Ali was picked up and charged with her murder. In court three years later, jurors heard Ali's recorded confession to investigators, according to a courtroom report from the Ventura County Star, which came during their fourth interview, after her body had been found earlier that day.

In that recording, Ali told investigators that he would tell them the truth. "I found Rachel, she was alone and I killed her," he said in the video. When asked why, he responded that "there was no reason," but he'd thought about killing her since their separation nine months before.

He then detailed Castillo's final day, which he said started when he picked up their two young boys from her apartment and took them to his parents' house before returning. He said that he noticed Castillo's door was unlocked, with her seemingly inside, but initially backed off when an older couple saw him outside her door.

"I really didn't want to do it," he told detectives in the video. "Everything in my body was telling me not to do it." And so, he said he sat in his car for the next 10 minutes before he ultimately made a decision and reentered her apartment.

Inside, he said he turned off the lights and waited for his estranged wife to come out of her bedroom. Once she did, per the recorded statement, Ali said he pushed her to the ground, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her three times.

He said that Castillo died within a minute, after which he wrapped her body in a blanket and tried to clean up the blood before putting her into the trunk of his vehicle and driving it out to a remote area of the desert in the Antelope Valley. There, he told detectives he dug a shallow grave and buried her.

He said that he went back to his parents' house after this, but again left and returned to the site where he'd buried Castillo at around 2 a.m. the following morning. There, he said he dug up her body, saying in the video, "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," he added, saying that afterward, he again buried her body.

In the interview, Ali said that he was not jealous of his wife's relationships with other men. Instead, he said he was not happy with his own situation, including his apartment, job, custody arrangement, and child support payments. "I thought something in my life would change," he said of killing Castillo. "I kind of blamed her for all my problems."

Fully acknowledging his actions, according to the Star, Ali said that he deserved the death penalty.

On the stand in his defense on November 17, 2025, Ali asserted that the taped confession was not coerced and that he stands by his admission that he had killed Castillo. He said that their marriage went from amazing to his being convinced that she was having an affair with a childhood friend.

Ali said that Castillo confirmed his fears when she told him she wanted a divorce because she'd fallen in love with someone else. At that time, he said he was not able to control his jealous rage. "She was my entire world at this point, and it all just crashed around me," he said in court.

Ali said that he and Castillo continued to live together even as she dated first this childhood friend and then other men, with him saying she "taunted" him with details of these relationships.

This prompted him to ultimately move out. He reportedly told the jury he wanted his wife to suffer for telling him about her other trysts, turning to alcohol, drugs, and even her father for advice.

According to Ali's testimony, per the Star, her father told him to look out only for himself, which he then interpreted as meaning he needed to just eliminate Castillo altogether as she was the reason he was unable to leave and move on.

"This is the only way I could escape," he said on the stand, per the New York Post. "I wanted her dead. I was angry that she just wouldn’t let me move on." The DA's release says that Castillo's divorce from Ali was nearly complete at the time of her murder.

He told the jury that he bought the knife weeks before that final confrontation, and said that he'd lied to detectives when he said she died fast. "In reality, she put up a fight," he said in court. "I was a brute. I pushed her down, and it was gory beyond belief."

On November 21, after just three hours of deliberation, the jury found Ali guilty of first-degree murder, use of a deadly weapon, and murder by means of lying in wait. He was found not guilty of murder for financial gain after he asserted that financially he was better off after their separation, insisting that child support was not a factor in the killing.

Ahead of his trial, Ali had previously pleaded guilty to felony sexual contact with human remains.

"He called himself a monster at the stand, and that’s exactly what he is," said Castillo's father, Chris, after the verdict, according to the Star. "She didn’t even have defensive wounds on her arms because he stabbed her immediately to death, and that is so evil and egregious."