[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- She missed the bus just by a second.
All of a sudden, she disappears.
- She harbored this hope to continue her doctoral studies
In the u.S., but then going back to china
To be a leader in her discipline
Of environmental engineering.
- Maybe this is a situation where she was kidnapped.
Or she's just confused,
Something happened to her medically.
- There was almost an exact 1-minute conversation
Between the driver of this vehicle and yingying.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
[suspenseful music]
- June 2017.
26-year-old yingying zhang is boldly following her dreams.
She's a visiting scholar from china
At the university of illinois,
Conducting research on crop production.
♪ ♪
- Yingying got here in April of 2017.
I've got a picture of mom, dad, and yingying
At the train station when she got on the train at home
To leave to come to illinois.
♪ ♪
She was really, really interested in crop production,
And improving methods of crop production back in china.
She's in her early 20s, she's at school,
She's learning, she's happy.
♪ ♪
- Before coming to america, yingying grew up
Over 7,000 miles away in southeastern china.
She's the oldest child in a close-knit family of four.
- Going to college,
Moving from three hours away from home was a lot.
I can't imagine what it's like to move
From a different country,
Trying to navigate life that way.
I know that she did miss her family.
She would call them often.
And I know that they missed her a lot too.
[bright piano music]
- ♪ tell me, why'd you have to go and make ♪
- She loved to sing, and she was part
Of a band called cute horse.
She is someone who is genuinely very, very kind.
She has a certain innocence to her.
She was very close to her-- to her parents,
Especially to her mother.
- Ronggao was the father.
He is a truck driver back in china.
Lifeng is the mom, and she was in poor health
And very fragile.
Life was a struggle for them.
Yingying was a dutiful daughter who
Performed many of the functions within the household.
- Coming from families with limited means,
Academic excellence was seen as the only way out.
♪ ♪
She did her master's degree at peking university's
Graduate school, where she studied
Environmental engineering.
Afterwards, she received a researcher position
At the chinese academy of sciences.
Her monthly salary was 4,000 yuan,
Which would probably be about 700 u.S. Dollars.
And she would use that to supplement
Her family's income.
[upbeat music]
- Now, in 2017, yingying accepts
A one-year research position as a visiting scholar
At the university of illinois in urbana-champaign.
- Champaign-urbana is a modest-sized community,
A small town in a lot of ways.
The students travel all around town, ride bicycles.
It's very pastoral.
And there are a significant number of students,
Undergrad and graduate, from china.
- Being able to go to another country,
Especially the united states,
To pursue further studies, especially
Trained as a scientist, is--
Is an affirmation of personal excellence.
♪ ♪
- On June 9, 2017, two months after she arrives
In the united states, yingying schedules
A 2:00 p.M. Appointment to tour a new apartment.
- Yingying was excited to be moving.
She was meeting one of the leasing agents
To tour it and potentially sign.
- She has the opportunity to move
To a new apartment in north urbana,
Which is north of campus.
And so she has to take the bus to get down to central campus,
Then she has to get off that bus
And catch another bus that's going to take her
North on lincoln out of campus,
Where it's student housing.
There's a significant number of students.
[ominous music]
- Five hours later, at 7:00 p.M. That night,
Yingying is supposed to meet a group of her labmates
For their regularly scheduled meeting.
She never arrives.
They call and text, but no one can reach her.
- Yingying was always on time.
So her labmates thought that was really weird,
That she didn't show up, because yingying would never
Not show up to anything without notice.
- I was the head of the department
Yingying was associated with.
I was at the movies with both my sons, and I got out,
And I got a text from the leader
Of the lab group saying, I have a student that's missing.
And then I gave that person a call.
And I just said, have you called the police?
[tense music]
- At 9:24 p.M., yingying's labmates
Report her missing to the university police department.
- This was unusual.
I've never had anything like that happen
With a student gone missing.
We were concerned about her.
We wanted to know what was going on.
- University police officers check her apartment.
She's not there.
But they find cash, important documents,
And belongings, which tells them she didn't go far.
♪ ♪
While searching her apartment, officers locate her diary.
They skim through its pages for clues to her whereabouts.
- One of the last things that she had written in it was,
"life is too short to be ordinary."
I think about that almost, like, weekly, if not daily.
It just really shows how she wanted
To continue living her life.
I think it's just a really heavy thing to hear,
Especially being the last entry there.
[somber music]
- That evening, university of illinois police
Make a difficult phone call to yingying's family in china.
