Jam Master Jay murder case: Two men found GUILTY in 2002 murder of Run DMC rapper after drug deal went wrong
Two men have been found guilty of the murder of Run-DMC star Jam Master Jay after a five-week trial.
Karl Jordan, 40, and Ronald Washington, 59, were found guilty on all counts of murdering the hip-hop star who was shot on Tuesday in October 2002.
The two men face a minimum of twenty years behind bars and a maximum of life in prison for the murder of the DJ, real name Jason Mizell.
Prosecutors said Mizell was killed in October 2002 during a failed cocaine deal.
The case had been unsolved for more than two decades, and prosecutors charged the two men with murder in 2020.
Jam Master Jay – born Jason Mizell – was part of the legendary hip-hop group Run-DMC. He was shot and killed at a recording studio in Queens in 2022
Karl Jordan Jr. (left), now 40, the hip-hop star’s godson, is on trial for the murder of Jam Master Jay. He is being tried together with co-defendant Ronald Washington (right), 59
Both men were well known to Mizell, who prosecutors said was killed in a business dispute over a lucrative deal to distribute cocaine in Baltimore. Washington was a childhood friend and Jordan was Mizell’s godson.
They all grew up in the same neighborhood in the Queens borough of New York City.
Prosecutors said Jordan and Washington conspired to kill Mizell after the musician cut them off from the nearly $200,000 drug deal in Baltimore.
Attorneys defending Washington and Jordan both bluntly told the jury that the defendants did not kill Mizell.
The defense called a single witness, an expert who testified about the weakness of human memory, to discredit prosecution witnesses who recounted decades-old events.
In their respective closing arguments on Wednesday, defense teams said a third person, Jay Bryant, was in fact Mizell’s killer.
Prosecutors accused Bryant of letting Mizell’s killers into the musician’s studio, where he was shot dead, but say Bryant was complicit in the larger conspiracy, rather than the shooter himself. He will be tried separately in 2026.
Defense teams pointed out that Bryant’s hat was discovered at the crime scene and say the spotlight should be on him, not their clients.
Attorney Michael Hueston, representing Jordan, tried to poke holes and point out inconsistencies in witness statements, urging the jury that reasonable doubt remained about Jordan and Washington’s involvement in the murder.
“This is an attempt to ridicule the justice system,” said Susan Kellman, an attorney on the Washington team. “They don’t have a case against anyone other than Jay Bryant.”
But in their rebuttal, prosecutors repeated their arguments that Jordan and Washington were in fact executioners who ambushed Mizell as part of a drug dispute.
Prosecutors said Jordan and Washington conspired to kill Mizell after the musician, seen here in 1986, locked them out of a nearly $200,000 drug deal in Baltimore.
Mizell worked at the decks with rappers Joe “Run” Simmons and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels as the group helped bring hip-hop into the mainstream in the 1980s with hits like “It’s Tricky” and a remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way ‘. from the best-selling 1986 album ‘Raising Hell’
Mizell was at his recording studio in Hollis, the Queens borough of eastern New York City, where he and the two defendants grew up.
A weapon was found outside the crime scene and was part of the evidence shown to the jury
Mizell’s body is removed from a recording studio where he was shot and killed, Wednesday, October 30, 2002, in the Queens borough of New York
Angry after being left out of a cocaine deal, Jordan — the slain musician’s godson — fired a .40-caliber bullet into Mizell’s head while Washington held others in the room at gunpoint, prosecutors say.
In the prosecution’s account of the night of the killing, Bryant, a friend of Jordan’s who Mizell did not know, entered the front door and let Washington and Jordan in through a locked fire exit, both armed with handguns, prosecutors said.
Mizell rose from a bench to greet his godson. Jordan shot him in the head from inches away, killing him instantly, prosecutors told the jury. All three defendants fled moments later, they said.
Singer Yarrah Concepcion saw Jay lying on the ground with his arms against his head shortly after the shooting, she testified.
‘I didn’t have to look at my wrist. When his arm moved, brain stuff came out of his head,” she recalled earlier this month.
Prosecutors said Rincon and other eyewitnesses at the time were too afraid to tell police who killed Mizell, and even fled New York out of fear for their own safety.
For years, two key witnesses Lydia High and Uriel “Tony” Rincon, the latter of whom was shot in the leg the night of the murder, had resisted cooperating with law enforcement, a reluctance that both they and prosecutors attributed to fear.
Prosecutor Mark Misorek said the defense teams’ attempts to shift the focus on Bryant represented “pure speculation.”
‘Karl Jordan Jr. shot Jason Mizell in the head and he did it while Ronald Washington was controlling the crowd,” he said.
Mizell performs on stage. Mizell was 37 and a father of three when he was shot to death after allegedly obtaining 20 pounds of cocaine from a Midwestern distributor, which Washington, Jordan and others planned to distribute in the Baltimore area.
Police (pictured at the scene in 2002) identified at least four people in the studio with Mizell, including the two armed gunmen. The City and Mizell’s friends offered more than $60,000 in reward money, but witnesses refused to come forward and the case languished.
The trial has revealed a lesser-known side of Mizell, who railed against the drug culture with his band Run-DMC.
But prosecutors say Mizell got involved in the drug trade to support his lifestyle and those of those close to him, while the buzz around the group’s music — hits like “It’s Tricky” and “Walk This Way” — began to fade.
He was a low-key middleman in the drug trade and a financial source for family and friends in the years leading up to his death, they say.
According to prosecutors, Jordan and Washington came up with their plan after Mizell deprived them of their jobs.
Mizell rose to fame in the 1980s as a member of the 1980s hip-hop sensation Run-DMC (pictured in 1985) with Joseph ‘Run’ Simmons and Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniel. Their hits included It’s Tricky, Christmas in Hollis and Run’s House
Along with LL Cool J and Public Enemy, Run-DMC pioneered new-school hip-hop, with a mix of rock elements, aggressive braggadocio and socio-political commentary, and its offshoot, golden-era hip-hop, including eclectic sampling .
The groundbreaking group were the first rappers to be featured on MTV and created a new rap aesthetic that incorporated street culture, a departure from the flashy, disco-style clothing of their predecessors.
Before his death, Mizell was influential in New York as a breeder of local talent, collaborated with young rappers and co-founded a DJ academy.
Jam Master Jay’s murder followed a wave of murders within the rap community in the 1990s, including the shootings of superstars Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G.