Yingying zhang, Brendt Christensen

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Federal authorities have arrested and charged a 28-year-old man with kidnapping Yingying Zhang, a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois who disappeared three weeks ago and now is presumed dead.

Brendt Christensen, a former Ph.D. candidate who had studied physics at the university, was arrested late Friday, according to a news release from the Department of Justice. A federal complaint also was filed Friday in the Central District of Illinois accusing him of kidnapping Zhang from the Urbana-Champaign campus the afternoon of June 9.

Authorities also searched Christensen’s home and seized electronics, including his phone, according to the affidavit. The phone’s search history revealed visits to a bondage and sadomasochism fetish website called FetLife and a forum called "Abduction 101," as well as subthreads titled “Perfect abduction fantasy” and "planning a kidnapping," according to the affidavit. The searches to those websites had occurred several weeks before the alleged abduction, around April 19, authorities wrote in the affidavit.