MURDERED: Yingying Zhang

[00:00] Hi, Crime Junkies. It's Britt, and I have big news. One of my favorite seasonal shows, CounterClock, is back with a brand new season, and it is wild. Host Delia D'Ambra is digging into the 2008 Lane Bryant murders. I mean, this isn't just a recap. It is a reinvestigation. She's talking to law enforcement, people from the community, even sources who have never spoken publicly until now. And you know I love a show that asks all the questions. Listen to CounterClock Season 8 now wherever you get your podcasts. [00:30] Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And our Crime Junkie listeners will know that violent crime doesn't always make sense. I mean, just last week, we told you a story where one of the theories or possibilities of the case is that someone totally random could have committed the crime with almost no motive at all. So while some killers and other offenders can have motivations guiding their actions, we all know that others don't. These attackers often have no real motive, [01:00] incentive. They just do violent things because they want to. This can often lead to cases where the investigation struggles to find a suspect. And even when they do, answers can be hard to come by. And this is without a doubt the case in Zhang Yingying's story, which began unfolding in a popular college town back in 2017. [01:23] Music

[01:54] It was Friday, June 9th in 2017, when friends, acquaintances, and even professors of Yingying's began to notice her absence. She was normally a very punctual and reliable person who on this day seemed to have gone off the grid. No one could reach her by phone or by text. And her friends at the university knew that she was planning to meet with an apartment manager that afternoon to look at getting a new place. But that couldn't have taken all afternoon. Like, that should have been very short. [02:24] She'd been gone several hours at this point, which was a major cause for concern. [02:29] Around 9:24 that night, an associate professor who she was friends with reported her missing to campus police. This led to an officer heading out to speak with Yingying's friends who all expressed worry for the missing woman. Now this officer was able to enter Yingying's apartment and quickly discovered that Yingying wasn't home. Surprisingly though, most of her belongings were still there, so it was unlikely that she'd left voluntarily. [02:54] When the officer learns more about Yingying, he's told that she's a foreign exchange student, originally from a small city in southeastern China, and she was the oldest of two children. And she earned good grades. She was always near the top of her class. She had hoped to become a professor when she was older. And, you know, when she was young, she began to express herself musically as she became a teenager. She sang. She played the guitar.

[03:24] as Cute Horse, which is a great band name. I love it. Yeah. So she was just like this all around, like friendly, fun, expressive person. So following secondary school, she attended both undergrad and graduate school in China and graduated in 2016. Now, while she was in college, she started dating somebody who she felt madly in love with. And the two dated for years and [03:54] However, before they could marry, Yingying decided to live abroad for a year. So following her graduation in 2016, she decided to become a visiting scholar for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is the largest research organization in the world. And there she wanted to focus on photosynthesis and crop productivity, particularly in soybeans and corn. [04:24] Now, I didn't study abroad ever, but this has to be the most life-altering, flip-your-world-upside-down kind of experience. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I haven't spent a lot of time abroad, but I did spend a couple weeks in Malaysia and Singapore, and that was a culture shock. [04:44] a quarter of a year I spent in Miami... [04:46] That even turned my life upside down. Yeah, you were in the same country. So I can't imagine. I mean, she was away from everything she'd ever known, away from her parents, her brother, her friends, her fiance, and even China itself. However, Yingying was excited for the trip and the opportunities that it presented for her future. When she first got to Illinois, she began renting an apartment at the University of Illinois Orchard Downs Complex, which was roughly one mile south of campus. And it was super affordable for her.

