‘She’s gone forever’: Brendt Christensen bragged to girlfriend that he killed Chinese scholar Zhang Yingying
- In a secret recording made by his girlfriend for the FBI, the suspect says he will not tell her or anyone else what he did with the victim’s body
Jurors in a federal death-penalty trial heard secretly recorded audio on Friday in which a former University of Illinois doctoral student describes to his girlfriend how he killed a visiting scholar from China, calling the 26-year-old woman “valiant” as she tried to fight back.
The News-Gazette reported that the recording of Brendt Christensen was made by his girlfriend when she wore a wire for the FBI as the two attended a campus vigil on June 29, 2017, for the missing scholar, Zhang Yingying. Christensen was arrested the next day.
Prosecutors at the trial in Peoria have said Christensen posed as a police officer to lure Zhang into his car on June 9, 2017, after deciding he would kill someone that day.
Jurors watched a video of Christensen explaining to an FBI agent that he was not in a good mood at the time and the woman looked “panicky” when he spotted her and offered her a ride near the Champaign-Urbana campus.
Her body has not been found.
In the recording, Christensen told his girlfriend about choking Zhang after he bound her and took her to his flat, appearing to describe with admiration how ferociously she resisted.
“She was valiant,” he said.