Inset: Zarrius Hildabrand and Saria Hildabrand (KSTU). Background: Zarrius Hildabrand being sentenced for shooting his Alaska National Guard combat medic wife Saria Hildabrand to death in Anchorage (KTUU).
A former U.S. Army soldier from Alaska is headed to prison for decades after gunning down his combat medic wife and stuffing her body in a storm drain.
Zarrius Hildabrand, 24, was sentenced to 59 years in prison on Friday after being convicted in June on charges of second-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence for the death of his wife, Saria Hildabrand, 21, who was found in a storm drain near their Anchorage apartment in August 2023. He was acquitted of a first-degree murder charge.
“The event occurred in the early morning hours of Aug. 6, 2023 after Hildabrand went out with his wife, Saria Hildabrand, and friends on his 21st birthday,” prosecutors said in a press release announcing Zarrius Hildabrand’s conviction in June 2026. “They visited several establishments in Anchorage, and the couple returned home. Saria Hildabrand found messages on the defendant’s phone that indicated he had been cheating on her.”
Both Zarrius and Saria Hildabrand were on active duty with the U.S. Army at the time of her death.
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Evidence presented during Zarrius Hildabrand’s trial showed that he shot his wife once in the head with a 9 mm handgun and then “cleaned up the scene at their apartment,” according to the Anchorage District Attorney’s Office and Alaska Department of Law.
“[Zarrius Hildabrand] purchased a 96-gallon rolling trash can that he used to transport Saria’s body to a nearby park, where he dumped her into a storm drain,” prosecutors said. “He reported her missing and helped her family search for her.”
A criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime said the Hildabrands were with friends celebrating Zarrius’ birthday at a downtown bar on Aug. 5 before the slaying occurred. Zarrius Hildabrand allegedly told police they got home at about 2 a.m. the following day and that when they woke up, his wife needed to go to work but they both were hungover. Neither of them felt good enough to drive, so she decided to walk to work, the complaint said.
Zarrius Hildabrand said Saria Hildabrand left between 9 and 10 a.m. to go to her place of work, Bread and Brew, about a mile from their apartment. He claimed his wife forgot to take her phone but took her purse and wallet before she went missing later in the day.
“Zarrius said that he had been searching for Saria,” the complaint alleged. “Zarrius said that he had been to every friend’s house, called Saria’s parents, contacted all the hospitals, and jail.”
According to Zarrius Hildabrand, he drove around the neighborhood before he decided to contact the police — 36 hours after seeing his wife leave, per the complaint. Up to 70 volunteers searched the route she walked to work to try to find her.
Police interviewed her co-workers, who told them they got a text from Saria Hildabrand’s phone number on Sunday at 10:45 a.m., about 45 minutes after her husband reported she left the house. The text said she was calling out of work.
When investigators interviewed Zarrius Hildabrand on Aug. 8 at his apartment, police saw two pistols on the kitchen table. He repeated his story about the night out, saying they went to Dave & Buster’s early in the evening, returned home, then “Ubered” to a bar downtown before going home at about 2 a.m. the following morning, the complaint said.
Zarrius Hildabrand initially said he stayed home all day on Sunday and “vegetated” but later changed his story, saying he ran some errands. He told detectives he didn’t worry about his wife until about 10 p.m., when he went out and drove around the neighborhood looking for her. He waited until Monday evening to make the missing person report thinking he might find his wife and “find it was a misunderstanding,” the complaint said.
A detective noticed that the only bed didn’t have a sheet and was only covered by a mattress pad. A set of new sheets still in the package was on the kitchen table, sheets he told investigators his wife had bought a week earlier. He said there was a sheet on the bed. He lifted the mattress pad slightly and showed police a fitted sheet under the pad.
When police asked him if they could lift the mattress to see if his wife was under there, he said they couldn’t because there were “embarrassing” items underneath.
“He finally told us it was stuff used for sex,” the complaint said. “We asked him if he would move those items while we looked away, and again he said we couldn’t look under the bed.”
When asked about the text sent from her phone after she left, even though the phone was still in the house, he denied sending the text and couldn’t explain how that happened, according to the complaint.
Investigators later learned that on Aug. 6, he made some purchases: a jar of marinara sauce, a set of sheets — the same brand found on the table — a mattress cover, hydrogen peroxide and an empty spray bottle.
Looking into any possible disturbances, police discovered that a witness reported hearing a gunshot at about 2:45 a.m. on Sunday, but when police responded, they found nothing suspicious.
Later, investigators pieced together clues from a search warrant at the apartment. When investigators lifted the mattress, they described it as “saturated by human blood.”
“There was so much blood on the mattress that the blood soaked through onto the carpet and into the wood frame,” the complaint said.
Using a spray that makes blood usually invisible to the naked eye visible, investigators found blood all over the bathtub and some of the floors, “most likely after ‘cleanup’ attempts were made,” the document said.
Police recovered two handguns, including one that was fully loaded and another missing a bullet from the magazine.
Authorities said Zarrius Hildabrand bought a 96-gallon garbage can with wheels from Lowe’s. Crime scene investigators found a black and red mop bucket in his apartment, the same mop bucket and mop sold at Lowe’s in the same aisle as the trash can, according to the complaint.
Police eventually found the trash can with what appeared to be blood inside. Using a drone, police followed a trail from where the trash can was found and discovered the victim’s remains after spotting what appeared to be a pillow and something they described as light-colored in a 4-to-5-foot storm drain. She appeared to have a gunshot wound to her left temple.
Jason Kandel contributed to this report.
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