Zarrius Hildabrand

Introduction

Zarrius Hildabrand, 24, a former U.S. Army soldier who served at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska with the 11th Airborne Division, was sentenced on Friday, October 23, 2026, to 59 years to serve in prison for murdering his wife, Saria Barney Hildabrand, 21, in Anchorage. An Anchorage jury convicted him in June 2026 of second-degree murder and two counts of tampering with physical evidence after a trial in which he testified he had no memory of the night she died; he was acquitted of first-degree murder. Judge Peter Ramgren imposed a composite sentence of 80 years with 20 years suspended.

Background Information

The Hildabrands were both active-duty soldiers and had been married about seven months when Saria was killed. Saria, formerly Saria Barney of Mt. Pleasant in Sanpete County, Utah, was a Utah native training to become a combat medic. On the night of August 5, 2023, the couple went out with friends to celebrate Zarrius’s 21st birthday, stopping at a Dave & Buster’s before heading toward a downtown nightclub; the New York Post reported a bouncer refused Hildabrand entry because he appeared drunk, and the group split up. Prosecutors said phone records showed Saria had found messages indicating he was cheating on her and confronted him at their Anchorage apartment.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. An Anchorage jury convicted Hildabrand of second-degree murder and two counts of tampering with physical evidence in June 2026. On October 23, 2026, Judge Peter Ramgren sentenced him to 59 years to serve in prison for killing Saria and covering up her death.

Saria died from a single gunshot to the head in the early hours of August 6, 2023; the state medical examiner’s office described a “penetrating, indeterminate range gunshot wound,” and investigators found the couple’s mattress saturated with blood that had soaked through to the carpet and bed frame. A witness reported hearing a gunshot around 2:45 a.m. that Sunday, and a criminal complaint detailed Hildabrand’s purchases that day: a set of sheets matching those on the table, a mattress cover, hydrogen peroxide, an empty spray bottle — and a 96-gallon wheeled trash can from Lowe’s, bought, he later admitted on the stand, to move his wife’s body.

The Alaska Department of Law said Hildabrand wheeled the body to a nearby park and dumped it into a storm drain, pouring gasoline over it, then bought cleaning supplies and scrubbed the apartment. About eight hours after the killing, he used Saria’s phone to text her coworkers at the Bread and Brew cafe that she was calling out of work; he took a late-night drive and only reported her missing roughly 30 hours after she was killed, then joined the search effort alongside up to 70 volunteers, posted missing-person appeals to Facebook, and even accompanied her family, soldiers, and police looking for her — all while knowing she was dead. Her remains were found in the storm drain on August 10, 2023, five days after the shooting, after police followed a trail from the discarded trash can with a drone.

At an August 8, 2023 interview, detectives found two pistols on his kitchen table and noted his story shifted — he first said he “vegetated” at home all day, then said he ran errands, denied sending the text from her phone, and refused to let officers look under his bed. His defense at trial suggested Saria had died by suicide, and Hildabrand testified he woke with “no recollection” of the night; pressed on cross-examination about how he knew he had not pulled the trigger, he answered, “I don’t.” He did admit from the stand that “the plan was to hide the body of my wife and then clean up the blood off the mattress and the surrounding area.” The jury convicted him the following June.

Public Reaction and Consequences

Judge Ramgren said that while he respected the jury’s decision not to convict on first-degree murder, he found for sentencing purposes that Hildabrand acted intentionally, calling his conduct “abhorrent” and noting an “apparent lack of remorse” through the police interviews, the search for Saria, and his own trial testimony — the killer, the judge said, “never seemed to show concern for anyone other than himself.” Prosecutor Brittany Dunlop told the court Hildabrand had “callously disposed” of his wife’s body and “perpetuated a lie about her being missing.” Saria’s relatives described a loving, caring, and beautiful daughter and sister who was “a good student in training to become a combat medic”; her mother, Meredith Barney, recounted how he posted desperate Facebook appeals and walked for hours in the search. Hildabrand offered no statement of his own at sentencing.

Current Status

Hildabrand, 24, is serving a composite sentence of 80 years with 20 suspended — 55 years to serve for second-degree murder plus consecutive two-year terms on each tampering count, for 59 years of active time, with an additional 25 years suspended. He will not be eligible for parole until he has served at least two-thirds of the active sentence. The case was prosecuted by Anchorage District Attorney Brittany Dunlop and Assistant District Attorney Kaila Hurley, with support from paralegal Tanna Severson, after an investigation by the Anchorage Police Department’s Homicide Unit with the cooperation of the Army Criminal Investigation Division. Coverage has described him as a former soldier following the conviction.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A soldier’s career ended in a place no promotion list names: the Alaska Department of Law categorized the case as a domestic-violence murder, and Hildabrand will spend most of the rest of his life in prison for killing the fellow soldier he had married seven months earlier. Saria Barney Hildabrand was 21, a Utah native training as a combat medic, when her husband shot her and staged the search for her own disappearance; the deception consumed a five-day, seventy-volunteer hunt before a drone found her in a storm drain near the apartment they shared. The sentence — 59 years to serve before any parole consideration — makes his release a question for his late sixties at the earliest.

Sources

NY Post, “US Army soldier Zarrius Hildabrand sentenced to 59 years in prison for murdering wife” — source
State of Alaska Department of Law (press release via PressReleasePoint), “Zarrius Hildabrand Sentenced to 59 years to Serve for the Domestic Violence Murder of his Wife, Saria Hildabrand” — source
Law&Crime, “Army soldier sentenced for wife storm drain slaying” — source
People, “Former Soldier Sentenced to 59 Years After Killing Wife and Hiding Her Body in Storm Drain” — source
ABC4 Utah, “Ex-soldier sentenced to prison for murdering Utah wife, hiding her body in storm drain” — source
KSL.com, “Man sentenced to 59 years for murder of his Utah wife in Alaska” — source