NYT Executive Who Died Allegedly Suffered Abuse During Past Pregnancy, Court Docs Reveal
Transgender executive Jonathan McKinsey recounted alleged abuse by his estranged wife, Candice Jang, during a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage, according to court documents.
Jonathan McKinsey, a New York Times engineering director, was allegedly killed by his in-laws in September. Court documents filed in December 2025 reveal that McKinsey, a transgender man, had previously been pregnant and experienced a miscarriage, which he attributed to the alleged terror campaign waged by his estranged wife, Candice Jang.
According to a court filing, McKinsey stated, "I was terrified of Candice hurting me or the baby, but had nowhere to go and limited options, as a pregnant transgender man." McKinsey was 40 at the time of his death.
McKinsey was fatally shot on September 26 in the parking lot of the Dublin Sports Ground in California's Bay Area. His alleged assailants are Candice Jang's parents, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, who have been charged with murder and are being held without bail. They face potential life sentences if convicted.
The court documents detail McKinsey's pregnancy with an embryo created from Jang's IVF treatment. McKinsey alleged that Jang did not want to have a child with his "f—ed up genetics." At the time, in November 2014, McKinsey was a graduate student at UC Berkeley and a part-time teaching assistant.
During the pregnancy, McKinsey claimed Jang frequently initiated fights due to jealousy. He stated that Jang forced him to sleep in the living room while she slept in their bed and once threw a cup at his stomach. In early 2015, as the couple moved from Berkeley to San Jose, McKinsey reported experiencing severe nausea at 22 weeks pregnant. He alleged that Jang compelled him to move heavy boxes, leading to bleeding and premature labor.
McKinsey recounted that while Jang drove him to the emergency room, she repeatedly yelled at him and told him to "shut up" when he expressed pain. Their son, Romeo Preston McKinsey, was born but survived for less than an hour. "I am confident that being forced to move the heavy boxes triggered my premature labor and ultimately caused the death of our son," McKinsey stated in the filing.
These alleged experiences were not the only traumatic encounters McKinsey described. In August 2013, he alleged that Jang hit him in the head with a frying pan during an argument and threatened him to eat a dead cockroach she had found. McKinsey claimed Jang then sterilized the cockroach and made him consume it whole.