Yingying Zhang is seen entering a black Saturn Astra on the east side of Goodwin Avenue in Urbana. . Hes also accused of stabbing and choking her and comparing himself to Ted Bundy. Penculikan dan pembunuhan Yingying Zhang terjadi di Urbana, Illinois, Amerika Serikat pada tanggal 9 Juni 2017 ketika Zhang, seorang sarjana tamu di Universitas Illinois Urbana-Champaign, diculik oleh Brendt Allen Christensen, seorang warga kota Champaign dan alumni jurusan fisika di universitas yang sama. Zhang family attorney Steve Beckett said, based on information provided by federal prosecutors and attorneys for convicted killer Brendt Christensen, her body likely was taken to a landfill near Danville, Illinois, after Christensen placed her remains in three garbage bags and tossed them in a dumpster. Zhang was remembered as intelligent and extroverted. (Zhang Family Photo via AP, File) PEORIA, Ill. (AP) The Latest on the trial of man charged in slaying . In my proximity to both the victim and the perpetrator, Ive felt, however presumptuously, a particular responsibility: to bear witness to the case as it unfolded, and to try to wring some sense out of this senseless tragedy. That was just hours before Zhang was seen getting into Christensen's black Saturn Astra, the last time she was seen alive. Ph.D. student at Unversity of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Brendt Christensen, 30, kidnapped, tortured and killed U of I scholar Yingying Zhang in 2018. Just imagine a woman opening a water tank and deliberately drowning herself in it. On the right, a strapped gurney. He then confessed that he decapitated Zhangs body and disposed of the parts separately to reduce the chances of discovery. Explore Scholarly Publications and Datasets in the NSF-PAR. Brendt Christensen was convicted of visiting Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang's 2017 murder. Federal prosecutors have said Christensen posed as an undercover officer to lure Zhang, 26, into his car on June 9, 2017. Yingying Zhang - update. The Chinese government closely followed Brendt Christensens trial, and the prosecution was determined to seek the death penalty. I had known this before, but seeing the words displayed on his page invoked an intense nausea that I doubled over. It doesnt reveal whom Christensen was allegedly speaking with at the time. She played guitar and sang in a band called Cute Horse in China. For those opposed to the death penalty, is replacing the needle with a cage the only option? She was a brilliant scholar and had won numerous laurels in China before coming to the US in April 2017, where she was supposed to stay for a year. Her body never found, the family still hoping to someday bring her . The suspect, Brendt Christensen, pleaded not guilty and refused to give up information. All Rights Reserved. With no news of the Chinese student for several hours, university authorities decided to approach the police and file a missing person report. However, he soon broke down and told authorities that he had picked up an Asian girl, but she was not in his car for a long time. Copyright 2023 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. 10. Zhang's father said if his daughter's remains are ever found, her family plans to take her body back to China. However, calls and texts to Zhangs phone went unanswered, and the worry heightened with time. We are both mothers. I was furious at my mother, who appeared oblivious to the cruelty and repeatedly defended the inhumane practice. Christensen, 30, was sentenced to life without parole. As per Zhangs family lawyers statements, the contents of the dumpster were taken to Danville, where it was compacted twice. This greatly alarmed counselors, but they later deduced that he was not in immediate need of hospitalization. ID found on disambiguation page, needs clean-up. I pursued physics, the same discipline as her killer. She wanted to make a difference in the world.. Four days after the news broke, a post went viral on Chinese social media, If the Yingying Zhang case took place in China, with attention from the entire country, whats the probability that it would be solved within 48 hours?. WGN-TV reported that he raped and beheaded Zhang, and implied he had 12 other victims, but this was never proven. Christensen is not a social, charismatic person, and so is unlikely to recruit others to commit violent acts on his behalf. Five jurors agreed with this point. The FBI approached Bullis, who was very confident about Brendts innocence. The memorial garden for Yingying Zhang outside Campbell Hall on the UIUC campus, near where she was last seen. Directed by Jiayan Jenny Shi, its a tender, intimate portrayal of a promising life cut short, a familys harrowing search for their beloved daughter on a foreign land, and their unrelenting quest for justice. I work in in the Team for Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment (TEEHTA). (Matt Masterson / WTTW News) Among the hundreds of exhibits used in the trial, theres a 90-second clip. The apartment was off-campus, and thus, Zhang had to travel quite a bit from her university to get to it. Christensen, a 30-year-old former doctoral student at the university, was arrested later that month and charged with her kidnapping and murder. He could have been a colleague, a classmate, someone I encountered at a conference: a white guy who takes whiteness and manhood for granted, who uses nonchalance to mask his insecurity, who can act polite but will never see me as his equal. As I was preparing to write this essay, I spent an evening at my favorite restaurant, where I ate dinner and sipped two glasses of wine by the bar. Yingying ZHANG | Cited by 11,350 | of Tsinghua University, Beijing (TH) | Read 163 publications | Contact Yingying ZHANG My mind had filled in the rest of the plot. Paradoxically, it also offers a primal sense of security. