PEORIA, Ill. — A former University of Illinois doctoral student is facing life in prison for the rape and murder of a 26-year-old scholar from China whom he abducted from a bus stop near campus in 2017, after a federal jury said Thursday that they failed to agree on sentencing him to death.
The jurors returned their decision against Brendt Christensen, 30, on their second day of deliberations. The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month in the killing of Yingying Zhang. Prosecutors and Zhang’s family had pushed for the death penalty , but a jury decision on that had to be unanimous. If even one juror opposed, then the life sentence was applied.
Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, but Christensen was prosecuted under federal law. If he had been sentenced to death, he would have been executed in neighboring Indiana.
Prosecutors said Christensen raped, choked and stabbed Zhang before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her. Christensen has never revealed what he did with Zhang’s remains . Her family, who traveled from China to Peoria, Illinois, for the trial had hoped he might explain in court where he left her, but Christensen’s lawyers didn’t call him to testify.
Among the most poignant testimony during the penalty phase was from Zhang’s mother, Lifeng Ye. 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 working class 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.”
She said Christensen dashed Zhang’s dreams and those of her family. Yingying was killed months before she had planned to get married.
“My daughter did not get to wear a wedding dress,” Lifeng Ye said. “I really wanted to be a grandma.”
Zhang’s father, Ronggao Zhang, cried when shown a photo of the two of them at a train station as she left for the United States.
“My life without her will not be complete,” he told jurors.
Her boyfriend, Xiaolin Hou, testified that the family’s only hope was that Zhang’s body will be found so they can bury her in China. Prosecutors indicated in court filings that Christensen may have destroyed the remains.
Christensen’s parents took the witness stand, too, and appealed to jurors to spare their son’s life. Both said they loved him unconditionally.
Michael Christensen said the thought of his son being executed was unbearable, prompting Brendt Christensen to break down crying in a rare display of emotion.
Ellen Williams, his mother, told jurors that Christensen’s crime was “horrible” and that she thinks about Zhang’s family “at least five times a day and how horrible this must be for them.” She said her son was extremely bright, kind and considerate.
The defense sought to humanize Christensen by showing home videos of him playing the piano and opening Christmas gifts as a child.
Brendt Christensen is a native of Stevens Point, Wisconsin. He began his studies in Champaign at the university’s prestigious doctoral program in physics in 2013.
Christensen’s sister, Andrea Christensen, told jurors that her brother had been her role model and that he was never aggressive to anyone when they were growing up.
“Brendt was a very gentle person,” she said,
Those depictions jar with Christensen’s actions on June 9, 2017.
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. The muscular Christensen likely forced the 5 foot 4 Zhang into a 6-foot-long duffel bag that he bought online days earlier and carried her up to his apartment in Urbana, 140 miles (225 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, Miller said. Once inside, he raped and killed her.
Zhang had been in Illinois for just three months — her only time living outside China.
Prosecutors said Zhang was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that Christensen, who had fantasized about killing, was determined to take someone’s life that day. They said he had approached a different woman earlier, posing as an officer, but that she refused to get in the car.
Defense attorney Julie Brain told jurors that Christensen had struggled with mental health issues for years and had tried to get help in dealing with homicidal fantasies in the months before killing Zhang.
“What happened next was a … battle between Brendt and his demons that little by little, he lost,” Brain said.
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