Court filings show slain NYT executive clashed with in-laws over son wearing girls’ dresses

A New York Times games executive was shot dead in a California parking lot by elderly in-laws who court records show he had angered by letting his son wear girls’ dresses.

Jonathan McKinsey, 40, was gunned down Saturday in the parking lot of a Dublin Sports Grounds store in Dublin, California. Witnesses described two masked shooters who approached him, took turns firing, then walked away. Police arrested his in-laws, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, on suspicion of murder.

Just The News reported that officers found McKinsey on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds and pronounced him dead at the scene. The couple faces charges that include murder, felony conspiracy, child endangerment, and dangerously firing a gun, with arraignment set for Wednesday.

McKinsey headed engineering for games player experience at the New York Times since 2023. He was a biological woman who had surgery to live as a transgender man, was in the middle of a divorce from Candice Jang, and shared three children with her, including a son named Wyatt and a daughter named Alexis.

Motive remains under investigation. Dublin police have not said whether the killing grew out of prior abuse claims, gender-identity fights inside the family, or something else.

Witnesses described a calm, methodical shooting

The New York Post reported the attack happened around 3 p.m. First responders could not save McKinsey. Witnesses said the masked pair took turns unloading rounds into him before a passing officer made the arrest.

Breitbart carried a witness account from Assad Razawi, who told the San Francisco Chronicle he heard five or six gunshots, saw McKinsey drop, and watched a man and woman walk calmly from the lot at a normal pace. Police later tied the pair to a black sedan near a nearby intersection.

Captain Michael Campos of Dublin Police Services said investigators are examining every angle.

Campos stated:

"Part of our investigation is looking for motives from all angles as well as looking at the histories and relationships of everyone involved and associated with the victim and suspects."

The shooting came a week before a scheduled hearing in the couple’s divorce case. A neighbor said McKinsey had recently moved out of the home he had shared with Jang.

Court papers detail a fight over a little boy’s dresses

The Daily Mail reported that 2023 Alameda County court filings from McKinsey claimed the trouble with his mother-in-law flared after Wyatt asked to wear his sister’s dresses. McKinsey wrote that he called it a “phase.” He said Chen reacted with fury.

In that petition, McKinsey described Chen blaming him and ordering him out of the house.

McKinsey wrote:

"She blamed me for Wyatt wanting to wear his sister’s dresses and told me to get out of "her house" even though we were in the home owned by Candice and I."

McKinsey further claimed Chen called the young child a “disgusting queer” and a “pervert,” then aimed the same labels at him. He alleged Jang told him he should take his own life because “no one would want to be with someone as f***ed up and transgender like me.”

Those are McKinsey’s claims in court papers. They are not findings of fact. Jang and her parents have told a sharply different story in their own filings.

Jang’s filings painted McKinsey as the danger

Last year a court granted Jang a domestic violence protection order against McKinsey. She alleged he had “threatened to kill me and my parents.” Her attorney wrote that McKinsey “is simply prone to domestic violence and child abuse,” and that the episodes were “far from the first time” he “committed physical violence against me or my family members.”

Jang stated in a filing last month:

"Due to his violent and negligent history, our children are simply not safe when left unsupervised and in his care."

Since last fall, McKinsey had been limited to two hours of supervised visits per week. Jang also pointed to a 2018 incident in which she said he grabbed her wrist hard enough to leave bruises.

McKinsey’s own earlier claims ran the other direction. He alleged Jang beat him with a frying pan in 2013, tried to pull medical tubes from his body after a procedure, and that Jang’s father punched him in the chest while he recovered from a double mastectomy. None of those allegations were adjudicated as proven in the material reported.

Child-abuse charges were still hanging over McKinsey

In 2023, McKinsey faced two misdemeanor counts of child abuse, cruelty to a child by endangering health and corporal injury to a child, after a police report accused him of slapping their six-year-old son and leaving a “large bruise in the shape of a handprint” on the boy’s face. He pleaded not guilty. He was freed on $50,000 bail on the condition he complete 12 parenting classes.

An earlier 2018-linked episode described deputies finding a two-year-old left unattended in an upstairs bedroom while McKinsey went shopping. At the time of the killing, reporting cited by the Mercury News said he was still out on bail and trying to enter a mental health diversion program that could have led to the charges being dropped if completed.

Violent threats and weak follow-through in the justice system have shown up in other recent cases, including when a trans activist who threatened a member of Congress received house arrest instead of prison time. Family court and criminal court both left this household in a running conflict right up to the week of the divorce hearing.

Two stories, one dead man, and open questions

On one side of the file: McKinsey’s petitions describing slurs over a boy and a dress, medical interference, and pressure to die. On the other: Jang’s petitions describing threats to kill her and her parents, wrist-grabbing, a handprint bruise on a six-year-old, and a father she said could not be trusted alone with the children.

Police have arrested the 77-year-old in-laws and scheduled them for arraignment. They have not announced a proven motive. Absolute calendar dates for the Saturday shooting, the Wednesday arraignment, and the planned divorce hearing were not fixed in the initial reporting. Full charging affidavits and complete petition texts were not laid out beyond the excerpts already described.

What is established is simpler and uglier. A New York Times executive died in a public parking lot. Two elderly in-laws are in custody on murder-related charges. The family had already spent years trading restraining orders, abuse allegations, supervised visitation limits, and fights over how a little boy should dress.

When identity battles, abuse claims, and family court orders pile up without clear resolution, the wreckage does not stay on paper, and children are the ones left standing in it.