Deceased/Not Found IL - Yingying Zhang, 26, Urbana, 9 June 2017 #7 *Arrest*

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Friday, August 24th:
*Discovery Motions Hearing (@ ET) - IL - Yingying Zhang (26) missing on June 9, 2017 - Brendt A. Christensen (28) indicted (6/30/17) on kidnapping (Federal charge) resulting in death of Yingying and 2 counts of giving false statements to FBI. Plead not guilty; DA will seek DP.
8/24: Discovery Motions; 9/21: Def. deadline to give notice of intent to offer Atkins defense; 9/28: Motion to examine Defendant if 9/21 motion is filed; 10/16: Responses to pretrial motions; 11/16: Hearing on objections to Juror questionnaire; 12/14, 17, 18 & 19: Hearing on pretrial motions & jury questions; 1/4/19: Submission of proposed jury questionnaire; 1/11: Jury questionnaire mailed; 1/18: Objections to jury instructions; 2/1: Conf. on jury instructions & selection; 2/8: Motion in limine; 3/1: Response to Motion in limine; 3/4: Motion to strike potential jurors; 3/11: Pretrial Conf.; 3/25: Final Pretrial Conf.; 4/2: Jury Orientation; 4/3: Jury Selection begins; 4/9/19: Trial begins, which should last about 5 weeks.
7/13/18 Update: Defense files Motion for Order Required Gov’t to Comply w/Rule 12(b)(4)(B), pursuant to 4th, 5th, 6th & 8th Amendments. Calls for evidence that will be used in case-in-chief @ guilty or penalty trial where evidence maybe subject to motion to suppress.
8/16/18 Update: Judge Bruce issued an order denying the motion by BC's defense team that the government provide documents detailing any communication between the White House and the DOJ or Trump and Xi regarding this case. Also denied their motion that the government provide more detail of the evidence they will use in support of the aggravating factors.
 
Niner said:
Friday, August 24th:
*Discovery Motions Hearing (@ ET) - IL - Yingying Zhang (26) missing on June 9, 2017 - Brendt A. Christensen (28) indicted (6/30/17) on kidnapping (Federal charge) resulting in death of Yingying and 2 counts of giving false statements to FBI. Plead not guilty; DA will seek DP.
8/24: Discovery Motions; 9/21: Def. deadline to give notice of intent to offer Atkins defense; 9/28: Motion to examine Defendant if 9/21 motion is filed; 10/16: Responses to pretrial motions; 11/16: Hearing on objections to Juror questionnaire; 12/14, 17, 18 & 19: Hearing on pretrial motions & jury questions; 1/4/19: Submission of proposed jury questionnaire; 1/11: Jury questionnaire mailed; 1/18: Objections to jury instructions; 2/1: Conf. on jury instructions & selection; 2/8: Motion in limine; 3/1: Response to Motion in limine; 3/4: Motion to strike potential jurors; 3/11: Pretrial Conf.; 3/25: Final Pretrial Conf.; 4/2: Jury Orientation; 4/3: Jury Selection begins; 4/9/19: Trial begins, which should last about 5 weeks.
7/13/18 Update: Defense files Motion for Order Required Gov’t to Comply w/Rule 12(b)(4)(B), pursuant to 4th, 5th, 6th & 8th Amendments. Calls for evidence that will be used in case-in-chief @ guilty or penalty trial where evidence maybe subject to motion to suppress.
8/16/18 Update: Judge Bruce issued an order denying the motion by BC's defense team that the government provide documents detailing any communication between the White House and the DOJ or Trump and Xi regarding this case. Also denied their motion that the government provide more detail of the evidence they will use in support of the aggravating factors.
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Note that this may be delayed due to Judge Bruce being removed and the chief judge for the district court assigning the case to himself.
 
I just looked at the court site and at the moment they have no change of dates. So will keep what I have for the time being, until I see something different. But thanks for the heads-up! :)
 
Niner said:
I just looked at the court site and at the moment they have no change of dates. So will keep what I have for the time being, until I see something different. But thanks for the heads-up! :)
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Do you have a link for this court site that you can share? I can't find it.

Nothing has been added to the docket on Court Listener so far......
 
Niner said:
I just looked at the court site and at the moment they have no change of dates. So will keep what I have for the time being, until I see something different. But thanks for the heads-up! :)
Click to expand...

There was no delay. There were ~30 or more motions to suppress/strike filed tonight

A LOT to digest. Much of it is discussing case law to provide precedence for suppressing things/throwing things out/dismissing charges. Many of them are re-filings of motions Bruce blanket-dismissed after the NOI was filed and a change in the trial schedule was necessitated. Many are aimed at striking things the government will present at the penalty phase that are listed in the NOI.

Most of the text is discussing case law and precedent to support accomplishing what they are trying to suppress, but there are a number of new tidbits about the investigation. Here's a few that caught my eye:

1) They have been surveilling the sh^t out of him while he has been incarcerated, basically sweeping up EVERY communication he has had with friends and family during this time, looking for evidence to use against him in the penalty phase, and presumably to try and figure out what he did with her body, or any other admissions of guilt.

2) They are trying to get the TEB stuff thrown out in two ways: First, focusing on that she was coerced into helping, and that she misused the surveillance equipment by picking up conversations of others that she was not a party to. Second, that her actions are an illegal interrogation because FBI agents were coaching her at times, and he had invoked his Miranda rights. In the second filing, the source is listed as "TLB," but I think this is a mistake/typo, as the dates and times they are describing, it almost certainly is TEB.

3) At the suggestion of an FBI agent, Christensen's wife pressured him to go to another interview with the FBI on the 17th to "clear things up."

4) The person alleged to have been sexually assaulted by BC seems to be a weak witness and to have credibility issues. It will be interesting to see what the government response is to the defense claims about her.

5) In addition to the woman who on the morning of June 9th reported someone posing as an undercover cop who tried to get her to get into the car, and subsequently picked Christensen's image as the one most closely matching this person, there is another woman who reported a man in a 4 door black sedan on campus who tried to get her attention and to get in his car on June 7th. This woman picked out another person's picture as the one most closely matching the person interacting with her, not Christensen.

6)They are claiming that for many of the visits to FetLife kidnapping fantasy pages, and to pages about serial killers on his phone, he was only on these sites for several seconds before closing the pages or going to other sites. Also, disclosed that during his last semester on campus, he was taking a Sociology class on deviant behavior, and serial killers were one of the topics of discussion in the class -so this explains his searches for info on them (my comment: left unsaid was the possibility that the entire reason he was taking the class was to pick up pointers on how to be one and get away with it....)

7) Finally, a small tidbit about what may have happened to YY. They are trying to get a hearing on admissibility of the cadaver dog searching. Previous filings by the prosecution have indicated that one of the cadaver dog searches gave a positive indication for the presence of a body. As I thought, they swept his apartment with a cadaver dog. The positive indication was in the master bathroom of the apartment, along the base and the doors of the vanity. Thus it appears likely that she was killed in the apartment and not at some other site. Most likely he placed her body on the bathroom floor for some period of time, as he cleaned up/prepared to take her away for disposal.
Also, in one of the filings they discuss the relationship between TEB and BC and indicate they were into flogging. No idea whether or not this sheds any light on what he may have done to YY.
 
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Much of this is a repost of the very insightful post by @dm92

New defense filings seem to shed light on why feds think UI scholar dead

The "cadaver sniffing canine" handler's report indicates that the dog "alerted to the presence of cadaver inside of the bathroom along the bottom of the vanity," according to a motion questioning the reliability of the dog's training. "There were no other alerts in the apartment or on the property."
Click to expand...

