Dark past of New York Times tech exec shot dead by his in-laws in California — as wife’s astounding claims revealed

The New York Times tech executive who was allegedly murdered by his elderly in-laws in a cold-blooded California shooting has a checkered past of domestic and child abuse, The Post has learned.

Jonathan McKinsey, 40, the newspaper’s head of engineering for games player experience, was killed by Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, in the parking lot of Dublin Sports Grounds around 3.p.m Saturday, police said.

Court records, seen by The Post, show McKinsey was charged with two counts of misdemeanor child abuse in 2025 by Alameda prosecutors.

The encounter that led to the charges was his wife Candice Jang calling Dublin police to report McKinsey had hit her six-year-old son in the face with an open hand, according the San Francisco Chronicle.

She also told investigators about a 2018 domestic violence incident, where McKinsey bruised her left arm, the documents say.

When police went to their home, they found their two-year-old child in a room upstairs by himself while he was out shopping, according to a deputy sheriff.

McKinsey ultimately pleaded not guilty to both crimes and was released from jail on the condition that he take parenting classes.

A spokesman for the Times confirmed McKinsey was the victim of the Saturday afternoon shooting and that he had worked for the newspaper since 2023.

First responders attempted aid, but he died at the scene. Witnesses reported seeing two masked assailants approach McKinsey in the lot.

They said the shooters took turns unloading bullets into the victim before they were quickly arrested by a passing cop.

Harrowing footage from the scene showed a body lying in the parking lot in broad daylight, before a couple was bundled into the back of a cop car.

Zhang, who stands 5ft 8in and weighs 165 pounds, allegedly carried out the attack alongside his wife, who measures just 5ft 2in and weighs 110 pounds, according to Alameda County Sheriff’s Office inmate records.

While the elderly couple is from the Dublin area, they also have ties to Albuquerque, New Mexico, The Post had learned.

Zhang and Chen were booked into Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail on suspicion of murder. McKinsey had been married to their daughter Jang, the Post revealed.

According to the booking records, the couple is looking at a whole stack of serious charges, including first-degree murder, felony conspiracy, dangerously firing a gun, and child endangerment that could’ve caused major injury or death.

McKinsey’s tech career spans nearly two decades, kicking off in the late 2000s with hands-on software engineering roles at heavyweights like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Oracle, along with a stint in product strategy at Coursera.

By 2018, he made the jump into engineering management at UKG, eventually leveling up through leadership roles at Splunk.

He joined the New York Times in early 2023 as a senior engineering manager for the games platform, overseeing infrastructure for viral hits like Connections and scaling systems to handle massive traffic surges.

He then moved to the games player experience team as a senior engineering manager and ultimately stepped up as the director of engineering for games player experience in late 2025, where he led a 25-person team driving feature innovation and monetization for millions of daily puzzle players.

McKinsey built the foundation for his tech career at UC Berkeley, where he earned his Master’s in Computer Science back in 2015.

Nathan Wu, whose LinkedIn says he worked at UC Berkeley, wrote in a comment on his LinkedIn late Sunday: “Rip buddy.”

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