[05:16] of months, she began looking for something a little closer to her work center to make her commute a bit more manageable. [05:23] And this is exactly why she had taken that meeting on June 9th. But knowing all of this about Yingying, knowing that she didn't have a car, knowing that she was here in the U.S. without family, her fiancé, and she only had a couple of friends who now couldn't get a hold of her, the responding officer began to suspect that foul play could have been involved in her absence. And Yingying was officially named a missing person. [05:46] The first thing police needed to do to track her down was to figure out her last movements. According to her friends, they knew that she'd left to go meet with the manager of the new apartment complex. So they go talk to this manager and he says, yeah, we had a meeting scheduled for like two o'clock. And at 1.39, I got some texts from her saying basically she was going to be 10 minutes late. And again, she didn't have a car. So in order for her to get to the apartment, she was going to have to take two buses. So it's about a 30 minute trip. So. [06:14] He's expecting her to be 10 minutes late. When she still hasn't shown up by 2.38, the manager texts her again saying, you know, are you still planning on coming by? But he never got any kind of response from her. So what they pieced together from this is that she likely had been hanging out in her apartment until about 1.39. Whether she fell asleep or just lost track of time or whatever, she realized she was going to be late for the meeting. So shortly after texting the manager, she would have left her house. [06:44] like 145. [06:45] The rest of her movements, they were able to track down using security footage. They know she caught the Teal Line bus, which took her from the Orchard Down Apartments complex where she lived to the intersection of Springfield and Matthew Street. There, she's picked up on camera. Now, she hopped off the bus and she was hoping to catch the 22 Limited. This is the next bus that she was going to take to One North Apartments where she was hoping to move into.

[07:15] already off the bus and waiting that she realized the connection she needed to get on that 22 limited picked up on the other side of the road. So she could still see the bus as it's picking up and as it's starting to go off. So she starts running down the road after the bus trying to catch it. But that didn't stop the bus from accelerating down the road with her just falling behind about a block and a half. That seems kind of rude. Like why wouldn't the bus driver just [07:45] Totally within company policy for most bus companies or public transportation. Drivers are not supposed to stop for pedestrians on the wrong side of the road. Because doing so generally leads to people illegally crossing. They can get hit by cars. Like it's turned into a nightmare. It's like a liability thing, yeah. Exactly. So now that she's missed her connection, Yingying returned to the bus stop, slightly defeated. And she knew the next bus wasn't coming for several minutes. [08:15] manager. [08:16] And it was here. [08:18] at exactly this point. [08:20] when police are watching this video, that they get their first clue as to what happened to Yingying. And dread sweeps over them when they realize what they're seeing. [08:32] . [08:34] I recently learned that after working out, performance and recovery come down to what's happening in your blood. Now, I pay a lot more attention to what's happening inside my body. And here's what most people overlook. Training gives your body the stimulus, but your internal environment determines what happens next. Thankfully, function can help you see exactly what's going on under the hood. Things like your glucose, whether your body is burning clean or running on fumes. Your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, which one is winning the inflammation battle. Your DHEAS, one of the building blocks your body uses to make testosterone.

[09:04] one of the first things to quietly decline. When these markers are off, you can do everything right and still feel like you're fighting against yourself. Check in on your health. Function provides over 160 labs for $1 per day and member pricing on MRI and CT scans. Join at functionhealth.com slash crimejunkie or use gift code crimejunkie25 for a $25 credit toward your membership. [09:24] Yingying is standing there, alone, on the sidewalk, and they see a black car drive by. Then, [09:33] Three minutes later, the same black car drives by. But this time, it doesn't pass her. The car stops next to the curb, and the driver seems to have started chatting with Yingying, because on the video, they can see her leaning into the passenger side window, and the two, the driver and Yingying, seem to be speaking to one another for about a minute. Whatever the driver said, or however desperate Yingying was to get to her meeting at the [10:03] was convinced to get into the car with this person. [10:07] Yingying shuts the passenger door, the car accelerates forward out of frame, and Yingying would never be seen or heard from again. [10:18] While the video was helpful in determining when and where she disappeared from, it only gave police one really tangible lead to follow, the car. They could tell that it was a black car. It was a four-door Saturn Astra. But they couldn't get a plate number or really even a clear description of the driver other than he appeared to be a white male.

