I am passionate . Christensen was convicted of kidnapping and killing Zhang at trial in June, and later was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release. Revisiting Yingyings story at this moment is not only relevant, but also necessary. The U.S. is the only Western democracy that regularly executes people. At 1:39 p.m., she sent a text message from her cell phone to a manager of a different apartment complex in Urbana, Illinois, where she intended to sign a lease. ABC 20/20 brings into focus the kidnapping and murder of a Chinese scholar named Yingying Zhang who went missing on 9 June 2017. Send it to The Daily Beasthere. In one of the audio recordings, according to ABC, Christensen described how Zhang fought back, saying, that it was supernatural almost how [Zhang] just didnt give up. He then claimed he attacked Zhang with a baseball bat before decapitating her. She loved to sing and was part of a band called Cute Horse. She arrived in the U.S. that April as a visiting scholar, her first time living abroad, and had planned to enroll in the Ph.D. program at UIUC that fall. He was arrested on June 30, his 28th birthday. Prosecutors and Zhang's family had pushed for the death penalty, but a jury decision on that had to be unanimous. Beyond the immediacy of war, when is a state justified to kill? Some documents remain sealed, including Christensen's medical and mental health records, and those of his entire family. Im one year older than Yingying. One popular response claimed that the situation would have been better had Yingying been Black, Hispanic, or Muslim as these minority groups wield more political power in the U.S. than Asians, especially in a blue state like Illinois. 10. Yingying Zhang. However, Brendt never returned for a second counseling session like he was asked to. 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. After reviewing hours of interviews and hundreds of pages of documents on him, Im haunted by a sense of familiarity. With trucks taking their loads to landfills across the city, authorities figured that her remains might have been spread around several landfills by the time Brendt was convicted. It was also revealed that Christensen was photographed attending a rally for the victim. Claim Author Page. Hes also accused of stabbing and choking her and comparing himself to Ted Bundy. Yingying is an incredible young lady. Referenced Authors. The alternative for a crime of this nature is life in prison. In addition to this, a memorial stone with Zhangs name was placed on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Copyright 2023 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. Police searched her apartment and found nothing. While the case was put to rest in court, the same cannot be said for Zhangs family who continue to live the loss of their daughter, as stated by them, was their pride and joy. Based on the statements made by Christensen to federal prosecutors in exchange for immunity, he butchered her body in three separate garbage bags and put them in the dumpster outside his apartment. Now, among the familiar sight and through the familiar sound, I also see Yingying. Students grouped together to find her, while the FBI was brought on to help the local police department. However, the jury was divided over the decision for the death penalty, as a result of which Brendt was awarded life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2018. On June 15, 2017, Christensen was interviewed at the FBIs Champaign office. Forever.. The FBI placed Christensen under surveillance and monitored his conversations. A source close to the investigation said the landfill has not been searched. Video showed her at an Urbana, Illinois, bus stop getting into a black Saturn vehicle, and, after that, she vanished without a trace. "The Zhang family reports this as information they have received and cannot vouch for its truth," he said in a statement. Yingying Zhang was known as a compassionate, talented, joyous, and intelligent woman. 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. 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. 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. 29 Nov - Zhang Yingying and Wang Xiaofei's mother Zhang Lan seem to be butting heads when it comes to the mainland businessman, after the actress seemingly decided to declare that they are dating.. As reported on CTWant, the 26-year-old actress, who has been romantically linked to Wang for months and was even accused of being the third party in his previous marriage with Barbie Hsu, recently . 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. (Photo by Mark Van Moer) Inset, top: Yingying Zhang (Courtesy University of Illinois Police Department). Apr 7, 2021 Around 2 pm, a CCTV camera spotted Zhang in a bus stand located directly opposite the universitys very own radio and television station. 