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NEW YORK (AP) — More than 20 years after Run-DMC star Jam Master Jay was brazenly shot dead At his recording studio, two men close to him were convicted of murder Tuesday, marking a long-awaited moment in one of hip-hop’s most elusive cases.
An unnamed federal jury in Brooklyn found Karl Jordan Jr. and Ronald Washington guilty of killing the pioneering DJ in 2002 for what prosecutors characterized as revenge for a botched drug deal.
The musician, whose real name is Jason Mizell, worked on the turntables of Run-DMC, which helped hip-hop break into the pop music mainstream in the 1980s with hits like “It’s Tricky” and a new cover of “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith.
Like the murders of rap icons. Tupac Shakur and the notorious B.I.G. In the late 1990s, there were no arrests for years. Authorities were inundated with clues, rumors and theories, but struggled to get witnesses to come clean.
AP correspondent Margie Szaroleta reports on a conviction in the murder of Jam Master Jay.
“It’s no mystery why it took years to charge and arrest the defendants,” Breon Peace, Brooklyn’s top federal prosecutor, told reporters after Tuesday’s verdict. He said key witnesses “were terrified of retaliation if they cooperated with authorities.”
“His strength and determination in testifying at this trial were a triumph of good over evil and courage over fear,” Peace added.
Jordan, 40, was Mizell’s godson. Washington, 59, was an old friend who was staying at the DJ’s sister’s house at the time of the shooting on October 30, 2002. Both men were arrested in 2020 and pleaded not guilty.
“You just killed two innocent people,” Washington shouted to jurors after the guilty verdict. Jordan’s supporters also erupted at the verdict, cursing the jury.
Defense attorneys said they asked the judge to overturn the verdict and acquit them.
“My client did not do this. And the jury heard testimony about the person who did it,” one of Washington’s attorneys, Susan Kellman, told reporters.
The men’s names, or at least their nicknames, have been floating around for decades in connection with the case. Authorities publicly named Washington as a suspect in 2007. He told Playboy magazine in 2003 that he had been outside the studio, heard the gunshots and saw “Little D,” one of Jordan’s nicknames, run out of the building.
Mizell’s relatives He welcomed the verdict and regretted that his mother did not live to see it.
“I feel like I’m carrying a 2,000-pound weight on my shoulders. And when that verdict came back today, it took off,” said Carlis Thompson, Mizell’s cousin, who wiped away tears after the verdict was read. “The wounds can begin to heal now.”
Mizell had been part of Run-DMC’s anti-drug message, conveyed through a public service announcement and lyrics such as “we ain’t thugs / we don’t do drugs.” But according to prosecutors and testimony at trialHe racked up debt after the group’s heyday and worked as a cocaine broker to cover his bills and his usual generosity to his friends.
“This was a man who got involved in the drug game to take care of the people who depended on him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Artie McConnell said in his summary.
Prosecution witnesses testified that in Mizell’s final months, he had a plan to acquire 10 kilograms of cocaine and sell them through Jordan, Washington and a Baltimore-based trafficker. But Baltimore connection refused to work with Washingtonaccording to testimony.
Prosecutors said Washington and Jordan pursued Mizell out of revenge, greed and jealousy.
Two eyewitnesses, former studio assistant. Uriel Rincon and Mizell’s former business manager, Lydia High, testified that Washington blocked the door and He ordered High to lie down on the ground. She said she brandished a gun.
Rincón identified Jordan as the man who approached Mizell and exchanged a friendly greeting moments before gunshots and a bullet rang out. He wounded Rincón himself. Three other people, including a teenage singer who had just stopped by the studio to promote their demo tape, testified that they were in an adjoining room and heard but did not see what happened.
Other witnesses testified that Washington and Jordan made incriminating statements about Mizell’s murder after it occurred.
Neither Washington nor Jordan testified. His lawyers questioned the credibility of key prosecution witnesses and their recollections of the long-ago shooting, noting that some initially denied being able to identify the attackers or having heard who they were.
“Virtually every witness changed their testimony 180 degrees,” Kellman told the judge during legal arguments.
Witnesses said they had felt overwhelmed, reluctant to pass on second-hand information or feared for their lives.
The essay shed limited light on a third defendant, Jay Bryant, who was charged last year after prosecutors said his DNA was found on a hat at the scene. They claim he snuck into the studio building and let Washington and Jordan in through the fire door in the back to avoid the doorbell.
Bryant has pleaded not guilty and is headed for a separate trial.
Testimony suggested he knew someone in common with his co-defendants, but there is no indication that Bryant was close to Mizell, if they ever met.
Bryant’s uncle testified that his nephew told him he shot Mizell after the DJ grabbed a gun, a scenario no other witnesses described.
McConnell said Bryant was “involved, but he’s not the killer.” Prosecutors’ theory doesn’t even place Bryant in the studio, although it was there that authorities found the hat with DNA from him and others, but not the other defendants, according to court documents.
One of Jordan’s attorneys, Michael Hueston, said in his summation that Bryant “is literally beyond reasonable doubt.”
The verdict comes a month before the 40th anniversary of Run-DMC’s self-titled debut album, which included a song titled “Jam Master Jay,” Peace noted. The song praised Mizell as “on his way / to being the best DJ in the US of A.”
The group, which also includes Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and Joseph Simmons, known as DJ Run and Rev. Run became the first rapper with gold and platinum albums and was the first hip-hop group with a video in regular rotation on MTV.
While the case may complicate Mizell’s image, Syracuse University media professor J. Christopher Hamilton says it should not be erased.
If he was indeed involved in the drug trade, “that doesn’t mean his accomplishments shouldn’t be praised,” Hamilton said, arguing that acceptance from local underworld figures was a necessity for successful rappers of the ’80s and ’90s.
“You can’t find these people without them going through the challenge of the street,” Hamilton said.