[10:48] And the fact that they could tell it was a four door and not a two door narrowed it down even more. [10:56] They look into this car and thankfully there weren't many of these in the region. In fact, there were only 18 registered in Illinois-Champaign County. So this helped them create a list of people to speak to, which would expedite the investigation significantly. [11:11] In those first couple of days, while police are making their list of Saturn owners that they want to talk to, a few of Yingying's loved ones flew from China to Illinois. This included her father and her fiancé, and later on, her mother and brother would join them as well. And they all wanted to pitch in on search efforts and help raise awareness for the case. And they told the media, the press, anyone who had listened, that we're not going to return to China until Yingying is found. [11:37] And it wasn't just the family and the police looking. The disappearance of the 26-year-old student had galvanized the large foreign student population who helped organize search efforts around campus. They even began spreading into the neighboring towns and cities. But unfortunately, they were unable to pick up any trace of Yingying. Investigators and searchers were unable to uncover any clues pointing to her whereabouts. What about her cell phone? Were police able to track down that at all? [12:07] They were able to see that Yingying had been texting the manager of the apartment complex, just like he said. But just minutes after she had gotten into that black Saturn, her cell phone stopped peeing off of cell towers in the area. So to police, this indicated that it had either been turned off or it had been destroyed.

[12:26] They might not need her phone records to find their suspect because within two to three days, police had met with or spoken to most of those Saturn owners in the area, including a young college student from the area who quickly became one of their main suspects. Just a few days after Yingying's disappearance, police went to the apartment of a man named Brent Christensen. He lived in Champaign, Illinois with his wife. And as police approached the apartment, do you want to know what they first noticed? [12:56] black Astra? Of course. It's the vehicle that led them there in the first place, sitting right in the parking lot, a 2008 black Saturn Astra, which looked exactly like the car in the surveillance video. So police walked up, knocked on the apartment door and met Brent Christensen for the first time. This is just like, you know, their first meeting, very general. They ask him a few questions, mostly about his whereabouts for the few days prior, particularly between the hours of two [13:26] that Friday and he's basically like, I don't know, I probably would have been sleeping, maybe playing some video games all day long. But he makes it seem like his afternoon was a bit of a blur. So in this chat, Brent did verify that the black Saturn was his and he allowed police to search the vehicle. [13:46] But they weren't able to find anything of real value just by glancing around in it. And after speaking to Brent for a bit, they end up leaving empty-handed. And they continued down their list of possible suspects and continued looking for any vehicles that might match the description. As these investigators continued to hit the pavement, so to speak, some other officers continued analyzing the surveillance footage. And within another day or two, they were able to learn more about that vehicle that she'd gotten into.

[14:16] four-door black Saturn Astra, the vehicle, they also could tell, you know, again, this footage is like super grainy. It's not what you might be imagining, but they're able to like clarify it a little bit, analyze it. They realize that it has a sunroof. And after inspecting it even closer, they find that the front passenger side hubcap of the vehicle was cracked. And it was cracked in such a way that it would have a very unique look. So officers decide to revisit all the Saturns [14:46] previously looked at in an effort to see which one really fit this description. And after looking at all 18 vehicles again, they discovered only one fit this criteria, and it was Brent Christensen Saturn, which was black, had four doors, had the sunroof, and had the exact same damage along the front hubcap. And to the naked eye, those vehicles were virtually identical. So now we are at June 14th. [15:16] Christensen's car as the vehicle that Yingying got into, they obtain a search warrant to search the vehicle more extensively. In particular, they're looking for any evidence that Yingying had been inside the car, maybe hair follicles, DNA, clothing fibers, whatever. If they could prove that she'd been in that car at all, they could prove that Brent Christensen had been the last person to have seen her and likely had lied to investigators about his whereabouts that day. I mean, which is a crime in and of itself.

[15:46] This is a production of the U.S. Department of State. [16:06] During this interview, Brent went back on his original statement. Now he does remember what he was doing, and he told police that he had actually been driving around the U of I campus that previous Friday, again, the same day that Yingying disappeared. He made it seem like he just confused his days, like, oh, I didn't lie to you before. I was mistaking Thursday for Friday or something like that. His story is totally changing. [16:36] he said looked distressed. Now he says he never got this young woman's name, so he wasn't sure if it was Ying Ying. But he does now say that he stopped and offered this woman a ride, which she accepted. And he says that they drove off and a minute or two later, the young woman became panicked, he says. So he pulls over to the side of the road, lets her out in a residential [17:02] That's it. He drives away. [17:05] ludicrous story I've ever heard. Like going from not even leaving the house that day to being on the campus, seeing her, talking to her, and then, oh yes, actually I did pick her up. [17:16] Oh, but I dropped her off. Yeah, even if you confuse the days. Like, if police are coming asking you about...

[17:22] you know, a woman who's like gone missing. [17:25] you what you thought it was thursday not friday you know what i mean like it's not adding up clearly his story is changing and police didn't really seem to buy this story either at least not the particular series of events and they didn't think that brent christensen had just like so happened to pick up a woman minutes before she disappeared forever so as they spoke to brent the police officers back at his apartment start talking to his wife who he had been at home with [17:55] that Yingying had gone missing. So there wasn't much information that she could offer, but she did allow police to search their apartment and she gave them consent to take away multiple pieces of potential evidence. And this was like their computer, cell phones, like anything like that, that they could potentially get something off of. [18:25] He was actually a graduate student at the University of Illinois, and he lived in the city of Champaign, Illinois, with his wife. The two had met while attending the University of Wisconsin and had [18:35] And they had married back in 2013. And they were at the time in 2013 in like their early 20s. So for a while, their marriage was stable. Things seemed to be fine. But in the winter of 2016, things began to take a turn for the worse. Brent started ignoring his classes. His grades began to suffer. And eventually he had to fully drop out of his doctorate program in physics. And instead, he set his sights on obtaining a master's degree,

[19:05] seemed like a derail of all of his life's ambitions. Now, in this time period, his relationship with his wife had begun to fall apart. He began turning to drugs and alcohol, which only made things worse. And he began to develop a dependency on alcohol in particular that really drove a wedge between him and his wife. Now, eventually, they reached a point of no return. And in an effort to keep their marriage intact, they decided what they needed was an open relationship. So Brent's wife quickly [19:35] got a boyfriend and Brent himself joined several dating websites and apps where he described himself as being in an open relationship. He was like very honest about it. And he got a girlfriend of his own the following month and she began to introduce him to the world of BDSM. [19:53] Normally, like, wouldn't be an issue. Right. Like, it's two consenting adults. Like, everyone has their thing. Sure. However, his introduction to this BDSM world through his girlfriend only seemed to exacerbate Brent's existing issues, which had apparently been festering for months at this point. You see, he started falling into a spiral of repeated dark thoughts, which were only made worse by his substance abuse. [20:23] Once before Yingying's disappearance, Brent met with a counselor at the University of Illinois, and he admitted that his marriage was on the rocks and contributed a part of that to his own shortcomings, in particular, his alcoholism. However, in this conversation, he also admitted that he'd recently been drawn to certain very specific negative thoughts, not only causing harm to himself, but thoughts about harming other people.

[20:53] horrible people like Ted Bundy, who he seemed to admire for their ability to kill without being caught. Yeah, that's a pretty big red flag. Yeah. And I think that's putting it mildly. So during this conversation with the counselor, Brent said that these issues, you know, they're all in the past. I have no desire to act out on these dark thoughts. However, months later, these statements would become incredibly incriminating. So if we fast forward now, [21:23] And during his interview, he made himself out to be a pretty normal guy. So he denies any wrongdoing. [21:32] The only thing I admit to, which he obviously knows is the only thing they could prove, is that Yingying had gotten into his car, but he said that's it. He sticks to his story. He lets her out just down the block. He refuses to budge and is like, listen, she got in. I didn't even know her name. I had nothing to do with what happened to her. However, while he's speaking to the police and holding firm on this, they... [21:52] get their extensive search warrant for his car and all of those electronics that they pulled from his house. And so while they're searching... [22:00] What they find in the vehicle is that his vehicle had been extensively cleaned recently. And... [22:07] What was strange was that while the entire car had been cleaned, in particular, the area around the front passenger seat had been cleaned like way more diligently than anywhere else and consumed like the majority of the work. There was a real focus on the passenger side where Yingying would have gotten in.

