JUNEAU, Wis. (Court TV) — A judge called a convicted killer “stone-faced” and said his version of events was “unfathomable” as he handed down a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Zachariah Rasch sits in court during his sentencing on July 21, 2026. (Court TV)
A jury convicted Zachariah Rasch, 44, of first-degree intentional homicide and mutilation of a corpse in the death of his wife, Crystal Rasch, 37. Crystal Rasch disappeared on June 11, 2024, after running errands with her husband. At trial, the defendant took the stand in his own defense and claimed that the victim had taken her own life.
Zachariah Rasch claimed that he “panicked” after his wife shot herself in their car and proceeded to burn her body and then pour acid over the remains to further conceal them.
“It’s unfathomable. It defies understanding,” Judge Brian Pfitzinger said at Tuesday’s sentencing hearing. “I’ve been involved with the justice system since 1988; I’ve never, ever heard testimony from this or any other witness stand in any other county, anywhere in the state that was so completely devoid of any emotion. Even if you hated her with a passion, if you truly wished her dead, one would expect some kind of natural human reaction out of it. We got none. Stone-faced, repeating the story that was outside the realm of reality.”
Crystal Rasch’s aunt, Diana Free, said that she believes her niece was killed at the family’s home based on what she saw when she went to clean out the property after the defendant’s arrest. “I washed her blood off of the walls in that living room because I know what the spatter of a slap across the face looks like when it’s on the side of a wall,” she said. “Every frickin’ wall in that house had blood, and I knew it was hers — she would never raise a hand to anybody.”
Zachariah Rasch testifies at his trial. (Court TV)
At the time of her death, Crystal Rasch had been seeking a divorce from her husband. Free said that the defendant had a history of abusing his wife. “If she ever dared to question him, or say, you know, ‘no,’ it was fists,” she said. “He threw her down the stairs. He beat her head against the stairs, and then his mother and father showed up at my house, telling me … that ‘she’s lying, he didn’t do anything.'”
Crystal Rasch had five children; her eldest child offered a brief statement at the hearing directed at the defendant. “I hope you rot in prison for the rest of your life,” she said. “I hate you because of how you treated my mom and what you did to my siblings and my mother. You’re such a bad person and you have been for your whole life. Nobody cares about you.”
Prosecutors cited the defendant’s criminal history as they asked Pfitzinger to impose a sentence of life without parole and a consecutive sentence for mutilating a body. Zachariah Rasch’s criminal record dates back to a disorderly conduct charge in 2005, prosecutors said, and includes a sentence of probation for domestic abuse in 2008 and fines for violating domestic abuse orders in 2018 and 2019.
“It really does appear that this was a situation, for reasons wholly, completely and unknown to this court, that you wanted this lady dead and you accomplished that. You killed her,” Pfitzinger said. “The depravity that is shown by the actions subsequent is probably one of the most troubling things that this Court has seen or heard in the entire time that I’ve been on the bench. The absolute depravity. I can’t imagine mutilating somebody, burning them and using drain cleaner to destroy the evidence, to destroy the bones. It’s just absolutely impossible for this Court to understand.”
Pfitzinger sentenced Zachariah Rasch to life without the possibility of parole for homicide and six years of confinement for mutilation of a body, with the sentences running consecutively.
