Brendt Christensen

(Newser) - Yingying Zhang's father was quiet Thursday as he watched a judge sentence Brendt Christensen to life in prison for his daughter's rape and murder. Afterward, quiet he was not. "If you have any humanity left in your soul, please help end our torment," Ronggao Zhang urged...

(Newser) - A former University of Illinois doctoral student is facing life in prison for the rape and murder of a 26-year-old scholar from China whom he abducted from a bus stop near campus in 2017, after a federal jury said Thursday that it failed to agree on sentencing him to death....

(Newser) - "Brendt Christensen killed Yingying Zhang," the defense attorney said in his opening statement Wednesday, "and nothing we say or do during this phase of the trial is intended to sidestep or deny" that fact. Zhang was a visiting Chinese researcher at the University of Illinois, the Chicago ...

(Newser) - A man who liked to surf kidnapping-fetish websites will face the death penalty in the disappearance of a Chinese graduate student. A federal grand jury on Tuesday slapped Brendt Christensen, 28, with one count of kidnapping resulting in the death of Yingying Zhang, 26, whose body has not been found,...