Lawyers for a former University of Illinois doctoral student who faces a possible death sentence for kidnapping and killing a visiting scholar from China say their client offered after his arrest to plead guilty and divulge where her remains were in exchange for a life sentence. The revelation came in a late Tuesday filing, a day after jurors convicted 29-year-old Brendt Christensen in the death of 26-year-old Yingying Zhang. Prosecutors said Christensen abducted her at a bus stop on June 9, 2017, then raped, tortured and killed her in his apartment in Urbana, 140 miles (225 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.
