Deceased/Not Found IL - Yingying Zhang, 26, Urbana, 9 June 2017 #11 *GUILTY*

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alexia98 said:
I don't understand why he refused to say where Yingying Zhang's body was. Maybe now he wouldn't be a lifer...really sad for the victim's family :(
He wasn't smart...on the other side I'm happy he didn't do that because he got life imprisonment.
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IF he can be believed (and that is a very big "IF"), then he didn't say where she was because the information wouldn't get prosecutors to spare his life by taking the death sentence off the table. Her body would be unrecoverable, and the only thing the prosecution and her family wanted from him in return for sparing his life would be a body they could take home. He didn't say anything because his lawyers also surely told him that if a jury were to find out what he did with her remains, it would only make them more likely to sentence him to death.

Christensen was always destined to spend his life in prison at a minimum. the case was not tried in Illinois state court; he was charged under Federal (United States government) law and tried in federal court. For the crime of Kidnapping Resulting in Death, US law only allows for two punishments: Life imprisonment, or execution. He could never receive a sentence less than a life sentence -nor will he ever be able to get out early, as the Federal system does not use parole.

Basically, Christensen was a coward: He didn't want to be executed. He knew he couldn't give her family the body, so they would never take the death penalty off the table. the only way to save his life would be to get a juror or two to have sympathy for him -and he knew that he'd likely get less sympathy from them if the jury were to find out what he did with her body.

In the end he was successful. His lawyers managed to get two morons to feel enough sympathy for him to spare his life. If those two knew in advance that Christensen had chopped her up and thrown her in the trash, so that her family could never take her home and bury her? No way to know what it would have done to their decision on sentencing, but it couldn't have helped him......
 
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Laughing said:
and he will never, ever need to Adult, support himself financially, because he's clever enough to have the tax-burdened citizens -- us -- do that for him.

No lab experiments to carry out, no lab records to keep, no scholarly papers to write, no need to collaborate with other physicists; no students, no papers to grade. No cooking, meal planning, grocery shopping. No dishes to wash, no countertops or 'fridge to clean. No yard work, no leaking roof, no garage door sticking to the tracks. No personal property taxes, no real estate taxes.

No deadlines to meet.

He will likely be assigned a job in the facility, if that is required.

Likely read books from the library.
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I understand why people think this way, but I can assure you that federal prison is no walk in the park. McCreary itself just went into lockdown last year due to inmates assaulting the guards and I remember reading a Reddit AMA from a former criminal that explicitly called out McCreary as the worst prison he'd ever been in.

And it's especially true if you're LWOP. See, all of this is still relatively recent news and I'm sure his family still have some contact with him. But think 5, 10 or even 20+ years from now when they've all moved on or died and MZ has remarried and started a new life with someone that isn't a drunk loser. He'll still be there sitting in a cell, totally alone and isolated from everyone and society. If he's 45 or 50 then, he still has decades of hard time to do with no chance of ever getting out and nobody from his past to see about him. In the end, he's still going to die alone in a prison. The psychological toll of that is brutal and just because he isn't doing yard work or having to manage a career doesn't offset that by much.

To be clear, I think he deserves every bit of that and I don't have the least bit of compassion for him. But my point is, McCreary USP isn't a permanent vacation and BC isn't sitting in a lawn chair laughing about how easy he has it.
 
dm92 said:
IF he can be believed (and that is a very big "IF"), then he didn't say where she was because the information wouldn't get prosecutors to spare his life by taking the death sentence off the table. Her body would be unrecoverable, and the only thing the prosecution and her family wanted from him in return for sparing his life would be a body they could take home. He didn't say anything because his lawyers also surely told him that if a jury were to find out what he did with her remains, it would only make them more likely to sentence him to death.

Christensen was always destined to spend his life in prison at a minimum. the case was not tried in Illinois state court; he was charged under Federal (United States government) law and tried in federal court. For the crime of Kidnapping Resulting in Death, US law only allows for two punishments: Life imprisonment, or execution. He could never receive a sentence less than a life sentence -nor will he ever be able to get out early, as the Federal system does not use parole.

Basically, Christensen was a coward: He didn't want to be executed. He knew he couldn't give her family the body, so they would never take the death penalty off the table. the only way to save his life would be to get a juror or two to have sympathy for him -and he knew that he'd likely get less sympathy from them if the jury were to find out what he did with her body.

