PEORIA, Ill. • A former University of Illinois doctoral student was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole for the 2017 rape and murder of a 26-year-old scholar from China, prompting her family to beg the killer to reveal where her body is so the remains can be returned home.

The jurors returned their decision against Brendt Christensen, 30, on their second day of deliberations. The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month in the killing of Yingying Zhang. Prosecutors and Zhang’s family had pushed for the death penalty, but a jury decision on that had to be unanimous. If even one juror opposed, then the life sentence was applied.

Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, but Christensen was prosecuted under federal law. If he had been sentenced to death, he would have been executed in neighboring Indiana.

Prosecutors said Christensen raped, choked and stabbed Zhang before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her. Christensen has never revealed what he did with Zhang’s remains.

Christensen lowered his head and looked back smiling at his mother when he heard that his life would be spared.

Zhang’s family said in a statement that they did not agree with the jury’s decision to sentence him to life in prison rather than death.

Speaking through an interpreter, her father, Ronggao Zhang, appealed to Christensen to reveal where her body is so that the family can take her remains back to China.

“If you have any humanity left in your soul, please end our torment. Please let us bring Yingying home,” Ronggao Zhang said.

The U.S. Attorney for Central Illinois, John Milhiser, said that efforts to find Zhang’s remains would continue. As he spoke, Zhang’s mother, Lifeng Ye, sobbed and the woman standing next to her appeared to be holding her upright.

Among the most poignant testimony during the penalty phase was from Zhang’s mother. She told jurors how the family was devastated by the loss of her beloved daughter, who had aspired to become a professor and to help her working class family financially.

“How am I supposed to carry on living?” she said in testimony by video. “I really don’t know how to carry on.”

She said Christensen dashed Zhang’s dreams and those of her family. Yingying was killed months before she had planned to get married.

“My daughter did not get to wear a wedding dress,” Lifeng Ye said. “I really wanted to be a grandma.”

Zhang’s father, Ronggao Zhang, cried when shown a photo of the two of them at a train station as she left for the United States.

“My life without her will not be complete,” he told jurors.

Her boyfriend, Xiaolin Hou, testified that the family’s only hope was that Zhang’s body will be found so they can bury her in China. Prosecutors indicated in court filings that Christensen may have destroyed the remains.

Christensen’s parents took the witness stand, too, and appealed to jurors to spare their son’s life. Both said they loved him unconditionally.

Michael Christensen said the thought of his son being executed was unbearable, prompting Brendt Christensen to break down crying in a rare display of emotion.

Yingying Zhang

courtesy photo