Photo: University of Illinois Police
The defense lawyer for theformer University of Illinois Ph.D. candidate on trialfor themurder of a visiting Chinese exchange studentshocked the jury when he admitted in opening statements that his client abducted, raped and brutally beat the 26-year-old in 2017.
“Brendt Christensen killed Yingying Zhang,” public defender George Taseff told jurors Wednesday, theChicago Tribunereports.
“Nothing we say or do during this phase of the trial is intended to sidestep or deny that Brendt Christensen was responsible for the death of Yingying Zhang.”
Despite the admission, Christensen, 29, has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer’s admission that Christensen is the killer isa strategy to spare him the death penalty, Fox News reports.
Christensen is“on trial for his life,”Tesseff told the jury as Zhang’s devastated family, who traveled from China for the proceedings, listened in the federal courtroom in Peoria, ABC News reports.
If he is convicted of kidnapping and killing Zhang, the same jury will then decide whether he will serve the rest of his life behind bars or be sentenced to death.
This is the first federal death penalty case in Illinois since the state abolished capital punishment in 2011,though it is still allowed in the federal courts, where Christensen is being tried, NBC Chicago reports.
Macon County Sheriff’s Office via AP
Zhang, a scholar in the university’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, went missing on June 9, 2017, after she was seen getting into a black Saturn Astra hatchback that authorities later traced to Christensen.
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage?Click hereto get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
On the day Zhang vanished, she was running late to sign a lease on a new apartment and was unable to catch a bus, say prosecutors.
University of Illinois Police
Zhang, who had only been in the U.S. two months and didn’t speak English well, accepted a ride from Christensen, who told her he was an undercover police officer who needed to interview her, say prosecutors, Fox News reports.
Instead, he took her back to his apartment, where he bound and raped her before stabbing her, prosecutors say.
When she tried to fight back, Christensen choked her, later dragging her to the bathroom and injuring her skull with a baseball bat, say prosecutors.
He decapitated her and disposed of her body, which has never been found.
In equally dramatic opening statements, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene Miller likened Christensen to serial killer Ted Bundy and said he was heard on tape admitting to killing 12 other people besides Zhang, Fox News reports.
Tesseff said his client was drunk when he said that, Fox News reports.
In April 2017, Christensen allegedly visited the website FetLife.com — which describes itself as “the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community” — and visited the forum “Abduction 101.” In the forum, he allegedly viewed sub-threads called “Perfect abduction fantasy” and “planning a kidnapping.”
(The site’s policy guidelines state that any interactions, whether online or in person, must be consensual and between adults.)
Prosecutors confirmed for the first time that they have DNA evidence linking Christensen to Zhang’s death, ABC News reports.
source: people.com