The FBI biologist is also expected to testify that "she identified the possible presence of blood in Mr. Christensen's bedroom and bathroom," Christensen's lawyers wrote.
Click to expand...
 
I missed the filing on suppressing the DNA/blood evidence when I wrote my post last night. At first glance it seems the evidence is fairly weak. They tested over 250 items from the apartment for DNA and most were negative. They are reported to have confirmed presence of her DNA in a few swabs taken from the bedroom. Luminol indicated the presence of blood spots on the wall, floor, and mattress in the bedroom, and in some places in the bathroom.

For the DNA identification, they used software called STRmix, which is able to analyze DNA chromatogram data and be able to discriminate DNA from up to five different individuals in mixed samples. It is a fairly new analytical technique, approved for use by the FBI just several years ago (back in 2014, I think). There is some questions to its reliability, but with any new technique that is to be expected -and I would expect his defense to question it. For blood, luminol isn't an absolute test; it picks up other substances too, so blood has to be confirmed with other tests. Those secondary tests confirmed blood on the baseboard and a spot on the carpet in the bedroom, and in a couple of places in the bathroom. The other luminol spots *might* be blood, but can't be confirmed that they are.

So it seems weak -but then you have to consider things and put them in context. First, he cleaned, and probably cleaned diligently. He probably stored her body in the bathroom after he was finished, and began cleaning immediately instead of waiting, so he wouldn't forget places he needed to clean; so he could clean up the blood while it was fresh and obvious so he wouldn't miss spots -but he missed some, allowing them to detect blood and her DNA in a few spots; and you wouldn't necessarily expect them to be able to find lots and lots of DNA if he diligently cleaned, and also because........... Second, they weren't able to get into the apartment and start taking samples for analysis for *three entire weeks* after it happened. That gives him plenty of time to keep cleaning, and gives time for samples to degrade -so some spots that he missed containing DNA, the DNA might degrade below the level of detectability, and some spots of blood he missed might have degraded to the point that Luminol might still pick them up, but secondary tests would not be able to confirm them. The entire three weeks that went by, virtually every day he would have time to go back and re-clean places he would be concerned about -because he was sitting at home unemployed, while his wife was out working. She wouldn't be there to see him cleaning and wonder what the hell he was up to with all the cleaning. Taking this into account, you might consider it lucky that they could find anything at all.

The other context it has to be put into is the context of information provided by TEB and the jailhouse informant. We don't know what that is -but if he describes doing things to her in the bedroom, and they find her DNA in the bedroom, the results they have make sense; and if he describes killing her in the bathroom or leaving her body there, and they find blood in the bathroom and have a cadaver dog giving an indication there, then those results make sense, too.

It will be interesting to see what the prosecution's response is to all these motions.....
 
Motion questions dog alert in missing Chinese scholar case

Christensen's attorneys are questioning a police dog's alert to the presence of a body in Christensen's apartment bathroom during a 2017 search.

The defense's motion questions the reliability of the dog's training. It says the dog only "alerted to the presence of cadaver inside of the bathroom along the bottom of the vanity."


Jury selection for the trial is scheduled to begin in April.
 
PinkPrincessPoop said:
I know it's not uncommon for killers to keep body locations a secret, but man this one pisses me off! Maybe because Yingying was so far from home, her family so far away. It's just not far. This guy has no compassion in his heart. ZERO!
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Hate to say this but due to the recent papers filed by BCs lawyers calling into question the cadaver dog getting a hit in BCs bathroom, it would appear he may have dismembered and further destroyed her in his apt. LE may be aware of this, but of course never a word to us.
Maybe like in the olden days , the cops take this into a room and get answers!
 
trunkizback said:
Hate to say this but due to the recent papers filed by BCs lawyers calling into question the cadaver dog getting a hit in BCs bathroom, it would appear he may have dismembered and further destroyed her in his apt. LE may be aware of this, but of course never a word to us.
Maybe like in the olden days , the cops take this into a room and get answers!
Click to expand...