- The thought of yingying leaving china
And coming to the united states had to be scary to the family.
Then to have this happen, they were devastated.
- I think the best word I could use to describe
What they were feeling was horrified.
- On June 10th, the day after yingying was last seen,
University police begin working the case
As a missing persons investigation.
- The university police department
Went to all the hangout places where students congregated.
They searched tirelessly over that weekend for yingying.
[tense music]
- I worked at the school newspaper, "the daily illini."
I think this was such a big case,
And I was just interested in it in that way,
As a student journalist, both of us
Being new to the university.
It just struck me on a personal level.
♪ ♪
- The city of champaign-- it's a smaller city.
There was such a tremendous outpouring
Of support of yingying's family, to find yingying.
- Missing posters for yingying were posted on every corner.
People who were on campus were basically
Surrounded by these posters,
And her picture was everywhere.
♪ ♪
- I was on the faculty at
The university of illinois college of law.
I had a graduate course where I would
Teach international students the american trial system.
It was devastating to us, the thought that
Something like this could happen on our campus
With one of our students.
This is crazy!
This is crazy.
♪ ♪
- The search for yingying intensifies.
- We received a lot of surveillance footage,
And we were able to trace yingying's entire route.
- The investigation takes a dark turn.
- Another university student said
She was approached by a strange individual who presented
Himself as an undercover police officer
And wanted her to get into the car.
- And a community fears the worst.
- Once it's clear that she got in that car,
Now it's kidnapping.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- Monday, June 12th.
Two days after yingying zhang was last seen
At the university of illinois,
Word spreads of her disappearance,
Shaking the quiet college community.
- Police were all around, looking for her.
And students who were still on campus were extremely scared.
- That fear increases as more details of the investigation
Become known.
University police reveal that a check
Of yingying's cell phone records show
The last text she sent was on the afternoon of June 9th,
To the leasing agent for her new apartment.
- At 1:39 p.M., yingying sends a text saying she would
Be about 30 minutes late.
♪ ♪
And she ends up never showing up.
At 2:38 p.M., he checks in again, seeing where she's at.
But there is no answer.
There's no more texts between them.
And the last communication anybody had with yingying
Was with that leasing agent.
- All of a sudden, the communication stops.
She's just gone.
♪ ♪
- Three days into the search, university police reach out
To the fbi for help.
- They had been working almost nonstop
For the last several days,
And were in some ways exhausted and in other ways
Just kind of needing some more resources.
So when they called, our entire office
Showed up to help them with what they had on their hands.
[tense music]
- The first move for fbi agents is
To retrace yingying's steps.
They know on the day she went missing,
She had an appointment to tour an apartment north of campus.
Based on her cell data,
They also know she took the bus.
- She's going to come to main campus on a bus,
Because she doesn't have a car.
She's going to use public transportation.
- We received a lot of surveillance footage
From the metro system.
The buses had a lot of cameras, and from those cameras,
We were actually able to trace yingying's entire route.
- Federal agents scan through the mountain
Of digital footage from June 9th,
The day yingying went missing.
They get their first glimpse of her
When they identify yingying boarding a bus at 1:35 p.M.
- You see yingying get on the bus from her apartment.
She smiles at the bus driver as she shows her bus ticket.
- The surveillance video shows yingying exiting the bus
17 minutes later, at 1:52 p.M.
Then she walks down the street toward another stop
To transfer to another bus.
- The security camera that caught yingying,
You can see yingying trying to catch the next bus.
I think she missed it by a few seconds.
And then you can kind of see her in the footage sort of,
Like, giving up and letting the bus go,
And probably trying to figure out what to do next.
♪ ♪
- Investigators scour these images of yingying
For any clues, and they see something
That piques their interest.
As yingying waits for another bus,
A black four-door vehicle drives up to her and stops.
- There was almost an exact one-minute conversation
Between the driver of this vehicle and yingying,
After which she gets into the passenger seat
And that vehicle proceeds to travel off camera.
♪ ♪
- Once it's clear that she got in that car,
Now it's a potential kidnapping.
[tense music]
- With the case now potentially a kidnapping,
Concern about yingying's safety grows.
Using the extensive surveillance camera system
In the university area, fbi analysts determine
The vehicle is a black four-door saturn astra sedan.
- It had only been manufactured
For a very short period of time.
It was identifiable.
- But they can't read the license plate.
- Everyone within the fbi
And the university police department was
Trying desperately to identify
The license plate on that vehicle,
Or some other mark that can make it highly identifiable,
So that way we could find it.