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) exhibits the characteristics of strong metastatic ability and a high recurrence rate, and M2-type macrophages play an important role in this process. Cruel as his act was, to cast Christensen as a uniquely-depraved individual would be to ignore all the historical and contemporary acts of mass violence, of wars, genocides, slavery, and colonization. electronic edition via DOI; unpaywalled version; references . The moment the page loaded, I looked away. Yingying ZHANG, Professor (Full) | Cited by 438 | of China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou | Read 47 publications | Contact Yingying ZHANG . From as far as I could remember, my mothers fervid fear of my sudden vanishing filled the air around her. Bottom: Brendt Christensen (Courtesy Macon . Yingying's body has never been found. Audio and video recordings were played for a federal jury in the murder-kidnapping trial of Brendt Christensen on Friday --- including a recording of Christensen's chilling account of how he kidnapped and murdered Yingying Zhang, a promising young environmental engineer from China in June 2017. Torture during detention is commonplace in China. Articles Cited by Public access. While the countrys Criminal Procedure Law forbids extorting confessions or collecting evidence by illegal means, the regulations contain many loopholes and are poorly enforced. I was too heavy! I joke with my friends. 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. Missing Since 06/09/2017. She was No. It has been shown that a low BCAA diet can lead to dramatic changes in metabolism, including an increase in energy expenditure, enhancement of ketogenesis, upregulation of Fgf21, and a decrease in body weight in mice (Newgard et al, 2009; Lotta et al, 2016; Cummings et al, 2018; Karusheva et al, 2019; Zhou et al, 2019; Richardson et al, 2021 . Y Zhang, X Qian, Z Peng, N Yang. The night ended with me being helped into an Uber, where I stayed for the next three hours. The U.S. Attorney's office in the Central District of Illinois said Zhang's remains have not been found. Born on December 21, 1990, in Nanping, Fujian Province, Ying Ying Zhang was a Chinese student at the University Of Illinois. Brendt Christensen, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in Yingying Zhangs murder, said he put her body in three separate trash bags and threw them in a dumpster. As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Christensen worked briefly on the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds largest particle physics experiment where I spent over a decade of my career. Tragically, and . My friends suggest that I was drugged. Prisons cannot solve the problem of prevalent harm in society and are in fact part of the problem, as they perpetuate the logics of power and domination, of segregation and dehumanization, which are also the logics of patriarchy and white supremacy. its incredibly painful, Bullis said in court, according to CBS Local. If someone is deemed prone to violence as a free man, then hes likely to become more so in prison, where violence is the norm. Thats because Christensens attorney said during an opening statement that Christensen had killed Zhang, but disputed some of the evidence against him. Ying Ying Zhang, Her Name Means "A Twinkle Of Light," But Her Light Was Taken Away; who Was Yingying Zhang? She knows how hard it is to raise a child. She exited the bus and tried to flag down another one, but it continued past her without stopping. Yingyings family believed that Christensen should be executed. Like her, I had grown up in a provincial city in China and clung to academic excellence as the only way out. However, soon, through the lenses of CCTVs, the police learned that the answer might be a lot closer to home than people thought. Police noticed that the Saturn in video footage had a sunroof and cracked front passenger hubcap, as did Christensens car, alleged the affidavit. She stands by the bus stop beneath a tree. In 1988, Democratic nominee for president Michael Dukakis would see his candidacy doomed as he answered no to this debate question: If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer? He lost to George H. W. Bush, whose team ran a series of attack ads, using the likeness of one Black criminal to stoke racial fear. Investigation Discoverys See No Evil: Far from Home chronicles the disappearance and the horrifying ordeal Zhang had to endure before her untimely death. The same jury who convicted him later split on the death penalty. . Zhang, circa 2017; Brendt Christensen. The strange and twisted life of Brendt Christensen: claims to have killed over 12 people already, vows Yingying Zhang's body will never be found (June, 2019) . The sentencing phase of the trial took place two weeks later. We were the same age. Japan Web Proxy Server*****Jiang Yuzhou was silent for a moment before saying: "You are still young, I can understand that you don't want to be bound by marriage early, but I think we are very suitable, if you want, we can not talk about marriage and talk about a relationship like other couples, you don't have to Just find someone to deal with."In his opinion, Gu Nai suddenly had a boyfriend . Yingying Zhang. With Zhang reported missing, there was a massive uproar in the university. Yingying Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, reads a statement in Chinese outside the federal courthouse in Peoria, Illinois, on Monday, June 24, 2019, moments after a 12-person jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her kidnapping and death. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Very new to the country, Zhang still hadnt settled down properly when a devastating state of affairs snuffed out her wonderful life. . They have since divorced. Brendt was also ordered to pay a hefty fine of $250,000 for each conviction. The potential site was alleged to be a landfill in Vermilion County, along the Illinois-Indiana border. Yingying is an incredible young lady. Later, in the other interview, authorities extracted an admission from Christensen that Zhang had been in his car, prompting the surveillance, according to the affidavit. One of her favorite songs was The Rose, a hit in 1980 for American singer Bette Midler, reported The Chicago Tribune. Cameras show her getting into a black car and authorities identified Brendt Christensen as the suspect. Yingyings family sued the social workers at UIUC for negligence. A bilingual memorial service for Zhang will be held on Friday in Savoy, Illinois. At this time, they think the most prudent thing to do is to allow the authorities to handle the situation and undertake the recovery of Yingyings remains if it is feasible, according to the statement. At the sentencing phase of the Christensen trial, one of the aggravating factors the jury agreed with was Yingyings particular vulnerability due to her small stature and limited ability to communicate in English. Ten thousand years of civilization and were still relying on physical size for protection. Murderer Brendt Allen Christensen. A federal jury convicted Christensen in June. It just adds to the tragedy, Miller said, because Zhangs family doesnt have her body back. Shraman Mitra. Ms Zhang's parents and . Publications 10. h-index 3. Small 2022 . The horrific details of her death were made public when Brendt Christensen was caught on an audiotape, talking about how he killed Zhang and then disposed of her body, stating that her family would never find her. Brendt also had a masters in Physics but dropped out from his Ph.D. program and instead claimed that he was searching for employment. She was last seen on surveillance video at her . I go back to the video and let the clock rewind. A journalism student at Northwestern University at the time of Yingyings disappearance, Shi had assisted in the search efforts and witnessed the familys pain from the very beginning. She had previously told people she was going to sign an apartment lease and would return shortly after. Dated June 1, 2017, it concludes with a line in English, Life is too short to be ordinary!. Her life is frozen in time, while mine goes on. The case was dismissed. The answer is no. Police searched her apartment and found nothing. The family of murdered Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang has finally learned what happened to the body of their beloved daughter. My research interests include economic evaluations of complex (public) health interventions and personalized healthcare. When confirming details about Christensen, I googled his name and clicked on his LinkedIn profile. I eventually regained some mobility and dialed a friend. During the trial, several people, including Terra Bullis, testified against Brendt. Cops are also more likely to commit domestic abuse than the general population. The backdrop to her stage features a spiraling pattern in green, yellow, and white: a clock turned upside down. Christensen was found guilty on June 24, 2019, of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of lying to investigators. Cultural difference makes for a convenient excuse to validate the self and exoticize the other. With over 6,000 Chinese students, accounting for 12 percent of its student body, UIUC is home to the largest Chinese community among U.S. universities. Over eggs and coffee, we shared our impressions of criminal justice from growing up in China and how a life for a life was presented as axiomatic. Video showed her at an Urbana, Illinois, bus stop getting into a black Saturn vehicle, and, after that, she vanished without a trace. The Chinese government keeps the total number of executions per year classified. Zhang went missing on June 9, 2017, as she was headed to sign a lease for an off-campus apartment in Urbana. According to News Gazette, she testified that Christensen typed the following, showed it to her, and then deleted it: It was me. A US former doctoral student has been spared the death penalty for kidnapping and murdering a 26-year-old Chinese scholar, prompting widespread anger in China. Reactions: ShHolmz, altojack, MajorHoople and 8 others. (Photo by Mark Van Moer) Inset, top: Yingying Zhang (Courtesy University of Illinois Police Department). ILLUSTRATION:JORDAN LEE. Rights of a criminal suspect were seen as obtuse hurdles inhibiting a swift conviction. "If you have any humanity left in your soul, please end our torment. "An attorney whos been representing the family is evidently holding a news conference this afternoon in Urbana to discuss information the government provided the family following trial based on statements Christensen made to his attorneys late last year and prior to trial," a spokesperson for the attorney's office said in a statement. Statement from family's lawyers: @WCIA3 pic.twitter.com/SaYqeuwE3h. Experiences: -- Graduate student at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University (2012-2018) -- Lab technician at Dana Farber Cancer Institute (2010-2012) -- Internship at . 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