PEORIA, Ill. _ A federal jury on Monday found Brendt Christensen guilty in the kidnapping and murder of Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang in Champaign-Urbana in 2017.
The jury reached the verdict after less than two hours of deliberations. The 12-member panel will now be asked to decide whether Christensen, 29, should be sentenced to death for the crime. That process is expected to begin July 8.
Christensen sat expressionless as the verdict was read.
The verdict did not come as a surprise _ Christensen's attorneys admitted in their opening statement that he killed Zhang, a 26-year-old visiting scholar at the University of Illinois.
In closing arguments Monday, his attorneys described their client as a once happily married and successful student at the university who became consumed with dark thoughts and struggled with alcohol.
But defense attorney Elisabeth Pollock told the jury that "there's no excuse, there's no justification for what he did. It's not alcohol's fault or another person's fault."
When Christensen began experimenting with BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism) with his then-girlfriend Terra Bullis earlier in 2017, it established a link for him between sex and violence, Pollock said.
While admitting Christensen's guilty, defense attorneys have taken issue with some pieces of prosecutors' case. Prosecutors are asking the jury to assume that the things Christensen said to Bullis, who wore a FBI wire, are true, Pollock said in her closing.
Christensen during one conversation confessed to killing Zhang as he and Bullis attended a memorial walk for her weeks after her June 9, 2017, disappearance.
He told Bullis that Zhang was his 13th victim, for which there is "no evidence whatsoever," Pollock said.
An FBI agent testified during the trial that no evidence has been found linking Christensen to other victims.
In the June 29, 2017, recorded conversation, which jurors heard in court last week and is one of nine Bullis recorded for the FBI, Christensen described in detail how he sexually assaulted and killed Zhang _ choking her, beating her with a baseball bat, stabbing her and ultimately decapitating her.
"Although he raped her, this was not about sex, though he tortured her, this was not about BDSM," Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene Miller said during closing arguments. "This was always about murder."
Christensen saw Zhang as "an object" to fulfill his desire to kill for the sake of killing, Miller said.
Footage captured by a camera at a parking garage showed a black Saturn Astra pull up next to Zhang, who had just missed a bus on her way to look at a new apartment. Prosecutors said Christensen posed as an undercover police officer, which he had done earlier that day when asking another young woman to get into his car. She didn't get into the car, but Zhang did.
"It's chilling to think about the fear and panic she must have felt in that car when she realized he wasn't a police officer, he wasn't taking her (where she wanted to go) and she was locked in that car," Miller said.
Jurors heard testimony over eight days from Christensen's former girlfriend, ex-wife, FBI agents and analysts, Zhang's long-term boyfriend and her professor. Jurors also saw text messages between Christensen and his then-girlfriend, and saw his interviews with law enforcement. Christensen did not testify.
Zhang's body has not been found.
