Title : Grad student, 29, found GUILTY of murdering Chinese scholar as her family seeks a death penalty
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Grad student, 29, found GUILTY of murdering Chinese scholar as her family seeks a death penalty
Illinois grad student, 29, found GUILTY of kidnapping, raping and murdering Chinese scholar as her family seeks a death penalty
- Brendt Christensen, 29, was found guilty Monday of kidnap, rape and murder
- The federal court in Peoria heard that the former University of Illinois doctoral student beat Yingying Zhang to death with a baseball bat and decapitated her
- The Chinese scholar's family will request the death penalty for Christensen
- Jurors are still to decide in the penalty phase whether he should be put to death
- His lawyers admitted to the murder in hopes of sparing him the death sentence
- Defense lawyers have disputed some of the details about how and why he did it
- Zhang's body has never been found since her disappearance on June 9, 2017
- Zhang was 26 when Christensen posed as a police officer to lure her into his car
- Prosecutors at trial said Christensen had been fantasizing about killing someone
Brendt Christensen, seen in his mugshot, was convicted Monday of kidnapping, raping and murdering a Chinese student
The family of a Chinese scholar is seeking the death penalty for the former University of Illinois doctoral student convicted on Monday of kidnapping, raping and murdering her.
The jury found Brendt Christensen, 29, guilty after hearing that he beat 26-year-old Yingying Zhang to death with a baseball bat and decapitated her in June 2017.
Jurors convicted Christensen in the U.S. District Court in Peoria, Illinois, on Monday afternoon after less than 90 minutes of deliberations.
Christensen looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the guilty verdict was announced against him.
In a media statement, Zhang's father called the verdict a 'step towards justice'.
'We have missed Yingying tremendously in the past two years,' said the statement, translated to English.
'As of today, we still could not imagine how we will live the rest of our lives without her. There is no language that can describe our pain and suffering.'
Zhidong Wang, a lawyer for Zhang's family, said they will ask the federal jury to recommend that Christensen be put to death.
Lifeng Ye, the mother of murdered University of Illinois scholar Yingying Zhang, cries out in grief as her husband Ronggao Zhang, left, addresses the media after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her murder Monday outside the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois
Prosecutors said Christensen (left), a former University of Illinois doctoral student, beat Yingying Zhang (right) to death with a baseball bat and decapitated her after abducting her at a bus stop in June 2017
Defense attorneys have sought to spare their client a death sentence by acknowledging from the beginning of the trial that he killed the visiting scholar, but said they disagreed with prosecutors over how and why.
Elisabeth Pollock, an attorney for Christensen, said her client was 'someone who lost control... who battled these dark thoughts'.
When she added, 'We are here because the government wants to take his life,' the judge stopped her, telling jurors they were not yet in the penalty phase.
The judge said there will be a break of a week or more before the penalty phase, which could last several weeks, to determine whether he should die.
Prosecutors are expected to focus on the brutality of Christensen's actions, with the defense underlining his mental health issues.
Illinois no longer has capital punishment, but he could be sentenced to death because he was convicted in federal court.
Prosecutors at the trial said Christensen posed as a police officer to lure Zhang into his car on June 9, 2017, after deciding he would kill someone that day.
Earlier, he approached a different young woman posing as an officer, but she refused to get in the car.
The muscular Christensen forced the 5-foot-4 Zhang into his apartment in Urbana, 140 miles southwest of Chicago, where he raped and killed her.
Zhang had been on her way to sign a lease for an off-campus apartment when she went missing.
Media crowd around Zhang's family to hear an address from attorney Zhidong Wang after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her murder on Monday
This 2017 file photo provided by Xinyang Zhang shows his sister, Yingying, with their parents, Ronggao Zhang and Lifeng Ye, at a train station in Nanping, China
Zhang had only been in Illinois for two months in what was her first experience living outside China.
Her body was never found.
At trial, Christensen's former girlfriend testified that he had bragged about murdering the Chinese student and that she was his 13th victim.
Terra Bullis told the court he had confessed to the murder to her while they attended a vigil for Zhang.
She wore a wire for the FBI and the jury heard a secretly recorded audio in which Christensen described how he killed Zhang.
Christensen is seen walking hand in hand at a vigil for Zhang, at which the girlfriend wore a wire. Christensen allegedly pointed out other women who would make good victims
Zhang had been on her way to sign a lease for an off-campus apartment when she went missing. She had only been in Illinois for two months in what was her first experience living outside China
He told Bullis about choking Zhang after he bound her and brought her to his apartment, appearing to describe with admiration how she resisted.
'She was valiant,' he said.
He said he had been eager to tell someone about the murder, and that Bullis was the only one he had told. But he said he wouldn't reveal to anyone what he did with Zhang's body.
Members of Zhang's family, who traveled to Illinois from China to join the search for the missing student, were going to 'leave empty-handed,' he told his girlfriend in the recording.
Investigators haven't been able to corroborate the claim that Zhang was his 13th victim.
This surveillance image shows Zhang on the day she went missing in Urbana on June 9, 2017
In the tape, Christensen never explicitly claimed that he killed 12 other people. However, he can be heard telling his girlfriend that she isn't in danger of becoming his next victim, explaining that she is too big.
'It's about getting rid of 100 pounds versus 150 pounds,' he said. 'That's too much... to get rid of.'
Christensen's lawyers said he made the claim about being a serial killer when he was drunk and that it's not true, but the FBI did not rule it out.
Prosecutors at the trial said Christensen, who began his studies in Champaign at the university's prestigious doctoral program in physics in 2013, had been fantasizing about killing someone and becoming infamous.
He seemed to allude to the fantasy when he talked to his girlfriend about what Zhang's death meant.
'It's just my legacy,' he said.
Christensen was arrested on June 30, his birthday.
At trial, FBI Senior Forensic Examiner William O'Sullivan told the jury Christensen visited a social media site for adults with alternative sexual interests and read several posts about kidnapping and rape fantasies in the weeks leading up to the murder.
He said the defendant also watched videos about knife sharpening.
Prosecutor Eugene Miller told jurors about Christensen's claim regarding additional victims but didn't offer additional details, nor did he say if authorities believed him.
Miller said Christensen abducted a stranger who was 'an object for him to fulfill his dark desire - to kill for the sake of killing'.
Christensen became obsessed with serial killers in the months before for he kidnapped Zhang, Miller said, adding that Christensen was engrossed by the novel 'American Psycho' and was intent on slaying someone.
But his legal team disputed prosecutors' allegations of torture and premeditation, which could influence whether Christensen is sentenced to death.
Christensen's lawyers said he sought help from mental-health counselors at the school for homicidal and suicidal thoughts in the months before Zhang vanished.
They said his life was spinning out of control and that in his first few semesters as a doctoral student, Christensen was making straight As, but by late 2016 was getting Fs in all his classes.
Christensen was married at the time of the recordings, but he had a girlfriend and his wife had a boyfriend in what the prosecutor told jurors was their agreement to have 'an open marriage' where they dated others.
Zhang, the daughter of working-class parents, aspired to become a professor in crop sciences to help her family financially. Friends and family described her as caring and fun-loving.
The case is being closely followed in China and by Chinese students in the U.S.
Champaign-based University of Illinois has more than 5,000 Chinese students, among the largest enrollments in the nation.
Zhidong Wang, the lawyer representing Zhang's family, said Monday they believe other Chinese families should still send their children to study in the U.S., calling the killing an isolated incident.
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