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. The black sedan that picked up Yingying was quickly identified as belonging to one Brendt Christensen. As the information was provided under immunity, prosecutors were not able to use or communicate that information to anyoneincluding her familyduring the criminal trial, according to a statement from the Zhang family released on Wednesday morning. From as far as I could remember, my mothers fervid fear of my sudden vanishing filled the air around her. With Zhang reported missing, there was a massive uproar in the university. "A lot of news coverage of . I laugh. Zhang went missing on June 9, 2017, as she was headed to sign a lease for an off-campus apartment in Urbana. Amidst a global pandemic caricatured as a product of Asian pathology, my birth country has descended further down the abyss of authoritarianism, my adopted home teeters on the brink of fascism, and relations between the two superpowers are at their lowest point in decades. Determined to find a closure to the case, authorities decided to turn to CCTVs as a last-ditch effort to locate her. Read More: Where is Brendt Christensen Today? But as I research this story, she appears so young to me, like a distant reminiscence. The moment the page loaded, I looked away. My mother forwarded many of these reports to me. I eventually regained some mobility and dialed a friend. Since Zhang was last seen in the video entering the car, said the news release issued by authorities, the FBI, the University of Illinois Police Department and the Illinois State Police and local law enforcement have worked around the clock to locate Ms. Zhang and to investigate her disappearance., Please review our privacy policy here: https://heavy.com/privacy-policy/, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. Publications 10. h-index 3. My biggest concern is that the suspect wont get a severe punishment, Yingyings father says in the film. To be a Chinese student or scholar in the U.S. is to chart a lonely existence. Her son should say where my daughter is., Lifeng Ye, the mother of Yingying Zhang, cries out in grief as her husband Ronggao Zhang, far left, addresses the media after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her murder. (MORE: Man found guilty of killing visiting Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang) Mike Christensen believes Zhang's killing could have been avoided if counselors took action then and there. The driver, to his credit, took me to my friends place. The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month in the killing of Yingying Zhang. A prosecutor told the court on July 5, 2017, that Christensen was recorded at a rally for Zhang by authorities and explained the characteristics of his ideal victim and, according to CNN, pointed out those in the crowd who matched them at a vigil he attended for the missing woman. The person helping authorities record Christensen was his then-girlfriend Terra Bullis. It doesnt reveal whom Christensen was allegedly speaking with at the time. University of Minnesota. This detail is particularly heartbreaking as members of law enforcement are frequent perpetrators of sexual violence, especially toward women of color, but are rarely held accountable. However, was Zhang's body ever found? 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. 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) . Highly Influential Citations 1. Steve Beckett of the Beckett Law Office in Urbana said Friday that Zhang's family learned from prosecutors in the case that her remains could be in a landfill in Vermillion County. People from the FBI also testified that Zhangs DNA and her blood were found inside Brendts apartment, which unmistakeably linked him to the crime. The only logical explanation, as far as I can tell, is that the jurors were only thinking about violence outside prison, whether Christensen would be able to commit it himself (impossible) or persuade someone on the outside to (unlikely). She exited the bus and tried to flag down another one, but it continued past her without stopping. Yingying's body has never been found. I stare at the slide for a very long time. The following month, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Yingying was still missing. He seemingly boasted about choking, sexually assaulting, and beating Zhang to death with a baseball bat. Shes gone forever. The heart of this question is not about measuring the harms of specific conduct but mapping the contours of state authority. Yingying Zhang was a visiting scholar from China at UIUC. The image was used in the missing person bulletin by the police and the FBI. If Yingyings remains are ever found, we will return to take her home to China where she belongs, her father said, according to ABC 7. Dated June 1, 2017, it concludes with a line in English, Life is too short to be ordinary!. Of course Yingying's Charley Project casefile has the basics. The menacing images appear to come alive, two monsters manifesting the paucity of our moral imagination. Red with rage, the old man exclaims: If the U.S. does not address this case properly, well kill one or two American students in China.. Co-Author. The 26-year-old visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, disappeared June 9, 2017. Cultural difference makes for a convenient excuse to validate the self and exoticize the other. Authorities narrowed their search down to 18 four-door Saturn Astra vehicles registered in Champaign County and interviewed the owners. By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. Born to a working-class family in the southern city of Nanping, Yingying received her masters degree from Peking University and worked as a research assistant at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Thats because, not only was Christensen convicted in Zhangs death, but his lawyer revealed in court that he admits to murdering her. He was convicted two years later. He was recorded confessing to killing her and has an online history at FetLife re . Citing Authors. According to Bullis, who testified during Christensens trial, she felt very conflicted because she still cared for Christensen, but she also cared about what had happened to Zhang. Her life is frozen in time, while mine goes on. My mind had filled in the rest of the plot. A large media contingent awaiting the start of the Yingying Zhang news conference at @Beckett6Steve's office in Urbana. 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?. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. Articles Cited by Public access. According to the affidavit, authorities allege that he admitted to driving around the UI campus when he observed an Asian female with a backpack standing at a corner appearing distressed. New information is expected to be provided on the search for her body in a . Christensen was found guilty on June 24, 2019, of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of lying to investigators. For those opposed to the death penalty, is replacing the needle with a cage the only option? Would love your thoughts, please comment. Explore Scholarly Publications and Datasets in the NSF-PAR. However, calls and texts to Zhangs phone went unanswered, and the worry heightened with time. Christensen has never revealed what he did with Zhang's remains. He does not have to be beaten, my mother wrote. 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. I felt fine the next morning, as if it were all just a dream. "We hope it will be a solemn place of reflection to all who visit, a place to remember the joy Yingying brought to her family and to everyone she met during her life," her father said. Federal prosecutors have said Christensen posed as an undercover officer to lure Zhang, 26, into his car on June 9, 2017. 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. The former girlfriend of accused killer Brendt Christensen, who recorded his alleged admission of brutally killing 26-year-old Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang, testified Wednesday that Christensen . In the just-unsealed documents was the story of a woman who claimed Christensen choked and sexually assaulted her sometime in 2012 or 2013. Yingying Zhang; Liangtao Li; Jiarui Guo; Yang Zhang; Xufeng Niu; Yang Wang ; Liang Hu et al. Prosecutors and Zhang's family had pushed for the death penalty , but a jury decision . Please let us bring Yingying home," Ronggao Zhang said. Yet historically, the Middle Kingdom was not any more punitive than its Western counterparts, and recent surveys show a two-thirds support rate for the death penalty in China, roughly the same as those from the U.S. over the same time period. Christensen lured Zhang into his car at a bus stop on campus posing as a police officer with the . Got a tip? My friends suggest that I was drugged. Christensen stated that he brought Zhang back to his apartment, and otherwise held her in his apartment against her will, the affidavit alleges. Western critics point to this as another example of the countrys abysmal human rights record, while Chinese officials and prominent academics claim that the legitimacy of capital punishment is ingrained in Chinese tradition and endorsed by its people. She refused to let me out of her sight, and I refused her suffocating love by leaving China as soon as I could. And me, myself will never agree with that. He pauses after every few words and presses his lips, as if to hold back the flame rising through him. Her body has never been found. HER BODY HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND. On the right, a strapped gurney. CHICAGO (CBS) -- The family of slain Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang said Wednesday they now know where her body might have been dumped, but that it might be impossible to find her remains more than two years after her brutal murder. The remains sought by Yingying Zhang's family for proper burial, and whose whereabouts the killer had kept from them, may be "impossible" to retrieve By Jeff Truesdell Published on August 8, 2019 . A new documentary, Finding Yingying, premiered at film festivals last year to critical acclaim and is now available on streaming platforms. Ive never felt as acutely aware of my identity as a Chinese woman in the U.S. My body is a constant reminder of the many ways society renders it vulnerable. 224. WTTW-TVs Matt Masterson also reported on Wednesday that Christensen has not and will not file an appeal to his convictions. In the documentary "Finding Yingying," which is now playing in virtual theaters, director Jiayan "Jenny" Shi turns the attention to Ms. Zhang and her family. ILLUSTRATION:JORDAN LEE. Previous research data suggested that Anemoside A3 (A3), a monomeric component of Pulsatilla Chinensis, could prevent and treat TNBC by converting M0 macrophages into M1 immunogen phenotypes. The answer is no. Follow Author. Yingying never made it to the leasing office. 2021. Zhangs father, Ronggao Zhang, said on Wednesday: If what that man said is true, it further confirms that he is a heartless and evil person. After nine days of trial and less than two hours of deliberations, the jury found Christensen guilty. That recording provided them with the key piece of evidence outlined in the affidavit. The last public execution took place in Kentucky in 1936, when 20,000 people gathered to watch the hanging of a young Black man convicted of rape. Ms Zhang's parents and . Prosecutors said Christensen raped, choked and stabbed Zhang before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her. She gets off the bus. She was diagnosed with Pyothorax (causes unknown). 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. To her, supporting capital punishment in this case is not an abstract position; its about thinking through what true justice is for a family that has lost so much. To do this, representative systems must be strategically selected to stimulate students' motivation. Eager to clear her boyfriends name, Bullis agreed to wear a wire for the FBI and accompany her boyfriend on a memorial walk for Zhang. Christensen was accused of saying on tape: Shes gone. 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