Husband Confesses To Murdering Wife, Digging Up And Raping Her Corpse

A Hawthorne man has been convicted of murdering his estranged wife, burying her in a shallow grave and then later digging up her body and raping her corpse.

Zarbab Ali, 28, was convicted by a Ventura County jury on Nov. 21 of the first-degree murder of Rachel Castillo. The jury also affirmed special circumstances that Ali murdered his wife by means of lying in wait and that Ali used a knife, according to the Ventura County District Attorney's Office.

Ali had previously plead guilty to felony sexual contact with Castillo's remains after her death.

He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Detectives from the Simi Valley Police Department and the FBI located Castillo's body in a remote part of the Antelope Valley in November 2022, according to prosecutors.

Ali was arrested the same day after leaving his parents' home in Victorville, prosecutors said.

Ali told investigators at the time that he had thought about killing his wife since they separated about nine months earlier. The couple were in the process of getting divorced when Ali killed Castillo, KTLA reported, based on a recorded confession.

Ali said that he came to Castillo's Simi Valley apartment and waited inside in the dark for her to leave her bedroom and then stabbed her, the Ventura County Star reported.

He wrapped her body in blankets in the trunk, drove to the desert and buried her in a shallow grave, the Los Angeles Times reported.

He confessed that the next day at 2 a.m. he returned to her grave to exhume and rape her corpse, the Times reported.

“Just to confirm that I am a monster, I raped her,” he said to officials. “If I didn’t commit to being a monster, then she would have died for no reason.”