Defence admits client murdered scholar
Print Edition
A FEDERAL prosecutor has told jurors in grisly detail that police believe a former University of Illinois doctoral student kidnapped a visiting scholar from China, and beat her to death with a baseball bat.
Defence attorneys intent on sparing their client Brendt Christensen a possible death penalty then offered an exceptional response: He did it.
Christensen is accused of posing as an undercover officer to lure 26-year-old Zhang Yingying into his car on June 9, 2017, as she headed to sign a lease off campus.
Christensen, who is over 1.8 meters, took Zhang to his apartment where he raped, choked and stabbed her in his bedroom, as the 1.6m Zhang tried to fight him off, prosecutor Eugene Miller said.
Christensen then dragged Zhang into his bathroom, and pummeled her in the head with the bat before decapitating her. He then disposed of her body, which has never been found.
Christensen became obsessed with serial killers in the months before he kidnapped Zhang, Miller said, adding that Christensen was engrossed by the novel “American Psycho.” He was intent on slaying someone in order to fulfill a goal of infamy that he’d set for himself. The federal death-penalty case is the first in Illinois since the state struck capital punishment from its books on grounds death-penalty processes were too error-prone.
Defence lawyer George Tesseff told jurors he would begin his remarks with what he realized was an unusual admission.
“Brendt Christensen killed Yingying Zhang,” he said.
While Christensen pleaded not guilty, the defence never argued law enforcement had the wrong man. The admission was a signal that their sole objective was not to win a not-guilty verdict, but to persuade jurors not to vote to sentence Christensen to death.
Tesseff portrayed Christensen’s life as being in turmoil leading up to Zhang’s disappearance, saying marital and drinking problems only made matters worse.
Christensen appeared to bow and shake his head slightly when his lawyer spoke of his client’s life spinning out of control.
Tesseff told jurors they would see video of Christensen seeking help from University of Illinois mental-health counselors for homicidal and suicidal thoughts.
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