Yingying Zhang

Christensen's trial began in June 2019 with his attorney, George Taseff, admitting in the opening statements that Christensen killed Zhang and he was on "trial for his life" because he could face the death penalty. Evidence was provided that before Christensen abducted Zhang, he had posed as an undercover police officer and attempted to abduct graduate student Emily Hogan. He asked Hogan to get into his car, she refused, and he drove off. Hogan reported this to the police and posted about the incident on social media. After picking up Zhang later that morning and taking her back to his apartment, Christensen choked, raped, and stabbed her in his bedroom before dragging her to his bathroom where he beat her with a baseball bat and decapitated her.

On June 24, 2019, the 12-member jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning its verdict. Christensen was found guilty of one count of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of making false statements to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During sentencing deliberations, the jury could not unanimously agree to sentence Christensen to death. As a result, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on July 18, 2019.

Following the trial, prosecutors revealed information about Zhang's remains that Christensen divulged through his attorneys in November 2018 under an immunity agreement. The day after he killed Zhang, Christensen claimed he put Zhang's dismembered body in three separate garbage bags which he then disposed of in the dumpster outside of his apartment. Over the next two days, Christensen claimed he disposed of Zhang's personal belongings in various dumpsters in the Champaign-Urbana area. The dumpster in which Christensen placed Zhang's remains was emptied three days later and the contents taken to a private landfill in Vermilion County, compacted at least twice, spread over an area fifty yards wide, and subsequently buried under thirty feet of garbage. Recovery of Zhang's remains would be difficult and a search for her remains has not begun. In October of 2019, Christensen was transferred to FTC Oklahoma City for evaluation and processing. In early December of 2019, Christensen reported to USP McCreary in Pine Knot, Kentucky to begin serving his life sentence. Christensen was transferred to USP Coleman II in Florida in early 2020. His BOP inmate number is 22127-026.

The kidnapping and murder of Yingying Zhang occurred in Urbana, Illinois United States on June 9, 2017 when Zhang, a visiting Chinese scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, was abducted by Brendt Allen Christensen, a Champaign resident and former physics graduate student at the university. Christensen lured Zhang into his car at a bus stop on campus with the promise of a ride after she missed a bus, but then took her to his apartment where he raped and murdered her while his wife was out of town for the weekend.

On June 30, 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested and charged Christensen in federal court. Christensen was convicted of one count of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of making false statements to agents of the FBI, for which he received a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on July 18, 2019.

On the afternoon of June 9, 2017, Zhang was traveling on a Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (CUMTD) bus in Urbana, Illinois, to an off-campus apartment complex where she was planning to sign a new apartment lease. She was running late and sent a text message to the leasing agent at 1:39 p.m. to inform them that she would arrive at approximately 2:10 p.m. After riding on one bus, she exited at 1:52 p.m. and tried to transfer to another. However, because she was on the wrong side of the street for boarding, the bus did not stop after she attempted to flag it down. The CUMTD stated it is against company policy to stop for pedestrians on the wrong side of the street, as to do so would encourage them to run into oncoming traffic.

Investigators interviewed Christensen on June 12, 2017 and inspected his car. When questioned, Christensen reportedly claimed that he did not remember what he was doing at the time of Zhang's disappearance. He later told investigators that he may have been sleeping, or at home playing video games.

On July 12, 2017 a federal grand jury formally indicted Brendt Christensen for kidnapping Yingying Zhang. The indictment alleges that Christensen "willfully and unlawfully seized, confined, inveigled, decoyed, kidnapped, abducted, and carried away" Zhang "and otherwise held her for his own benefit and purpose, and used and caused to be used a means, facility and instrumentality of interstate commerce, namely, a Motorola cellular telephone and a Saturn Astra motor vehicle, in committing and in furtherance of the commission of the offense". Christensen pled "not guilty" at his arraignment on July 20, 2017.

Yingying Zhang (simplified Chinese: 章莹颖 ; traditional Chinese: 章瑩穎 ; pinyin: Zhāng Yíngyǐng ) (December 21, 1990 – June 9, 2017) was born in the city of Nanping, Fujian Province, to Ronggao Zhang and Lifeng Ye. Zhang has one younger brother, Zhengyang. She played in a band and had ambitions of becoming a professor in China. In 2013, Zhang graduated from Sun Yat-sen University in the top of her class. In 2016, she graduated from Peking University. Zhang was a visiting scholar in the Chinese Academy of Sciences before travelling to the United States. She arrived in the United States in April 2017 to conduct research on photosynthesis and crop productivity for one year in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, within the College of Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences (ACES), at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was considering entering a doctoral program at the University of Illinois. Zhang planned to marry her boyfriend, Xiaolin Hou, in October 2017.

Investigators were unable to discern the license plate number of the vehicle from security camera footage. However, they determined that there were 18 four-door Saturn Astras registered to owners in the Champaign County area. One of these vehicles was registered to Brendt Allen Christensen, a Champaign resident. Christensen, born June 30, 1989, is a former Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013 with a bachelor's degree in math and physics and graduated with a master's degree in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2017. Before starting graduate school, Christensen married in March 2013. During the time of Zhang's murder, Christensen was still married while he was also dating a girlfriend.