The vehicle proceeds off of the university grounds,
Off of their campuses,
And goes into a more residential area.
And we lose a lot of the surveillance at that point.
♪ ♪
- Then a report comes in about a concerning incident
On campus on the same day yingying disappeared.
- The university police department actually
Received a call from another university student,
Emily hogan, who said she was approached
By a strange individual in a black vehicle on the 9th.
We called her that night,
And she came in and spoke with us
And told us all about her experience.
She said this individual presented himself
As an undercover police officer
And wanted her to get into the car.
She declined and immediately called the police.
- The fbi believes it could be the same car
Yingying is seen getting into.
- I think yingying was understandably really stressed
With everything that was going on,
And was put in that situation on a seemingly safe campus.
So it makes sense that she would have trusted him
And gotten into the car.
- We didn't know whether other people were
At risk or not,
Whether that person could be out there,
And it might happen again.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- Four days after yingying zhang vanishes
From the university of illinois campus,
The fbi is searching for the black car
She's seen entering on surveillance video.
Agents believe the same saturn astra approached
Another young woman earlier on the day yingying disappeared,
And the driver tried to coerce her into the vehicle.
♪ ♪
- They turned to automobile registration records
For champaign county and the surrounding counties.
♪ ♪
- Agents discover there are only nine
Four-door saturn astras registered
In champaign county.
- On the 12th, our canvass teams
Went and attempted to make contact with every owner
Of a saturn astra.
- Investigators track down and clear all nine
Potential suspects one by one.
- There was nothing specific, at that moment,
That would have raised any additional suspicion.
- Hoping to find something that can help focus their search,
Something they might have missed earlier,
Investigators return to the surveillance footage.
[ominous music]
Finally, something catches their eye.
♪ ♪
- Somebody noticed that the hubcap was cracked.
It had a piece missing.
And in zooming in, you could also
See the vehicle had a sunroof.
- One of the fbi agents who spoke to the astra owners
In champaign county recalls seeing only
One astra that had a sunroof.
He cross-references his list.
It belongs to 27-year-old brendt christensen.
♪ ♪
- Brendt christensen was a grad student
In the physics department, a ta.
He was teaching other students and earning his own degree
At the same time.
Generally pretty quiet, and kept to himself.
♪ ♪
- Agents review the statement brendt christensen made
When they first asked him about the day yingying went missing.
- He said he was home that day, was sleeping,
His wife was out of town.
He was playing video games.
And there was nothing suspicious
At that time that would put any more attention on him.
[suspenseful music]
- Officers go back out to the apartment
Where christensen lives,
And the car is parked in the parking lot.
♪ ♪
- They looked at that hubcap,
And it had the exact same break,
The exact damage that was in that surveillance footage.
♪ ♪
- Investigators believe they've found
The car seen with yingying in the surveillance video.
It's a major discovery, but they want to confirm
It was brendt christensen behind the wheel
Before they confront him.
They reach out to emily hogan, the woman who reported
That a man in a black car approached her the same day
Yingying was abducted.
- We presented her with a lineup of individuals.
She went through those pictures
And immediately identified christensen
As the person who was driving that vehicle on that morning.
♪ ♪
Emily hogan's experience,
Her identification of christensen,
Showed that he was in some ways hunting
To try to find a victim.
Based on the information we had,
Were very confident that christensen had, in fact,
Kidnapped yingying.
♪ ♪
- Armed with emily's positive id of brendt christensen,
Agent manganaro races to his house
And brings him in for questioning.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Okay.
- My impression of christensen was that
He was capable of manipulation.
We knew that something terrible had happened,
And there was a lot of pressure.
We were operating under the hope that
She was still alive, maybe being held against her will
By christensen at an unknown location.
♪ ♪
[ominous music]
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- Six days after the disappearance
Of yingying zhang,
Brendt christensen admits to giving her a ride on June 9th,
But insists he dropped her off and hasn't seen her since.
♪ ♪
- Investigators put their suspect
On a 24-hour investigative hold.
- I immediately set out to write a search warrant
And met the magistrate judge that night,
While other agents were keeping an eye on the vehicle,
And got that search warrant signed to go seize it.
♪ ♪
- Fbi agents inspect brendt's saturn astra,
But they find no physical evidence linking
Yingying to the vehicle.
The fbi is confident they have the right man,
But they can't hold him without evidence.
- They decide to release him and keep track of him,
Put him under surveillance.
- We had 24-hour surveillance on him,
Gps trackers on the car.
We had aerial assets circling above,
Hoping that he might lead us to where she was at
Or give us some clue of a location to search.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- It was a really scary time.
The investigation was ongoing, and nobody really knew
What had happened to yingying.
This was genuinely a really scary experience
For the whole college community.
♪ ♪
- Fbi surveillance teams continue tracking
Brendt christensen for several days,
But without any luck.
- At that same time, some of the other agents
Met with his wife and had a voluntary interview
With her at her residence.
- Investigators learned their marriage
Is anything but ordinary.
- Christensen and his wife had an open relationship.
They each had a--
Another girlfriend or boyfriend on the side.
- Brendt met his girlfriend, terra bullis,
On a dating site in 2017.
- Christensen and terra were involved in, like,
A domineering/submissive type relationship.
From terra's perspective, it was mutual
And she still maintained a great deal of control.
When we went and talked to terra,
She was very open about their relationship,
Was very concerned about the missing student, yingying,
And agreed to help us find out what was going on
And if christensen had any involvement.
So terra agreed to wear a wire for us
And record the conversations that she had with him.
♪ ♪
In all of these scenarios, it can be a risk.
We don't know if the person we're asking to help us
Is going to turn around and then tell christensen
Everything that we just talked to them about.
We don't know.
But in this instance, we really needed to find yingying.
And so that risk was very worth it.
♪ ♪
- You have agents watching him.
You have agents watching her.
And you know, the risky thing, I think,
For the fbi is that if he discovers that wire, he--
He could harm her.
♪ ♪
- While this was going on,
We also had massive efforts underway,
Searching fields, searching dumpsters,
Searching parks,
Looking for anything that might give
Some sort of indication as to where yingying was.
[somber music]
- The family has this hope.
They want her to be alive.
And so if you have that hope, then she's going to be alive.
In your own thinking, she's going to be alive.
And so the chinese community, the family,
And the local community are going to have
A March in support of the search for yingying.
All: [chanting] let's find yingying.
Let's find yingying.
- The March for yingying brought a lot of people
In the community together and out to kind of
Commemorate her, and it was really emotional.
All: [chanting] let's find yingying.
Let's find yingying.
- The March for yingying takes place
On the university of illinois campus on June 29th,
20 days after she was last seen.
All: [chanting] let's find yingying.
Let's find yingying.
- Brendt christensen decides he's going
To participate in that March.
- Christensen ordered terra to attend that event with him.
She agreed and, as she had done in her past interactions
With him, wore a wire to that event.
- At the event, christensen started making
Disclosures to her,
That if the people at the event knew who he was
And what he had done, they would flee in terror.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
All: [chanting] let's find yingying.
Let's find yingying.
- June 29, 2017.
20 days into the search
For missing college student yingying zhang,
Students at the university of illinois
Hold a March to support her.
The marchers include brendt christensen,
The prime suspect in her disappearance.
He doesn't know his girlfriend is wearing a wire for the fbi.
[tense music]
- They're walking through champaign,
And he proceeds to tell her how he kidnapped yingying,
How he caused her a great deal of physical harm,
How he assaulted her, bound her.
♪ ♪
- I know terra was very fearful
Throughout this entire exchange.
And you can actually hear, in that captured recording,
Her heartbeat.
♪ ♪
- It was, in a lot of ways,
A powerful moment for all of us.
We knew that christensen had kidnapped yingying.
We knew that something terrible had happened.
And now we have him describing it.
- Christensen was capable of immense violence,
And he had a lot of pride in what he had done.
♪ ♪
- We had all been working so tirelessly
Over the last several weeks-- the entire team--
To get to this moment.
We had enough to make an arrest.
- On June 30, 2017, the fbi arrests
And charges brendt christensen for yingying zhang's death.
[tense music]
- It was a relief to make an arrest,
To put christensen in jail.
But we still didn't have yingying.
And that was our goal.
We wanted to find where she was.
♪ ♪
- When the charges are brought against christensen,
It was announced he's arrested, that's a shock.
The family is hoping that he has hidden her away somewhere.
It was tough.
It took them a while to accept the fact
That she was really dead.
- Christensen's arrest brought a lot of relief to myself
And the rest of the college campus.
It was also really confusing, of just--
How could somebody that I thought was
Teaching me something do something so horrible?
♪ ♪
[tense music]
- Law enforcement has every reason
To believe yingying is dead.
