A New York Times tech executive who claimed to be “transgender” has allegedly been murdered by her Chinese in-laws, who police say took turns shooting her in a California parking lot.
Biological woman Jonathan McKinsey, 40, who was of East Asian descent and sported a beard after undergoing a so-called sex change, was allegedly killed by Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, in Dublin at 3pm on Saturday.
Witnesses reported seeing two masked shooters approaching McKinsey before opening fire and walking away calmly. Zhang and Chen were arrested nearby and are being held in Santa Rita jail charged with murder, felony conspiracy, child endangerment and dangerously firing a gun.
Court documents show that McKinsey was in a custody dispute with her wife, Candice Jang, over their three children, and had filed for divorce in December 2025, Mercury News reported. It is unclear whether Jang is also a biological female, and who is the mother of the children.
McKinsey claimed while filing for a restraining order that she had been the victim of abuse for more than 15 years and had been beaten with a frying pan by Jang.
She also alleged that Chen had objected to the way one of the couple’s children was dressed, and used “anti-LGBTQ+ slurs” towards her and the child, calling them both in turn a “disgusting queer” and a “pervert”.
McKinsey further allegedly that Jang tried to pull medical tubes from her body shortly after a medical procedure related to her “transition”, and that Jang’s father punched her in the chest while she was recovering from having her breasts surgically removed.
Jang claimed that McKinsey had physically abused their children while alone with them, and last month wrote in a court filing that McKinsey was “simply prone to domestic violence and child abuse”.
McKinsey was charged with cruelty to a child by endangering health and corporal injury to a child. At the time of her death she was out on bail and had been trying to enter a mental health diversion program that would have resulted in her charges being dismissed.
According to McKinsey’s LinkedIn profile she was Director of Engineering, Game Player Experience, at the New York Times, where she had worked since 2023.
Header image: Left, Jonathan McKinsey (Facebook). Right, Shili Chen. Inset, Shouyong Zhang (Alameda County Sheriff’s Office).
