Yingying Zhang was a 26-year-old visiting scholar from China at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. On the afternoon of June 9, 2017, she was heading to sign an off-campus lease, missed a bus, and waited at a different stop where surveillance footage shows a black Saturn Astra circle the block and pull up beside her. After a brief conversation she entered the car and was never heard from again. An associate professor reported her missing that evening.

Investigators traced the vehicle to Brendt Christensen, a former physics graduate student at the university. Christensen initially gave inconsistent and false statements. His then-girlfriend cooperated with the FBI and wore a recording device; those recorded conversations included admissions in which Christensen described kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing Yingying. Forensic testing from his apartment recovered blood matching Yingying’s DNA on a mattress, a wall, and a baseball bat, and a cadaver dog indicated the scent of human remains in his bathroom.

Christensen was arrested June 30, 2017, charged with kidnapping resulting in death, and later tried and convicted. Prosecutors sought the death penalty but the jury did not reach unanimity on sentence; a judge imposed life without parole. Under an immunity agreement, Christensen’s lawyers reported he dismembered Yingying and disposed of remains in a dumpster; the body has not been recovered. Does anyone have memories or details about Yingying’s last known route or the area around that bus stop?