JUNEAU, Wis. (Court TV) — A Wisconsin jury saw a defendant deny any knowledge of his missing wife’s location on police bodycam as he told a deputy that “she’s done this before.”
Zachariah Rasch is seen on bodycam shown to the jury. (Court TV)
Zachariah Rasch, 44, is charged with killing his wife, Crystal Rasch, whose remains were found in a burn pit on the couple’s property. Crystal Rasch was last seen alive on June 11, 2024, when surveillance video showed her out with the defendant, from whom she was estranged.
After Crystal Rasch’s stepmother reported her missing on June 23, 2024, Dodge County Sheriff’s Deputy Zachary Kuckkahn drove to the couple’s house to begin their investigation into the victim’s disappearance.
Video recorded by Kuckkahn’s squad car and shown to the jury on Tuesday showed the driver’s view as he approached the Raschs’ property. Zachariah Rasch first appears from the right side of the screen and approaches the deputy; prosecutors say he had been standing near a burn pit on the property when Kuckkahn arrived.
Zachariah Rasch flatly denied having any idea where his missing wife was and told Kuckkahn that he hadn’t seen Crystal Rasch in weeks. “She’s done this before,” he said. “She won’t talk for a while, then she’ll come back.” When asked, Zachariah Rasch denied having any kind of an argument with his wife before she disappeared. “I know she’s been hanging out with a lot of people,” he said. “I’m just figuring she’s mad and letting her cool off.”
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Kukkahn then visited Crystal Rasch’s longtime friend, Robin Reals, to talk about the missing woman. Reals testified on Tuesday that she had been friends with the victim for 24 years and spoke to her daily. When Kuckkahn was speaking with her, Reals said she began receiving strange messages.
The messages, which purported to be from Crystal Rasch, were coming from a newly created account that Reals said was unfamiliar. Reals noticed that the way Crystal Rasch appeared to be talking was different — for instance, she said, her messages strangely didn’t contain any emojis, which they usually did. Reals became even more suspicious when the person who said they were Crystal Rasch refused to call or send a photo. “No matter how mad she was at me or anything, she would call me,” Reals testified. “If she was upset about something, she’d call me.”
Prosecutors say Crystal Rasch didn’t send those messages and have instead accused the defendant of sending them in an effort to distract from his wife’s disappearance.
Zachariah Rasch’s defense has conceded that the defendant lied to friends and family and disposed of Crystal Rasch’s body, but denied that he had any involvement in her death. In opening statements, his attorneys suggested that Crystal Rasch took her own life while handling her husband’s gun in his car.
