Man found guilty of killing Utah wife in Alaska jury trial

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A man on trial for killing his Utah wife while they were both stationed in Alaska with the U.S. Army was found guilty of her murder on Thursday.

Zarrius Hidabrand, 23, was accused of shooting and killing his wife, 21-year-old Saria Hildabrand, the night after his 21st birthday and then hiding her body in a nearby storm drain in August 2023. The man took to the witness stand on Monday and admitted he has no memory of what happened that night and does not know if he is the one who fired the gun.

He said he was testifying for himself, not the jury.

“Regardless of the outcome of the trial, I needed to tell the truth, I needed to get the weight off of three years of a lie,” he said.

When asked during cross examination how he knows he didn’t pull the trigger, he responded “I don’t,” and when asked if he wanted the jury to believe his wife fired the gun, Zarrius Hildabrand said “it’s not up to me what the jury believes.”

The 12-person jury found him not guilty of murder in the first degree, but guilty of the lesser offense of murder in the second degree. He was also found guilty of a second count of murder in the second degree and two counts of tampering with physical evidence.

‘You cover up a crime’

The prosecutor, Brittany Dunlop, argued in her closing arguments and told jurors that it was not an accident or suicide, but murder.

“He shot her in the head and then callously disposed of her body down a storm drain. He perpetuated a lie about her being missing and he has lied to every single person that he talked to about Saria’s death, and he lied to you yesterday. … Selective amnesia is a coward’s way out of a hard truth. He acted impulsively and drunkenly, no doubt — but he did act intentionally,” the attorney said.

She claimed he was trying to “plant a story” early in the morning the day after her death, scoping out where he could hide the body.

“You don’t cover up an accident, you cover up a crime,” Dunlop said.

Dunlop said Saria Hildabrand was shot from about 6 inches away, in a position that would be hard to pull the trigger if you were holding the gun yourself, citing testimony from officers and a medical examiner that her injury did not resemble the typical suicide case.

“The defendant’s story is not reasonable … it’s what he wants to tell himself because it makes him feel better,” she said. “Being black-out drunk does not absolve him of liability.”

‘Disgusted’

Although he said he did not remember what happened that night after returning home after celebrating his 21st birthday, Zarrius Hildabrand testified about his actions after his wife’s death. He said he ran to the store for supplies multiple times, cleaned up their home, continued drinking and put his wife’s body into a trash can to move it to a storm drain where he dumped her body and blankets and pillows, which he said he initially planned to burn.

He didn’t ask for help because he didn’t think anyone could help him, he said.

Zarrius Hildabrand said about once or twice a year he would drink to the point that he didn’t remember what had happened and said it was his “routine” to go to his phone to check to see what had happened.

He admitted that he was involved in an affair, and said when he woke up he saw Snapchat messages had been screenshotted and sent from his phone to his wife’s phone. He was going to their bedroom to ask about it when he “realized that she was no longer alive.”

Zarrius Hildabrand said he didn’t do CPR, because he felt for a pulse and did not feel it.

“I just was confused, this was where the fear started to set in, and I was hurt. And, I basically didn’t know what I was, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he testified.

He said he was afraid of “letting everyone that I loved down,” and thought that others would assume the worst and that he was going to lose his family and “go to jail for something that I had no recollection of.”

At multiple points, he said he felt shame, anger, disrespect and self-hatred.

“I just felt so hollow and empty and just disgusted and just hating what I was doing and hating myself for doing it,” Zarrius Hildabrand testified.

He said he told lies when asked because he wanted to follow the plan he had already committed to. Helping in a search for her felt “incredibly dishonest and disrespectful.”

In texts to his dad the day after his birthday, he said that he might have had “a little too much fun.” His dad responded that it was OK as long as no one got hurt or went to jail and Zarrius Hildabrand said “well neither of those things happened.”

Zarrius Hildabrand showed little emotion during his own testimony, but he did wipe his eyes while his mother, who adopted him and his younger brother when he was 6, was on the stand testifying about his family relationships.

His mother, Paula Hildabrand, said in the jail phone calls she has with her son he has never talked about missing or loving Saria Hildabrand.

‘Reasonable doubt’

Zarrius Hildabrand’s attorney, Lacey Brewster, said there are three plausible manners of death, and it’s reasonable to believe Saria Hildabrand died by accident or suicide — and because there are other reasonable explanations she asked the jury to find him not guilty of murder.

She said there is not evidence Zarrius Hildabrand is violent, and the jury can consider that lack of evidence as well. She said prosecutors and investigators were biased by his actions, but there is not a reasonable response to the unreasonable situation of waking up and finding your wife dead.

“This case is about reasonable doubt, because this could be an accident. Reasonable doubt is not based on what normal people do, reasonable doubt is based on reason and common sense. It is based on the absence of evidence,” she said.

Brewster encouraged the jury to not get distracted from that doubt by the emotion in the case, admitting that her client made mistakes.