U.S. to seek death penalty for murder of Chinese grad student

[July 08, 2019]  By Bob Chiarito

PEORIA, Ill. (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors were expected on Monday to argue that an Illinois man who kidnapped, raped and murdered a Chinese graduate student two years ago should be executed.

A jury in U.S. District Court in Peoria, Illinois, found Brendt Christensen, 29, guilty last month of the abduction and murder of Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

While Illinois has outlawed the death penalty, federal prosecutors trying Christensen under U.S. kidnapping laws had said they planned to seek the death penalty if he was found guilty.

In their closing arguments of the eight-day trial, Christensen's lawyers suggested they hoped to persuade the jury to spare his life during the penalty phase of the trial.

"This is not the ultimate decision. You have to realize there's more," defense attorney Elisabeth Pollock told jurors at the time.

Zhang was reported missing on June 9, 2017, two months after coming from southeastern China to study photosynthesis and crop production at the university. Her remains have never been found, but prosecutors said her DNA was matched to blood later found in three spots inside Christensen's bedroom.

The case has been closely watched by China's media and government as well as by Chinese students in the United States. Zhang's relatives publicly appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump for additional resources to help find her two months after she vanished.

Zhang Ronggao, father of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student Yingying Zhang, arrives at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois, U.S., June 3, 2019. REUTERS/Daniel Acker/File Photo

Investigators were led to Christensen through surveillance video footage captured in Urbana, 130 miles (210 km) south of Chicago, that showed Zhang getting into a black car that later was traced to the defendant.

Prosecutors said Christensen, a one-time master's student at the university, took Zhang to his apartment, where she fought for her life as he bludgeoned her with a baseball bat, raped her and stabbed her in the neck before cutting off her head.

Earlier in the trial, prosecutors characterized Christensen as having a fascination with serial killers, including Ted Bundy, who murdered dozens of women during the 1970s and was put to death in 1989.

Details of the crime, including Zhang's decapitation, were revealed by Christensen himself in conversations with his then-girlfriend secretly recorded for FBI agents investigating the case before his arrest, according to trial testimony.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Paul Simao)

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