Yingying Zhang. Title. Police noticed that the Saturn in video footage had a sunroof and cracked front passenger hubcap, as did Christensens car, alleged the affidavit. The family of murdered Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang has finally learned what happened to the body of their beloved daughter. With a confession on hand, the FBI arrested Brendt Christensen and charged him with the murder of Yingying Zhang. 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. During the trial, several people, including Terra Bullis, testified against Brendt. That I had emerged unscathed made everything seem surreal. April 27, 2022. She was even decapitated. 116313 (2021) [j53] view. Last edited: Feb 8, 2021. When the police searched his car, nothing stood out of the ordinary at first glance. Zhang's body has not been found. According to ABC News, Law enforcement believes the bags were then taken to a landfill in Danville, Illinois. But it was too late to recover her body. Yingyings family believed that Christensen should be executed. Her phone was disabled moments later. 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. Ying Ying Zhang, Her Name Means "A Twinkle Of Light," But Her Light Was Taken Away; who Was Yingying Zhang? "There is nothing in the world that we want more than to find our daughter and bring . For a woman, the most dangerous place is often the home. She stands by the bus stop beneath a tree. Rights of a criminal suspect were seen as obtuse hurdles inhibiting a swift conviction. Its loss can never be repaid. "The Zhang family reports this as information they have received and cannot vouch for its truth," he said in a statement. Determined to find a closure to the case, authorities decided to turn to CCTVs as a last-ditch effort to locate her. 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. 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. In England and colonial America, as legal historian Stuart Banner writes, the death penalty circa 1700 was the equivalent of prison todaythe standard punishment for a wide range of serious crimes including arson, theft, and counterfeiting. Brendt Christensen, a former Ph.D. student at the same university, was convicted of Zhangs murder in 2019. According to Beckett, a follow-up investigation determined the dumpster where Christensen placed Yingying Zhang's body was picked up three days after her murder, and the contents were taken to a private landfill near Danville, where they were compacted at least twice. Zhang was remembered as intelligent and extroverted. Ph.D., 2016, Xiamen University. 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. Even as the family of Yingying Zhang acknowledges the near impossibility of her remains ever being found, . Zhang was a visiting scholar at the university. When we turn away from the face of the condemned, were in fact refusing to look at ourselves, to confront our culpability in systems of oppression, to recognize the glimmer of humanity in the darkest corner. She left her quaint, mountain top home town after receiving a scholarship to study at the Chinese Academy . Search For Terms: Body found later in a water tank at the top of the hotel, the coroner stated that she died by drowning. Torture during detention is commonplace in China. This greatly alarmed counselors, but they later deduced that he was not in immediate need of hospitalization. She refused. Apr 7, 2021 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. Missing Since 06/09/2017. Listeria monocytogenes is the causative agent of listeriosis, a bacterial infection that can cause severe illness, including septicaemia via blood infection, meningitis and encephalitis in the brain, and perinatal infection or abortion via . 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. The same power structures undergird the institutions tasked with holding her killer accountable. It was found during a search of his Macon County jail cell. Since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic caused by a new beta . The judge has denied bail for Christensen. YINGYING ZHANG WAS ABDUCTED AND MURDERED IN 2017. 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. HER BODY HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND. Ms Zhang's parents and . Christensen, 30, abducted Zhang Yingying on campus in June 2017 before beating her to death with a baseball bat and decapitating her. Paradoxically, it also offers a primal sense of security. The driver, to his credit, took me to my friends place. I eventually regained some mobility and dialed a friend. "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. He told authorities that he was at home around the time in question. This study showed . However, even with massive searches and attractive cash rewards announced, the few leads the police got led to nothing. The image was used in the missing person bulletin by the police and the FBI. 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. Investigators believe Zhang is dead . Her remains have never been found. 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. She was last seen on surveillance video at her . By the penalty phase, Christensen had already been found guilty. Citing Authors. Most of them would not have known the context behind my post. The trial, from that moment on, was no longer about the certitude of Christensens guilt but whether he deserved to die. Cultural difference makes for a convenient excuse to validate the self and exoticize the other. Like every other institution in this country, the evolution of the death penalty in the U.S. is intertwined with slavery and codified with racism. On June 29, 2017, while Christensen was under law enforcement surveillance, agents overheard him explaining that he kidnapped Zhang. 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) . Yingying's body has never been found. Tropical Geography 2023, Vol. What happened to Yingying could never have happened in China, she insisted, echoing the talking points on state media that U.S. authorities were only paying attention to the case because China is strong. The badge was found by a motorist about two-and-a-half miles from Christensen's apartment. 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. However, Mike refused to divulge any information about the location of Zhangs remains. Yingying Zhang is from a small city in South east China called Nanping (a prefectural city in the Fujian province). 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. Its a potent concept, appealing to our instincts. (Feature Image Credit: ABC 20/20). (Matt Masterson / WTTW News) She had previously told people she was going to sign an apartment lease and would return shortly after. / CBS Chicago. Her body has never been found. Its sadly ironic that prisons are called penitentiaries or correctional facilities, while theyre designed for neither repentance nor rehabilitation but segregation and retribution. Beckett said, so far, no search has begun at the landfill for Zhang's body. 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. Im one year older than Yingying. Alpha was very healthy and energetic otherwise. Christensen, 30, was sentenced to life without parole. Photos of Yingying Zhang on a tree on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana, Ill. Photo: Stephen Haas/The News-Gazette via AP, This is the last entry in Yingyings journal. Explore Scholarly Publications and Datasets in the NSF-PAR. The defense was signaling to the jury that life in prison is already a very harsh sentence and sufficient punishment for this crime. By defending features in the U.S. judicial process, I was in fact defending the life I had worked so hard to achieve. When confirming details about Christensen, I googled his name and clicked on his LinkedIn profile. I work in in the Team for Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment (TEEHTA). Brendt Christensen, 30, kidnapped, tortured and killed U of I scholar Yingying Zhang in 2018. Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old Chinese scholar, traveled to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in April 2017 to pursue research in agriculture. She was the first in her family to graduate from college in 2013 and to go on to finish a master's degree in 2016 in the field of agricultural sciences at . Shes gone forever. Just imagine a woman opening a water tank and deliberately drowning herself in it. Of course Yingying's Charley Project casefile has the basics. One says that I might have had an allergic reaction, which is the version I swear to because the alternative is unthinkable. 15. Zhangs family reportedly provided the first gift for the endowment. . I felt fine the next morning, as if it were all just a dream. Yingying Zhang was a 26-year-old visiting Chinese scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who went . Its generally estimated to be in the thousands and accounts for 80 percent or more of state executions globally. At one point the driver had tried, but failed, to drag me out of his car. We were the same age. It doesnt reveal whom Christensen was allegedly speaking with at the time. Calls to her cell phone went unanswered. Beyond the immediacy of war, when is a state justified to kill? Reactions: ShHolmz, altojack, MajorHoople and 8 others. A new documentary, Finding Yingying, premiered at film festivals last year to critical acclaim and is now available on streaming platforms. Shraman Mitra. He confessed to posing as an undercover police officer and picking Zhang up before bringing her back to his apartment. 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. By the time they provided that information, it was almost 18 months after she would have been placed in the landfill, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene Miller, ABC reported. On June 15, 2017, Christensen was interviewed at the FBIs Champaign office. August 7, 2019 / 6:12 PM If even one juror opposed, then the life sentence was applied. 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. Last year to critical acclaim and is now available on streaming platforms the Chinese Academy had an reaction! 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