A Hawthorne man has been found guilty of first-degree murder after confessing to stabbing his estranged wife to death and desecrating her remains, according to the Ventura County district attorney.
In November 2022, 25-year-old social worker Rachel Castillo was watching her two young sons at her Simi Valley apartment when her husband, Zarbab Ali, picked them up, left them with his parents, and returned with a knife and the intent to kill, prosecutors said.
After only three hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Ali on the first-degree murder charge Friday along with use of a deadly weapon and murder by means of lying in wait, which means a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. His sentencing date is set for Jan. 12, 2026.
Shortly after Simi Valley police discovered Castillo’s body in a remote part of the Antelope Valley, Ali, now 28, told investigators that he had thought about killing her since their separation nine months earlier. Castillo was in the process of divorcing Ali at the time of her murder.
In a recorded confession reported by KTLA, Ali described to detectives how, after returning from dropping off their 2- and 5-year-old sons, he left his trunk open and approached Castillo’s door, which he found unlocked.
“Everything in my body was telling me not to do it,” he said in the recording.
Yet, Ali continued inside and turned out the apartment lights. He later confessed to waiting in the dark for Castillo to leave her bedroom.
“I thought something in my life would change,” Ali told detectives of his motivation according to the Ventura County Star. “I kind of blamed her for all my problems.”
His accounts of her murder have differed, officials say. In early taped confessions, Ali said that he stabbed Castillo three times, a slaying that “lasted a minute.”
But in a courtroom this month, the Star reported, Ali revealed he had lied about the quick death to lessen the impact on her family.
“In reality, she put up a fight,” Ali reportedly said. “I was a brute. I pushed her down, and it was gory beyond belief.”
With Castillo’s dead body wrapped in blankets in his trunk, Ali drove to Antelope Valley in a panic, prosecutors say. He buried her in a shallow grave, but the carnage did not end there.
Ali confessed that, at 2 a.m. the next day, he returned to Castillo’s desert grave to exhume and rape her corpse.
“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.”
Castillo’s sister, who lived in the apartment with her, called authorities after returning home to find blood and that Castillo was missing. Ali was arrested days later.
Court records show Ali initially pled not guilty to first degree murder in the case before pleading guilty.
“He called himself a monster at the stand, and that’s exactly what he is,” Chris Castillo, Rebecca’s father, said of Ali to the Star.
Castillo was a Simi Valley native who worked for a local nonprofit organization helping families who were victims of domestic violence, Dist. Atty. Erik Nasarenko said at a 2022 news conference.
She was studying for a master’s degree in clinical psychology with dreams of becoming a marriage and family therapist.
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