Alaska trial begins for man accused of killing 21-year-old Utah wife
by Emily Ashcraft ksl · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- The trial of Zarrius Hildabrand, accused of killing his Utah wife, began on Wednesday and the victim's mother testified.
- Prosecutors allege he shot Saria Hildabrand on Aug. 6, 2023, and hid her body in a storm drain before lying to police.
- His attorney claimed her death was a tragic, self-inflicted accident, and he acted out of fear after discovering her dead.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Meredith Barney was teary as she testified about her relationship with her daughter at an Alaska jury trial for her daughter's husband, who is accused of killing her and placing her body in a storm drain.
"Saria and I were really close; she was really close with our whole family … I had her when I was really young, and so she had a really special place in my family," she said, talking about Saria Hildabrand's grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings.
The jury trial began on Wednesday and is scheduled to last through the end of June. Zarrius Hildabrand, 23, is charged with murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree and two counts of tampering with physical evidence.
Saria Hidabrand married Zarrius Hildabrand in Utah about eight months before her death. They moved to Alaska to follow their dreams in the military after meeting in basic training. Barney said her daughter wanted to be a combat medic and moving to Alaska meant she didn't have to wait to get into the program. She said her daughter enjoyed Alaska and was active and social there.
Barney had plans to go to Alaska for a visit with her daughter weeks after she died. When she heard from Zarrius Hildabrand that her daughter was missing, she immediately flew to Alaska, met with police and organized a search party.
In her testimony, she said Zarrius Hildabrand was acting "weird," "uncomfortable," and was "very paranoid and very rigid," giving excuses for not helping find his wife.
While searching for her daughter, Barney said Zarrius Hildabrand seemed to want to stay with her and her sister and they took note of where he did not want them to go, planning to go back to those places later.
No explanations
During opening statements, prosecutor Kaila Hurley highlighted multiple interactions between Zarrius Hildabrand and police before his wife's body was found. Although police responded when a neighbor reported hearing a gunshot in the early morning hours of Aug. 6, 2023, Hildabrand didn't report his wife missing until she had been gone for 30 hours.
"Where is she? What happened? When will we find her? Those are the questions that everyone else in Saria Hildabrand's life was asking except for the defendant Zarrius Hildabrand, as he already knew all those answers," Hurley said.
On Aug. 10, Saria Hildabrand's body was found about 100 yards from their apartment in a storm drain after a landscaping crew found a new 96-gallon trash can with red-brown staining nearby. Hurley showed the jurors photos of that trash can and the storm drain, where Saria Hildabrand's body sat for days, along with a blanket, pillow, sheet and tan military gloves.
She said the couple had returned from celebrating Zarrius Hildabrand's birthday that night in August 2023, taking an Uber home with friends. Between 2:12 a.m. and 2:24 a.m. Hurley claimed the wife found evidence her husband had been messaging other women, sending photos and offering to fly them to Alaska.
A neighbor called 911 to report hearing a gunshot shortly afterward at 2:48 a.m.
"Saria Hildabrand was shot in her head that night, just above her left temple, and that ended her life," the attorney said.
The next morning, she said he sent a text from Saria Hildabrand's phone, telling her boss she wouldn't make it to work, but Zarrius Hildabrand told officers she had left to walk to work before that text was sent. When questioned why the phone was in his possession but she had sent a text after leaving home, he responded, "I don't have an explanation for that," according to Hurley.
When asked, "Where do you think we're going to find Saria?" the prosecutor said the husband hesitated before saying, "I think she'll be within a 2-3 mile radius of here."
She also said he told detectives they could not look under his bed, blaming embarrassing stuff, when they asked if she was there he said "no she's not, she wouldn't fit." Later, officers would find the mattress was soaked with blood, the prosecutor told jurors.
In a letter addressed to his wife, officers found, Zarrius Hildabrand said he hopes she is found alive and that he "loved" her. Hurley said he wrote: "For the people working the case, I'm sorry the info I gave you wasn't the best."
An accident?
In her opening statements, Zarrius Hildabrand's attorney, Lacey Brewster, admitted her client made mistakes, but said he had found his wife dead from a "tragic, self-inflicted accident" and was afraid. She said he did not cause his wife's death, but instead woke up on Aug. 6, 2023, to find his wife dead.
She said the case is about "a young woman who lost her life to an accident, and the story of a scared young man."
Brewster explained that he had been drinking heavily the night before, his 21st birthday, so much that he was denied entrance to one bar, and his memory is not clear about what happened that evening — but he remembers finding his wife dead.
"He's afraid. What am I going to do? What are people going to say about me? Zarrius is scared, and when he's scared, he does some stupid things and he does some offensive things. He does some things he regrets," she said. "Fear is the motivation behind the reason that Zarrius did what he did."
The attorney said the gun was fired from within a foot of Saria Hildabrand's head, to support that she could have fired the gun herself.
"While you will not like what you hear … while you will see graphic pictures and you will likely be angry at what Mr. Hildabrand did after he discovered his wife deceased, the evidence simply will not show that Zarrius pulled the trigger; that will not be shown," Brewster said.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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Emily Ashcraft
Emily Ashcraft is a reporter for KSL. She covers issues in state courts, health and religion. In her spare time, Emily enjoys crafting, cycling and raising chickens.