[22:26] But what they find on his phone and internet history are even more incriminating evidence. There, they discovered that he'd become enamored with abductions. And in fact, his exposure to the BDSM community had exposed him to some extreme fetishes, which included forced abductions. Like he was looking up stuff about abducting women, like how-to fantasy videos, stuff like that. [22:56] term interest in these violent abductions as well as his idolization of serial killers. But even though he seemed like their guy, none of this was getting them any closer to finding out what happened to Yingying or where she was right now. So proving that he did something to her just on him being a creepy guy wasn't going to be enough. Police decided they couldn't arrest Brent. But [23:20] they could put him under a microscope. So they let him go, but they start to surveil him. And their hope was that he would lead them back to Yingying somehow, whether she was alive, whether she was dead. Like maybe he would panic and try and cover up the crime or go revisit somewhere, something like that. But in their surveillance, police had someone on their team who Brent never expected. [23:50] wire. Now, Brent spent a lot of time with his girlfriend who he'd been seeing for a couple months at this point, and they had become incredibly close. She seemed to spend more time with Brent than his own wife did. So she was probably the closest person to him during this time span. Now, she literally recorded the conversations with Brent for the better part of two weeks. And I think deep down, she did this and she even kind of alluded to this, that she

[24:20] She felt like she was proving her own case. See, like, he couldn't have done anything. He hasn't said anything to me, not even, like, insinuated. Right. But after two weeks of him not saying a single incriminating thing, the floodgates opened in the most unlikely of places. [24:39] . [24:40] For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. [24:59] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now. [25:06] wherever you get your podcasts. [25:10] On Thursday, June 29th, this is 20 days after Yingying's disappearance, her family members and her fiancé organized a memorial walk on campus, which they hoped would raise awareness for her still unsolved case. This memorial walk was attended by hundreds of students who came out to show support for Yingying's loved ones, and among them was none other than Brent Christensen, who attended the event with his girlfriend. Now, [25:39] Brent, again, at this point, is totally unaware that his girlfriend was quite literally wearing a wire. And he made several alarming comments during this event saying that he only came out because he wanted to see how many people attended. Then he said that everyone was there for him as if he was the star of the show. And I don't know what his girlfriend had to have been thinking when all this was coming out.

[26:09] saw what police had been seeing in him, but she didn't drop it. That evening, over drinks, Brent would end up detailing to her exactly what happened to Ying Ying. He confessed to abducting, beating, raping, and torturing her in his apartment and eventually hitting her in the head with a baseball bat. A baseball bat that he had lamented was now in police custody. [26:39] Yinging's body to his bathtub and then stabbing her in the neck before decapitating her. Oh my God. During this confession, which took place over several hours, Brent proceeded to get increasingly intoxicated. And he would even brag about being an amazing killer who had killed multiple women over several years. And by his count, he said he'd murdered about 13 women over roughly a decade [27:09] teen years old. However, in his words, Ying Ying was the only victim whose disappearance had led back to him. The rest, he said, were women whose names he didn't even know. And he tried to brag to his girlfriend and say that he was just like Ted Bundy. [27:27] I found something particularly chilling within the trial transcripts when Brent is talking to his girlfriend about Ying Ying. He said, quote, Ying Ying is gone. She is never going to be found. The FBI has looked for her. The police and the FBI don't know where she is. I'm apparently very good at this. The family won't leave until she's found and they are going to leave empty handed because they will never find her.

[27:57] you know, after hearing all of this, now had confirmation from Brent himself that he'd been involved in the disappearance and death of Yingying. And so that following day, June 30th, 2017, which also happened to be Brent's 28th birthday, he was arrested. So after his arrest, police began conducting a more thorough search of his apartment and eventually found evidence that seemed to validate what Brent had confessed to the prior day. [28:25] What do you mean by more thorough? I thought they had already searched it. [28:29] Honestly, I have no clue. Like, I would have hoped that the first time they went through his place would have been, like, with a fine-tooth comb. I don't know, like, the extent of their search warrant. I don't know if they were just looking for items that first time. And when they came back, they're looking for blood. I honestly have no idea. But I think based on his story, what I imagine is maybe they had come back and spent, like, [28:53] extra time and given particular interest to maybe that bathroom if he took her in there and that's where he stabbed her and decapitated her. Okay. Perhaps they were focused on that. Following his arrest, Brent was charged with federal kidnapping, which, if it had led to the death of someone, could result in either life imprisonment or the death penalty. On July 12th, he was officially indicted by a grand jury, and on July 20th, he would plead not guilty to the crimes he'd been charged with. [29:22] Now, the next two years would pass with the state and defense preparing their cases. I mean, this was a massive case. And all the while, Brent refused to cooperate with investigators, refusing to give up the location of Ying Ying's remains. At least that's what the public would be told at the time. His actual trial didn't start until this past summer, June of 2019. And this is when the public learned a whole lot more.

