A New York Times technology executive was shot dead in a parking lot Saturday afternoon — allegedly by his own in-laws, both 77, in what police describe as a conspiracy to kill.
Jonathan McKinsey, 40, the Times' director of engineering for games player experience, was found with multiple gunshot wounds at the Dublin Sports Grounds in the East Bay city of Dublin around 3 p.m., according to police. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
His mother-in-law and father-in-law, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both Dublin residents, were arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder, conspiracy, willfully discharging a firearm with gross negligence, and child abuse. They're being held without bail and scheduled for arraignment Wednesday.
A witness told KPIX-TV that a masked man shot McKinsey, handed the gun to a woman, and she also shot him. Police have not confirmed that account or said which suspect fired. The New York Post played up the suspects' Chinese heritage in its headline; SFGATE omitted it entirely and stuck to procedural facts. Both outlets treated the killing as a straight crime story. Neither asked the question that matters.
Court records show McKinsey and his wife, Candice Jang — Zhang and Chen's daughter — had been locked in a year-long legal war. Jang sought a domestic violence restraining order against McKinsey in October 2025. McKinsey sought one against her in December. He filed for divorce that same month. The couple continued battling over child custody into this year.
In October 2025, McKinsey was also charged with two misdemeanors: child endangerment and injury to a child.
The in-laws' booking records include a child abuse charge as well. Authorities won't explain the allegation, citing the active investigation. Whether the child abuse charge against Zhang and Chen connects to McKinsey's prior child endangerment case remains an open question — but the overlap demands scrutiny the press isn't providing.
McKinsey joined the Times in 2023 after a career spanning NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, Splunk, and Coursera. He held degrees from UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech and taught computer science at both. A Times spokesman confirmed his death.
A man who spent his career inside the institutional tech-media complex ended up dead in a suburban parking lot, allegedly executed by his wife's elderly parents. Behind it: mutual domestic violence claims, child endangerment charges, a divorce, a custody fight, and now a murder charge with a child abuse count baked in. This is the same family collapse playing out across the country. The class that runs the paper of record isn't exempt from the decay — they just don't want to connect the dots when it's one of their own.
Zhang and Chen face arraignment Wednesday. Police say there are no outstanding suspects and no known threat to the public.
