Brendt Christensen, a former doctoral student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), was found guilty Monday of kidnapping and killing Zhang Yingying, a Chinese visiting scholar at UIUC in 2017.

A 12-member jury at a federal court of Peoria in the U.S. state of Illinois unanimously ruled that Christensen was guilty on all three counts of the charge against him, namely kidnapping resulting in the death of Zhang in 2017 and two counts of making false statements to FBI.

It took less than two hours for the jury to make the decision after the prosecutor and the defense finished their closing statements on Monday morning.

At a press conference outside the courtroom afterward, Zhang Ronggao, father of Zhang Yingying, told Xinhua he was satisfied with the verdict and further hoped justice will be done in the upcoming penalty sentence on July 8 when the same jury will decide whether Christensen deserves the death penalty.

Following the verdict, on behalf of the family, the father issued a statement in which he expressed gratitude to the jury for making first step towards justice.

He also thanked the prosecutors, the UI police, the FBI and all people across the world who have contributed to the investigation and the trial of the case.

"We have missed Yingying tremendously in the past two years. There is no language that can describe our pain and suffering," Zhang said. 

"Our family's hope is to find Yingying and bring her home. We will never give up."

Zhang, a 26-year-old Chinese visiting scholar, went missing on June 9, 2017, after getting into a black Saturn Astra about five blocks from where she got off a bus on her way to an apartment complex to sign a lease.

Christensen was arrested on June 30, 2017, after being caught on tape pointing out people he described as "ideal victims" during a vigil in Zhang's honor. But he pleaded not guilty. 

On June 12 in the Peoria federal courthouse, Christensen's defense attorney George Tesseff admits his client has killed Zhang Yingying.

The shocking admission from Christensen’s defense team came after prosecutors spent close to an hour outlining the gruesome details of Zhang’s death, claiming that the Chinese scholar was raped, assaulted and decapitated inside Christensen’s Champaign apartment.

Read more: 

Defense attorney says Brendt Christensen killed Chinese scholar Zhang Yingying

(With input from Xinhua News Agency)