Exclusive | Grandma accused of gunning down trans NYT tech exec son-in-law makes shocking claim about husband in desperate bid for freedom

A grandma accused of murdering her transgender New York Times executive son-in-law is throwing her husband under the bus in a bombshell bail filing, making shocking claims about her co-defendant in a bid for freedom.Lawyers for Shili Chen, 77, claim her husband, Shouyong Zhang, was “fixated” on Jonathan McKinsey, the executive married to their daughter, Candice Jang, and was the one who fatally shot him in September.Chen’s attorney, Curtis Briggs, writes that Chen did not fire the first shots at McKinsey when the couple allegedly gunned him down in the parking lot of Dublin Sports Grounds.Briggs says Chen watched as her husband, 77-year-old Shouyong Zhang, fired the deadly shots at McKinsey before she got out of the car “to protect her husband from what she feared was an assault by Mr.McKinsey.”Chen then “walked towards his body and fired several shots into his motionless body as her husband appeared to be doubled over with pain clutching his abdomen,” Briggs wrote.The couple went to the park only at her husband’s direction, Briggs wrote, and only knew that Zhang instructed her to bring a gun “for the purported purposes of going to the shooting range.”Briggs also presents evidence that Zhang was “consumed by the belief” McKinsey, whom he told police had a “dark soul,” would kill him.

He became increasingly obsessed with him and believed the executive set up two instances in which he was hit by cars while riding his bike in the preceding months.He thought McKinsey targeted him because he would have “freedom” without the grandfather present.“I truly do believe the reason he wants to set me up and harm/kill me because without me, he will have full freedom,” Zhang told police, also admitting that he killed McKinsey to protect himself and his grandchildren from future harm.Police executed a search warrant at the couple’s one-bedroom apartment and made a shocking finding that convinced them “Zhang had formed an intent to target McK...