Simi Valley Man Found Guilty of Murdering Wife Rachel Castillo and Assaulting Her Remains amid divorce
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Rachel Castillo was just 25 years old when she went missing on November 10, 2022. At the time, she was living with her sister, Emily, in an apartment in a complex on the 300 block of Country Club Drive in Simi Valley, California.
A devoted mother of two young boys, Rachel worked at Interface Children & Family Services, a non-profit organization, while studying in Pepperdine University’s graduate program. She was working toward a master’s degree with the goal of eventually becoming a family and marriage therapist. She was also going through a divorce from her husband, Zarbab “Bobby” Ali, 28.
On the morning of November 10, 2022, at approximately 8:30 a.m., Ali picked up their sons, then ages 5 and 2, as part of their shared custody agreement. He claimed he left Castillo’s place about 30 minutes later and said he arrived at his parents’ home in Victorville around 11:30 a.m. That same day, he posted on social media asking “anyone who knows anything to report it to the police.”
Later that day, Rachel’s sister Emily returned home to a horrific scene. There was blood in multiple areas of the apartment, and signs that a violent struggle had taken place. Rachel was nowhere to be found. Her keys, car, and cell phone had all been left behind.
"It's kind of hard to tell where it started, but there's blood in multiple places," Emily later told CBS News.
Sr. Officer Casey Nicholson added: "We have a lot of blood in the house and we're talking about more than a nosebleed here."
Simi Valley Police launched a large-scale search. Three days later, on November 13, 2022, Rachel’s remains were discovered in a remote area near Littlerock in the Antelope Valley. That same day, Zarbab Ali was identified as the main suspect and charged with murder.
His bail was set at $510,000.
Rachel’s mother, Robyn Castillo, later said:
"For him to do this and play along that he was upset and worried, it just hurts my heart. I let him into my family. I loved him like a son."
Before the trial in November 2025, Ali confessed to investigators that after killing Rachel and burying her, he returned to the grave site, dug up her remains, and made sexual contact with them. He pled guilty to the felony crime of sexual contact with a victim’s remains after death.
In a taped interview with police, Ali said: “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.”
Phone location data placed him both at the murder scene and the burial site, and forensic evidence was found in his trunk as well as on and inside Rachel’s body. A large amount of evidence corroborated his own admissions.
On November 21, 2025, after just three hours of deliberation, a jury convicted Ali of first-degree murder.
According to Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko:
The jury also found true the special circumstance that the murder was committed by means of lying in wait and that Ali used a knife.
The jury did not find murder for financial gain to be true.
Ali is scheduled for sentencing on January 12, 2026, and is possibly facing a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.
While on the witness stand, Ali described thinking about killing Rachel for nine months before he acted. He said that after dropping off the kids at his parents’ house, he returned to Rachel’s apartment and waited outside with a knife.
He sat in his car watching for the bathroom light to turn on before entering through the unlocked door.
He described violently stabbing her to death in the dark hallway, rolling her up in a carpet and placing her body in the open trunk of his car, and driving to Antelope Valley to bury her. Media outlets report that he admitted to returning the next day, digging up her remains, sexually assaulting them, and reburying her.
When asked why he murdered his estranged wife, Ali denied it was for financial gain, and claimed it was because of her alleged infidelity.
He openly admitted: “I was a monster.” “This is the only way I could escape,” Ali said. “I wanted her dead. … I was angry that she just wouldn’t let me move on.”