They need to find her body.
But brendt christensen is keeping his secret.
♪ ♪
- He declined a second interview.
So our work wasn't done,
And we continued to search the area
And try to find some sort of evidence as to where she was.
♪ ♪
- Police execute a search warrant at brendt's apartment.
Although there's no sign of yingying,
They do find evidence of an assault.
- We find blood stains on the mattress.
We found evidence that blood had gotten up
Against the wall behind the mattress,
And had seeped down into the carpet.
And we find that the bathroom had been tremendously clean.
We discovered christensen had put in a work order
To his apartment complex
A couple days after he killed yingying
For the grout and the tub in the bathroom to be redone.
♪ ♪
- Investigators also locate what they believe is the bat
Brendt used to beat yingying.
They send the bat and blood samples
To the forensics lab for testing.
- The crime scene evidence absolutely confirm
The admissions that he made during the parade
Was true.
♪ ♪
- Investigators also dig into brendt christensen's
Social media,
Where they find more disturbing information
About their suspect.
- He had some posts on different websites
That discussed fetishes.
There was one in particular that we found very concerning.
It described kidnapping someone,
Putting them in a duffel bag,
Proceeding to have a sexual encounter.
♪ ♪
What was particularly disturbing was,
When you compared it to the amazon purchase records
Of christensen, we found a purchase
Of a very large green duffel bag that
Could easily fit a person inside it.
And the realization that she was likely put into a bag
Just like this, and carried against her will
Into the apartment, it hits you.
It makes it real.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- 21 days after yingying zhang goes missing,
Investigators have built a solid case
Against brendt christensen.
But they still don't have a body.
- The family-- there's certainly anger.
There's always anger.
To think that this man,
In any form of brutal way,
Kidnapped and killed your daughter,
It's beyond your ability as a human being to fathom.
So the family's position was that he should
Receive the death penalty.
♪ ♪
- Although they know that not having a body
Will make it more difficult to win a conviction,
Prosecutors move forward with plans for the trial.
♪ ♪
On June 24, 2019, after a two-day trial,
A federal jury finds brendt christensen
Guilty of kidnapping resulting in a death.
♪ ♪
Next, the jury deliberates on his sentencing.
- Of the 12 jurors,
Ten voted for the death penalty.
Two didn't.
And so because a unanimous verdict was not reached,
Her killer was sentenced to life in prison
Without the possibility of parole.
♪ ♪
- I couldn't even say how I felt.
I was happy that there was a verdict,
And that he would,
Like, go away for the rest of his life.
♪ ♪
I thought it was going to feel like the ending of a story,
But it--it didn't really feel like there
Was that closure that you would get.
- [crying, shouting]
- When the verdict was initially read,
Emotions were really high.
I don't think yingying's family felt
As though justice was served,
As they were really adamant
About wanting the death penalty.
But instead, christensen got life in prison.
♪ ♪
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- At the conclusion of the trial,
The court gave authorization for me
To take yingying's journal from evidence
And replace it with a copy,
And I was able to give that journal to yingying's mom.
♪ ♪
- It's all yingying's family has of her,
Because brendt christensen refuses
To say what he did with her body after killing her.
♪ ♪
- He personally has never told the fbi,
But he's told his attorneys what he did.
And they tell us-- because the trial is over,
So immunity is gone.
Nothing else can happen.
They tell us that he had dismembered the body,
Put her remains in the dumpster outside
Of the apartment building.
♪ ♪
It was taken to a landfill.
The area in the landfill was probably
Half a football field.
So the likelihood of recovering her body is virtually nil.
♪ ♪
- I'm not sure if there will ever be closure
For the family in that yingying was never found.
- A parent's worst nightmare is losing a child.
Just think about her and how excited she was
When she came here.
I got kids.
You know, I got kids in graduate school.
And I think about that.
And you know, it's just, uh--
You know, life's not fair.
Bad things happen to good people.
And this is a case of that.
- Yingying's loved ones returned to china
Without their daughter.
To honor her memory, they establish a memorial fund
At the university, where the student body
Is forever touched by yingying's final words.
- The diary entries were her conversations with herself.
The last line is,
"life is too short to be ordinary."
This kind of thinking, that one makes something
Out of one's ordinary life,
In the sense of making a difference,
Doing something meaningful--
That was something that she was probably telling herself
When she was still navigating this very new country,
This very strange new life to her.
- At the end of the day, this is something that
Should have never happened,
And yingying should still be here.
♪ ♪