Life for Christensen
Zhang’s family asks for revealing of scholar’s remains
PEORIA — A former University of Illinois doctoral student was spared the death penalty Thursday and sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and killing a 26-yearold scholar from China. Her parents, disappointed he was not sentenced to death, publicly begged for the killer to reveal where her remains are so they can be returned home.
Jurors deliberated for eight hours over two days before announcing they were deadlocked on whether 30-year-old Brendt Christensen should be put to death for killing Yingying Zhang, automatically resulting in a sentence of life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month for abducting Zhang from a bus stop, then raping, choking and stabbing her before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her. Prosecutors called for the death penalty, which the Zhang family also supported, but a jury decision on that had to be unanimous.
Christensen, who has never revealed what he did with Zhang’s remains, lowered his head and looked back smiling at his mother when he heard that his life would be spared.
Zhang’s family said in a statement that they did not agree with the jury’s decision to sentence him to life in prison rather than death.
Speaking through an interpreter, her father, Ronggao Zhang, appealed to Christensen to reveal where her body is so that the family can take her remains back to China. “If you have any humanity left in your soul, please end our torment. Please let us bring Yingying home,” Ronggao Zhang said.
The U.S. attorney for Central Illinois, John Milhiser, said that efforts to find Zhang’s remains would continue. As he spoke, Zhang’s mother, Lifeng Ye, sobbed, and the woman standing next to her appeared to be holding her upright.
Among the most poignant testimony during the penalty phase was from Zhang’s mother. She told jurors how the family was devastated by the loss of her beloved daughter, who had aspired to become a professor and to help her workingclass family financially.
“How am I supposed to carry on living?” she said in testimony by video. “I really don’t know how to carry on.”
Prosecutor Eugene Miller said Christensen posed as an undercover officer and lured Zhang into his car when she was running late to sign an apartment lease.
Zhang had been in Illinois for just three months — her only time living outside China.