Photo by: Robin Scholz/The News-Gazette

Scott Bennett

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Next month will mark 27 years since a 20-year-old Parkland College student was stabbed to death while taking a shower in her apartment near the University of Illinois campus.

It's tragic times like these that memories of Jennifer Amerio's murder haunt those who followed the 1990 case.

"All day, I've been thinking about the young lady stabbed to death almost 27 years ago when I was just three months into my graduate studies at the University of Illinois," Carol Bradford, clinical director at The Prairie Center of Urbana, said Saturday, one day after the FBI announced it believes missing UI scholar Yingying Zhang is dead.

"When something like this happens, it is devastating and very unsettling to everyone. I have two sons, 16 and 23 years old. I hope I never have to face what her poor family is going through right now. I'm so sorry this happened to her."

In Springfield, where state legislators worked overtime to try to hash out a fiscal budget, Scott Bennett took a break to reflect upon the terrible news that left his community back home reeling.

Before becoming a state senator representing a district that includes Champaign and Urbana, he was a prosecutor with the state's attorney's office.

Cases like this one involving a kidnapping allegedly orchestrated by a former UI grad student in broad daylight and others Bennett prosecuted "make victims of the entire community, as they steal our sense of security and force us to look at our hometowns as much scarier places than we previously thought we lived," he said.

"Our community is so vibrant, so diverse and welcoming that sometimes we become lulled into an exaggerated sense of safety. During my days as a prosecutor, I used to see it in the eyes of horrified jurors in the opening minutes of a trial when they first heard of a grotesque crime that happened in 'their' friendly town.

"From my time in the courthouse, I have long understood that evil exists in every community, regardless of how it may appear on the surface. But there are unnerving crimes like this one that can shake us from our peace and leave us a little more guarded, a little less trusting of strangers we would normally welcome. We say to ourselves: 'Maybe this could have happened to me or someone I love.'"

Friday's news left Emma Dorantes with more questions than answers.

As a UI alumna who chose Champaign-Urbana "not just for its reputation and rankings, but for the sense of safety and warmth it gave," the allegation that a former UI grad student and local resident was responsible made her think back to all the times she described Champaign-Urbana to old friends from her hometown of Chicago as "all the culture of the city, but without the crime or the commute."

As an attorney with Champaign's Dodd & Maatuka, reading the affidavit given by FBI special agent Anthony Manganaro was chilling, given that Brendt Christensen's alleged actions "were not out of rage or jealousy, or any of the other usual justifications for bad human behavior, but just for thrills," she said. "Random acts of evil are not something we can ever be prepared for."

And that the UI announced via massmail Friday night that a campuswide memorial would be held Saturday in Ms. Zhang's honor came across as "more than a little tasteless," Dorantes said, "especially since it seems the investigation is ongoing, and there has yet been no final determination about Ms. Zhang's whereabouts."

The memorial was called off Saturday morning, per the family's wishes.

"I'm not ready to give up hope," Dorantes said. "And I think we owe Ms. Zhang's family respect as they continue to seek answers and closure, good or bad, in their ordeal."

Read the original here:
'Evil exists in every community' - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette