Defense lawyer says client admits killing Chinese scholar in US

An attorney for Brendt Christensen, who is charged with kidnapping and killing Chinese visiting scholar Zhang Yingying in 2017, told a US federal court judge in Illinois on Wednesday that Christensen has admitted to killing the young woman.

"Brendt Christensen is responsible for the death of Yingying Zhang," defense attorney George Taseff said during his opening statement in the trial in US District Court in Peoria, Illinois. "Brendt Christensen killed Yingying Zhang."

Taseff said the trial will proceed in an effort to spare Christensen, 29, the death penalty, adding Christensen is "on trial for his life" and there are several "factual issues" that must be debated before sentencing, according to media reports.

In addition to the charge of kidnapping resulting in death, Christensen also faces a capital murder charge as well as two counts of making false statements to the FBI.

While the state of Illinois has abolished capital punishment, a federal trial allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty. Christensen has pleaded not guilty to all counts, according to Reuters.

Taseff's statement came after prosecutors spent 45 minutes outlining the details of Zhang's death, contending that the 26-year-old visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was raped, beaten and decapitated inside Christensen's apartment in Champaign.

Federal prosecutor Eugene Miller said Christensen picked up Zhang in his vehicle after telling her he was an undercover police officer, bound her hands and took her to his apartment, where he raped her and choked her for 10 minutes while she fought for her life.

Christensen then put her in a bathtub, hit her on the head with a baseball bat, decapitated her and later disposed of her remains at an unknown location, the prosecutor said.

Miller also detailed the government's evidence including surveillance video showing Christensen picking up Zhang on June 9, 2017, at an Urbana bus stop; a positive DNA match to Zhang of blood in Christensen's Champaign apartment; and Christensen's own words in recordings obtained by his then-girlfriend, who agreed to wear a wiretap for the FBI.

During a recording made as Christensen and his girlfriend took part in a memorial walk for Zhang in late June 2017, Christensen said Zhang was his 13th victim and bragged that the last serial killer "at his level was Ted Bundy", Miller said.

Bundy, who had confessed to killing at least 30 young women and girls in seven US states in the 1970s, was executed in Florida in 1989.

According to the prosecutor, Christensen said in the recording that he wanted to attend Zhang's vigil "to see how many people are here. ... They're here for me."

Christensen added that Zhang's body would never be found and that her family, who had traveled from China to help locate her, would be "leaving empty-handed", Miller said.

The prosecutor also told the court that Christensen cleaned his apartment and vehicle extensively in an effort to cover up the crime. But investigators located blood spots on his mattress and the baseboard of his bed, as well as on drywall, underneath carpet and on the baseball bat, Miller said.

DNA tests conducted on the samples found a match to Zhang, he added.

"He kidnapped her, he murdered her, he covered up his crime," Miller said.

Defense attorney Taseff said Christensen had been drinking heavily before the vigil, adding that there was no evidence to show Christensen had killed anyone before Zhang, according to The News-Gazette, a central Illinois daily newspaper.

Prosecutors described Christensen as a man who had become infatuated with serial killers and had plotted a kidnapping and killing in the months before he lured Zhang into his vehicle on the Urbana-Champaign campus.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the defense lawyers aimed to depict Christensen as a "brilliant" graduate student at the university but a person troubled by substance abuse, a failing marriage and a problematic academic record.

Steve Beckett, an Urbana-based attorney representing Zhang's family, told China Daily on Wednesday, "The defense position in court admitting that Christensen killed Yingying was a possible scenario that ... the attorneys for the family discussed with them.

"However, mother, father, brother and boyfriend still must deal with this horrible tragedy by being there for Yingying every day in court during the trial," he said.

On Wednesday afternoon, University of Illinois Police Department Officers George Sandwick and James Carter testified about the search for Zhang. Carter was the officer who, on June 14, 2017, spotted damage to the front passenger side hubcap of the Saturn Astra that Zhang was seen entering.

The court was told that a piece was missing from the top of the hubcap, and the car also had a sunroof, which matched details of the Astra that Christensen owned, according to The News-Gazette.

Assistant Professor Kaiyu Guan, whom Zhang worked for, testified about how Zhang, who was from East China's Fujian province, had applied for a PhD position and missed out but continued to seek opportunities.

"She showed great initiative," The News-Gazette quoted him as saying.

Zhang went to the US to study photosynthesis and crop production at the university two months before she was reported missing.

The trial will resume on Thursday morning.