[29:52] Christensen had become enamored with dark, violent fetishes, in particular those abduction fetishes in which he would abduct someone, particularly a young woman, and force her to do sexual acts out of her control. He would abduct this woman and force her into a large duffel bag in his fantasy, which... [30:12] just so happened to match one that he had purchased online just days before Yingying's disappearance. [30:19] And all of this seemed to fit with the official narrative that prosecutors were working to establish. Their narrative was that Brent Christensen had premeditated every facet of this crime down to the victim profile. He was going after a young woman of small stature that he could easily overpower and force into his duffel bag and who had no official link back to him. And that's what led him to prowling the University of Illinois campus on that day, the 9th. [30:49] saying it's not like he drove by and it was like a crime of opportunity he had been driving around the entire day prowling looking for the perfect victim and it eventually led him to yinging who accepted a ride out of necessity or some other reason and made her the perfect victim [31:08] So along the lines of this premeditation, what they brought up in trial is they specifically read a text that I think is pretty ominous that he had sent to his girlfriend. And here's a direct quote from the trial transcript. Quote, fading into nothingness is the default for most people. You want to know what terrifies me? It's that. I will not fade away. I refuse. I don't care how I will be remembered, just that I am. Good, bad, revered, infamous, I don't care. Think back over the past 2,000 years.

[31:38] Who do you know? The people who pushed the limits and those who supported them. Fading into nothingness is not an option. I would rather destroy humanity than let that happen. I know most would disagree. End quote. Wow. That is... [31:53] Some really dark stuff. It really is. I mean, and it shows you where his mindset was. I mean, again, he is plotting and planning something so that he can become infamous and hopefully be remembered. Now, another thing we learned after that trial started was that Yingying might not have been his first attempt at abduction that day. [32:23] officer. He had intended to lure the woman inside his vehicle, but she refused and eventually informed the police about this man, like basically attempting to abduct her. Okay, so maybe Yinging didn't just go with him because she needed the ride. She could have fallen for this undercover bit, right? Yeah. So according to CBS Chicago, that's what they're saying federal prosecutors are alleging, that this was his ruse and she had fallen for it, whether it was because she was [32:53] and thought maybe a police officer was giving it to her maybe because she was from another country and not used to, you know, what you need to be asking of an undercover officer. So it very well could be. Now, based on the evidence that police gathered, it's believed that Brent had incapacitated Ying Ying inside his vehicle, forced her into that large duffel bag that he purchased a week prior, and then he was able to sneak her into his apartment where he raped and murdered her over a span of several hours.

[33:23] to her inside his bathroom by hitting her in the head with a baseball bat, cutting her throat with a knife, and ultimately decapitating her in his bathtub. Following this, the prosecution alleged that he disposed of her remains and then disposed of her personal items in numerous garbage cans throughout campus, trying to separate them so none of them could be traced back to her. After this, he began an exhaustive cleanup effort, which lasted through most of the weekend. And again, [33:53] He had the place to himself. He made numerous trips to local stores where he was buying several cleaning items, like roughly half a dozen bottles of Drano, which he used to erase all trace of yinging from his bathroom drain. Yet, despite his exhaustive cleanup efforts, which focused, again, primarily on his bathroom and his vehicle, Brent missed numerous spots. He cleaned his carpets but missed the flooring underneath the carpets. [34:23] to find numerous red spots, which were later determined to be blood that positively matched with yin-yang. Okay, so how did Brent's defense even try to argue against that? [34:35] I mean, I feel like it's a pretty... [34:37] clear-cut, [34:38] case of murder, right? Yeah, so here's the thing, is they didn't try to argue against the fact that he did it. In their opening statement, Brent's attorneys argued that he indeed killed Ying Ying, verifying that much of what the state alleged was in fact true. However, what they pushed back against were like some of the minor discrepancies in the case, in particular, the confession that he'd made to his girlfriend, which is what informed much of the follow-up investigation.

