Grad student, 29, found GUILTY of murdering Chinese scholar as her family seeks ...

Brendt Christensen, seen in his mugshot, was convicted Monday of kidnapping, raping and murdering a Chinese student

Brendt Christensen, seen in his mugshot, was convicted Monday of kidnapping, raping and murdering a Chinese student 

The family of a Chinese scholar is seeking the death penalty for the former University of Illinois doctoral student convicted on Monday of kidnapping, raping and murdering her. 

The jury found Brendt Christensen, 29, guilty after hearing that he beat 26-year-old Yingying Zhang to death with a baseball bat and decapitated her in June 2017. 

Jurors convicted Christensen in the U.S. District Court in Peoria, Illinois, on Monday afternoon after less than 90 minutes of deliberations. 

Christensen looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the guilty verdict was announced against him. 

In a media statement, Zhang's father called the verdict a 'step towards justice'.

'We have missed Yingying tremendously in the past two years,' said the statement, translated to English.  

'As of today, we still could not imagine how we will live the rest of our lives without her. There is no language that can describe our pain and suffering.' 

Zhidong Wang, a lawyer for Zhang's family, said they will ask the federal jury to recommend that Christensen be put to death.  

Lifeng Ye, the mother of murdered University of Illinois scholar Yingying Zhang, cries out in grief as her husband Ronggao Zhang, left, addresses the media after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her murder Monday outside the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois

Lifeng Ye, the mother of murdered University of Illinois scholar Yingying Zhang, cries out in grief as her husband Ronggao Zhang, left, addresses the media after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her murder Monday outside the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois

Prosecutors said Christensen, a former University of Illinois doctoral student, beat Yingying Zhang to death with a baseball bat and decapitated her after abducting her at a bus stop

26-year-old Yingying Zhang disappeared on June 9, 2017, in Urbana, Illinois

Prosecutors said Christensen (left), a former University of Illinois doctoral student, beat Yingying Zhang (right) to death with a baseball bat and decapitated her after abducting her at a bus stop in June 2017

Defense attorneys have sought to spare their client a death sentence by acknowledging from the beginning of the trial that he killed the visiting scholar, but said they disagreed with prosecutors over how and why. 

Elisabeth Pollock, an attorney for Christensen, said her client was 'someone who lost control... who battled these dark thoughts'.

When she added, 'We are here because the government wants to take his life,' the judge stopped her, telling jurors they were not yet in the penalty phase.

The judge said there will be a break of a week or more before the penalty phase, which could last several weeks, to determine whether he should die. 

Prosecutors are expected to focus on the brutality of Christensen's actions, with the defense underlining his mental health issues. 

Illinois no longer has capital punishment, but he could be sentenced to death because he was convicted in federal court.   

Prosecutors at the trial said Christensen posed as a police officer to lure Zhang into his car on June 9, 2017, after deciding he would kill someone that day.  

Earlier, he approached a different young woman posing as an officer, but she refused to get in the car. 

The muscular Christensen forced the 5-foot-4 Zhang into his apartment in Urbana, 140 miles southwest of Chicago, where he raped and killed her. 

Zhang had been on her way to sign a lease for an off-campus apartment when she went missing.

Media crowd around Zhang's family to hear an address from attorney Zhidong Wang after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her murder on Monday

Media crowd around Zhang's family to hear an address from attorney Zhidong Wang after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her murder on Monday

This 2017 file photo provided by Xinyang Zhang shows his sister, Yingying, with their parents, Ronggao Zhang and Lifeng Ye, at a train station in Nanping, China

This 2017 file photo provided by Xinyang Zhang shows his sister, Yingying, with their parents, Ronggao Zhang and Lifeng Ye, at a train station in Nanping, China

Zhang had only been in Illinois for two months in what was her first experience living outside China.

Her body was never found. 

At trial, Christensen's former girlfriend testified that he had bragged about murdering the Chinese student and that she was his 13th victim.  

Terra Bullis told the court he had confessed to the murder to her while they attended a vigil for

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