It is possible he dismembered her in the bathroom to make it easier to carry her out later, but not a given. I doubt he would have attempted to dissolve her remains there. That requires strong acids that would give off toxic fumes, and it would require a lot of liquid reagent that he would have to acquire ahead of time and store at his apartment. The acids that can be used for this, you can't just go out and pick them up at Lowes or Menards. Also, it would take a few days to complete -no way his wife wouldn't notice this going on in the bathroom.

My guess is, given where the dog indicated, that he kept her body on the floor of the bathroom and it was lying against the bottom of the vanity for a number of hours while he cleaned and gathered things he needed to get rid of with her. Storing her there would be safer; any blood or other fluids that leaked out of her while he was cleaning the bedroom, things he used on her, and maybe even his car would be easier to clean up off of a tile or linoleum floor. It would be much easier to totally clean these fluids completely away off of that type of floor, than to get them cleaned out of a carpet. Possible then that he could have dismembered her in the tub to make it easier to carry her out, or he could have stuffed her in a large bag.

Very sad to think of all the possibilities. Hopefully they have lots of evidence that will make all of these filings by the defense futile and ultimately meaningless.
 
I've had that thought in my mind more or less since this began. If he has cut her up for disposal he's one sicko and no doubt. The only other way of disposal would be to place her body in a large gym bag but I feel she would have been found by now. I imagine her body went into several small plastic bags and dumped here and there in bins on his travels from home to gym or wherever he wandered. This would mean her remains could be in several landfill sites, never to be found.

The thought churns my stomachs, that's for sure.
 
MomminIt said:
It's been my thought that he may have dismembered her also. Though, other sleuthers pointed out that they could get her DNA from the piping to his bathtub, so now I'm not sure...
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Must say, I hadn't thought about DNA in the piping. He may have flushed gallons of a product we have here in the UK called Drain Buster, or maybe he didn't.
 
altojack said:
I've had that thought in my mind more or less since this began. If he has cut her up for disposal he's one sicko and no doubt. The only other way of disposal would be to place her body in a large gym bag but I feel she would have been found by now. I imagine her body went into several small plastic bags and dumped here and there in bins on his travels from home to gym or wherever he wandered. This would mean her remains could be in several landfill sites, never to be found.

The thought churns my stomachs, that's for sure.
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Of course we're all just speculating, but I've never thought he dismembered her -- actually, rather difficult, messy, and time-consuming to do... for someone who knew his wife would soon be back from a trip. It's possible (and sorry to be so grisly) that he dismembered the head, as perps do so dental records can't be checked, but I think late night gym bag or luggage disposal is more probable.
On side note, has anyone yet heard anything about ID'ing the Litchfield body from months ago???
 
Webthrush said:
Of course we're all just speculating, but I've never thought he dismembered her -- actually, rather difficult, messy, and time-consuming to do... for someone who knew his wife would soon be back from a trip. It's possible (and sorry to be so grisly) that he dismembered the head, as perps do so dental records can't be checked, but I think late night gym bag or luggage disposal is more probable.
On side note, has anyone yet heard anything about ID'ing the Litchfield body from months ago???
Click to expand...

Justice for Native Women: Montgomery County Jane Doe, Discovered in Illinois in 2018.

Link above is all I've been able to find about the Litchfield remains. Not sure how accurate it is as it's a blog. I would think if it was Yingying we would know by now since LE would have access to her family's DNA for comparison. So sad, another family's daughter...
 
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MomminIt said:
Justice for Native Women: Montgomery County Jane Doe, Discovered in Illinois in 2018.

Link above is all I've been able to find about the Litchfield remains. Not sure how accurate it is as it's a blog. I would think if it was Yingying we would know by now since LE would have access to her family's DNA for comparison. So sad, another family's daughter...
Click to expand...
Thanks for updating this. I have been watching for any news on those remains and was never able to find anything.....
 
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