[35:08] attorneys argued that he was incredibly drunk at the time. So like fruit of the forbidden tree. I don't know. I mean, basically, they're saying like he was super drunk. So you wouldn't have had that if he wasn't super drunk. And then you wouldn't have got the rest of the stuff. So the rest of the stuff doesn't. I don't know. To me, like to me, it seems crazy. And luckily, I'm not the only one who thinks that because it was surprisingly not very effective. Brent's attorneys seem to place the blame for his crimes on his substance abuse. But they also debated the merits [35:38] I had found no evidence of Brent being a serial killer or really committing any other crimes throughout his life. So much of what he said in that original confession could be chalked to BS. So I don't know if they're saying like, you know, that's BS. This other stuff could be their defense is just to me very muddy and I didn't really understand the point of it. It's almost them just continuing saying like, but maybe not. Yeah, I think the logic was to try to like pivot certain arguments in favor of the defense. But I [36:06] It didn't work. The jury would deliberate for less than two hours before returning their verdict. And on June 24th, 2019, Brent Christensen was found guilty of kidnapping resulting in death and two charges of making false statements to FBI agents. He would have to wait a few weeks for his sentence, but he received good news when he learned that he would not be facing the death penalty. Rather, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. I mean... [36:35] it still doesn't seem like enough. You know, like this case is just so heartbreaking and tragic. And like you said at the beginning of the episode, really, truly senseless. Yeah, but wait till you hear this part. So following his sentencing, it was announced that in November of 2018, this is months before the trial even started, Brent had actually disclosed the location of Ying Ying's remains. However, he'd done so as part of an immunity deal,

[37:05] be used against him in trial. So they had even more information that... [37:11] they possibly could have used to secure a harsher sentence, but they didn't because of this deal. So following the resolution of the trial, that's when this information can come out. And prosecutors were able to meet with Yingying's family and her fiance, and they told them about the information that they gathered, which they had unfortunately been sitting on for the better part of a year. [37:33] So Yingying's family is actually the ones who released a statement. And in their statement, they alleged that Brent Christensen had disposed of Yingying's remains in three garbage bags, which were placed in dumpsters at his apartment complex and picked up by the Waste Disposal Company on June 12th. This is just three days after her disappearance. [38:03] impossible for officials then or now to find her remains. Yeah, I can imagine that would be an incredibly lengthy and expensive process. And you'd have to get like some sort of green light from the government, right? Oh, yeah. And I mean, unfortunately, as far as I know, that process hasn't even started yet. And I'm not sure if it ever will. So it remains unknown if Yingying's family will be able to make good on their word of not returning to China without her. But only time [38:33] Despite making himself out to be a methodical serial killer, the likes of which hadn't been seen since Ted Bundy, Brent Christensen was nothing more than an opportunistic coward who took advantage of a woman less than half his size. Police would even reveal that in the months after his arrest, Brent had agreed to give up all the information about the case in exchange for a life sentence because he was so afraid to lose his own life.

[39:00] At the time, prosecutors had rejected the deal, hoping to pursue the death penalty through the trial process. Unfortunately, that subjected Ying's family to a really lengthy trial in which horrific details of her death were aired in a public forum, making it so that her family was basically victimized again and again. And as they had to learn about what happened to their poor 26-year-old daughter day after day, I just can't imagine being put through that. [39:29] To date, Zhang Yingying's remains have not been found. And despite Brent receiving a life sentence for kidnapping her and her murder, she very much remains a missing person. I only hope for her family's sake that her remains can be found and return to her home country where she can finally be laid to rest. [39:49] If you'd like to see pictures from this case or check out our sources, read all the trial transcripts, you can find those on our website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. We will be back next week with a brand new episode. [40:19] Thank you.

[40:43] you [40:45] *music* [40:48] *music* [40:51] Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? [40:59] Okay, Crime Junkies, you know, I absolutely love a twist and a turn, especially when it comes to people who turn out to be someone they're not. That's why I have been obsessed with the podcast Chameleon. Every Thursday, host Josh Dean deep dives into a scam so bizarre, it will leave you wondering, how did they get away with that? [41:17] It is truly one of my favorite podcasts right now and I've been listening for years. [41:21] I think you'll love it too. [41:22] Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.