In the end he was successful. His lawyers managed to get two morons to feel enough sympathy for him to spare his life. If those two knew in advance that Christensen had chopped her up and thrown her in the trash, so that her family could never take her home and bury her? No way to know what it would have done to their decision on sentencing, but it couldn't have helped him......
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Thanks for the explanation dm92 :)
I didn't know he only had 2 options on the table (death or life imprisonment). I thought he could have got something less (for example 4/5 decades in prison).
Anyway the whole thing is really sad. The victim and her family are 2 times victims, because the body won't be found (probably forever...) :(
 
alexia98 said:
Thanks for the explanation dm92 :)
I didn't know he only had 2 options on the table (death or life imprisonment). I thought he could have got something less (for example 4/5 decades in prison).
Anyway the whole thing is really sad. The victim and her family are 2 times victims, because the body won't be found (probably forever...) :(
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He had two options, yes. They gave him the easy way out at the cost of tax payers. There are better uses for taxes than to feed a murderer.
 
Merry Christmas sleuthers. Thank you for all the hard work put into this heartbreaking killing. It's been a tough ride hasn't it but he's out of the way and can't do a repeat.

The Zhang family will never find peace, I'll never forget what that animal did to Yingying and her family.

I wish you all health and happiness for 2020. Let's keep on sleuthing.
 
altojack said:
Merry Christmas sleuthers. Thank you for all the hard work put into this heartbreaking killing. It's been a tough ride hasn't it but he's out of the way and can't do a repeat.

The Zhang family will never find peace, I'll never forget what that animal did to Yingying and her family.

I wish you all health and happiness for 2020. Let's keep on sleuthing.
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Thanks altojack.
I wish for you the same thing you wish for all of us
animated-smileys-christmas-062.gif
:)
 
Happy New Year YY in the celestial realms.
I so wish we could have found what he left of your body.
Your death left a hole in me, the trial left an even bigger one.
No catharsis, no regret, no remorse, no sorrow from the perpetrator or his supporters.
It don't seem right.
Love to you beautiful angel and Divine healing to your family and loved ones.
Respect to the heros and heroines, especially you @TEB .
You were the only bright light in this dark tunnel.
 
YingYing continues to creep into my mind rather often, I'm not sure why.
Feels there is more that can be done to retrieve her body and is being un-done, neglected in a way.
But that's just the same as it always was.
From the outset the civil case was dead in the water. I mistrusted the lawyer and I felt the therapists behaved correctly and ethically. He voluntarily showed up to them, he was free to come and go as he pleased. Mastermind, of course thought he'd weave it into his sophisticated unique killing spree. It didn't pan out.
He got to live, she got to die.
Her loved ones died too in so many ways. Their future with their child, denied to them,
The loss of her very remains and a ceremony in her home country for her earthly body has been denied to them and with it, a lack of catharsis, a vacuum of questions and imaginings too awful to contemplate.
No financial compensation, possibly many big bills to be paid.
He may as well have chewed them up and spat them out along with their child.
His contempt had no boundaries, no filters.
I suppose a chance exists that he might eventually eat himself up internally until nothing remains.

we never found her
i don't believe he dumped her as he described, in his own dustbins,
he had prepared for this the wannabe Phd candidate... he had planned for her disposal. He had though that much out beforehand for sure.
She's not in landfill, if she's anywhere, she's within walking distance of his apartment, no records exist of his car having moved after the capture, until it moved to the hardware store for disposal items.
Just sayin'.
 
Kitty, like you Yingying is in my mind more than I ever thought she would be. Now I'm in a state over her parents, are they safe in China, out of harms way of this Coronavirus. I had to step back a while as I wasn't sleeping, matters relating to YY running through what brain I've got.
An idiot wouldn't cut a body up and dump the pieces in their own bin outside the apartments, no way. He was equipped for murder, so had to be equipped with a plan for disposal, and that did not include his bins. She's not far away as he is lazy, wouldn't want to have to go too far.

Thinking back over the entire case, look at the number of lives he ripped apart and trampled on. Not just Yingying, but his own wife, his devoted girlfriend until she saw the light, I bet she's still struggling through. His family must have been devastated by what he did and of course YYs family who are always in my thoughts along with one other person. Always in my prayers.
 
altojack said:
Kitty, like you Yingying is in my mind more than I ever thought she would be. Now I'm in a state over her parents, are they safe in China, out of harms way of this Coronavirus. I had to step back a while as I wasn't sleeping, matters relating to YY running through what brain I've got.
An idiot wouldn't cut a body up and dump the pieces in their own bin outside the apartments, no way. He was equipped for murder, so had to be equipped with a plan for disposal, and that did not include his bins. She's not far away as he is lazy, wouldn't want to have to go too far.

Thinking back over the entire case, look at the number of lives he ripped apart and trampled on. Not just Yingying, but his own wife, his devoted girlfriend until she saw the light, I bet she's still struggling through. His family must have been devastated by what he did and of course YYs family who are always in my thoughts along with one other person. Always in my prayers.
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If one of us win the lottery, we'll both travel with carers, get some dogs set up and we're away, I promise you.
simple short walk with dogs is all that is required.
 
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