A New York Times games executive allegedly gave his daughter a children’s book about mourning a mother’s death while his wife was still alive, according to court documents filed during the couple’s bitter divorce.
Candice Jang said she found Jonathan McKinsey’s choice of The Memory String “deeply disturbing and frightening”, particularly because she alleged he had previously threatened to kill her and her parents.
“I cannot know what Jonathan intended by selecting that particular book,” she wrote in a restraining-order filing.
McKinsey, 40, was shot dead in a California car park last weekend. His in-laws, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, have been accused of killing him at the Dublin Sports Grounds in Dublin, California.
The couple are facing charges including murder, felony conspiracy, child endangerment and dangerously firing a gun. Their arraignment was scheduled for Wednesday.
New York Times executive’s divorce battle
McKinsey had been head of engineering for games player experience at The New York Times since 2023. He and Jang were in the middle of divorce proceedings, with both making allegations of domestic abuse in Alameda County court filings.
Jang was granted a temporary restraining order against McKinsey in October 2025. He sought an order against her in December, shortly before her order was due to expire.
In his filing, McKinsey alleged that Jang had physically and emotionally abused him on a weekly basis. He claimed she had once struck him on the head with a frying pan until he agreed to eat a cockroach, and alleged that she had submerged a cat in a bucket before he revived it.
He also accused Jang of abusing their children and said she had told him to take his own life because “no one would want to be with someone as f***ed up and transgender like me”.
Jang, in turn, alleged that McKinsey had threatened to kill her and her parents. She also claimed he had grabbed her wrist in 2018, leaving bruises.
McKinsey had previously faced two misdemeanour child-abuse charges after police accused him of slapping their six-year-old son in the face and leaving a large bruise in the shape of a handprint. He pleaded not guilty and was released on 50,000 US dollars bail, with the condition that he complete 12 parenting classes.
At the time of his death, he was seeking entry to a mental-health diversion programme which could have resulted in the charges being dropped after completion.
Allegations over children and gender identity
McKinsey also alleged that Chen became angry after seeing his son Wyatt ask to wear his sister Alexis’s dresses. He said Chen called the child a “disgusting queer” and a “pervert”, and directed the same terms at him while criticising him for being transgender.
He claimed that Chen blamed him for Wyatt wanting to wear dresses and told him to leave “her house”, although he said the property belonged to him and Jang. McKinsey also alleged that Jang refused to arrange outside childcare to prevent Chen from looking after the children.
His court papers further alleged that Jang had interfered with medical treatment connected to his transition, including trying to pull out medical tubes after a procedure. He said Zhang punched him in the chest while he was recovering from a double mastectomy.
Jang’s lawyer later described McKinsey in court documents as “simply prone to domestic violence and child abuse”. Jang wrote that their children were not safe when left unsupervised with him, citing what she called his “violent and negligent history”.
It was unclear whether the allegations of abuse, disputes over the children or disagreements about McKinsey’s gender identity played any part in the killing.
Captain Michael Campos of Dublin Police Services said investigators were examining possible motives “from all angles”, as well as the histories and relationships of those involved.
A neighbour said McKinsey had recently moved out of the home he shared with Jang and their three children. The shooting took place a week before a scheduled hearing in the couple’s divorce case.
