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.
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…