A Foster City genetic researcher killed his former employer and himself Wednesday with a cheap gun he had purchased legally and registered with the state, investigators said yesterday. Police would not disclose, however, when the researcher, Guyang Matthew Huang, 38, bought the gun, a Bryco Arms Jennings .380, which was used to kill Tanya Holzmayer, 46, at her Mountain View home and then shot himself on February 27. The gun was still in Huang's hand when he was found by a passer-by. Holzmayer was shot after opening her door to tell a pizza delivery man that she had not ordered any food. A gunman later identified as Huang burst from the darkness, shot her repeatedly and then sped away. Huang then drove to Foster City and parked his car near his home. He called his wife to say what he'd done and walked about a quarter of a mile to a levee, where he shot himself, police said.
Dr. Huang was a molecular biologist who had run a prestigious genome center in China. He was earned a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Massachusetts in 1993. His wife was a successful geneticist, the co-inventor of a patented technique to screen genes in a search for cures to AIDS and cancer. One possible clue, however, came from a close associate of the slain woman Igor Roninson, Holzmayer's friend of more than 30 years who heads the Division of Molecular Oncology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said Holzmayer fired Huang in June from a Menlo Park research company where they were working together. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle).