Jam Master Jay: Two Men Found Guilty in Murder of Run-DMC DJ

A jury was empaneled two men, Karl Jordan Jr. and Ronald Washington, found guilty in the 2002 murder of pioneer and world-renowned DJ Jam Master Jay at the end of a federal trial Tuesday. The verdict ends decades of speculation about why Jay, whose real name was Jason Mizell, had been killed. The jury returned the verdict after weeks of testimony in the US District Court – Eastern Department of New York in Brooklyn.

In 2020, US attorneys charged Jordan and Washington with conspiring to kill and stage Mizell's murder after a drug deal went bad. Mizell, U.S. attorneys alleged, had begun selling cocaine when Run-DMC's popularity began to fade, and that when a drug dealer refused to cooperate with him if he included Washington in their distribution plan, Washington and Jordan plotted Mizell's death.

In 2023, the government added another man, Jay Bryant, to the indictment, alleging that he helped Jordan and Washington gain access to Mizell, who was playing video games in a recording studio at the time of his death. Bryant will be arraigned at a later date.

Jordan and Washington each face a minimum of 20 years, with sentencing to be set at a later date.

Jordan and Washington's trial began on January 29 with opening statements in which US attorneys told the court that Jordan was Mizell's godfather and that Washington was a childhood friend of the DJ. Still, when Mizell ruled Washington out of a Baltimore cocaine-distribution plot, the men converged on Jamaica's 24/7 studio in Queens around 7:30 p.m. on October 30, 2002.

Bryant entered the front entrance of the studio and let Washington and Jordan in through the fire in the back. Prosecutors claimed Bryant left behind a hat with his DNA on it. Washington stood guard at the studio door while Jordan approached Mizell, who had taken a gun with him for protection in the days before his death.

During a hug, Jordan fired two shots from a .40-caliber handgun, including one into Mizell's skull at such close range that it burned his hair and skin. Another bullet wounded Mizell's boyfriend, Uriel “Tony” Rincon, who was playing video games with Mizell. Rincon and a woman who worked for Mizell's JMJ Records, Lydia High, were the only eyewitnesses to the shooting. Both appeared as witnesses and testified during the trial. Others were in the studio control room and heard only the gunshots.

Attorney Miranda Gonzalez described the shooting as both an “ambush” and an “execution.” The motive, he said, was money. Washington had accompanied Mizell on a trip to Baltimore, where a drug dealer refused to cooperate with him. Without Washington's involvement in the drug distribution scheme, he and Jordan would gain nothing. At the time, Washington was down on his luck and an alcoholic living at Mizell's sister's house.

The attorney said Rincon and High didn't identify Washington and Jordan to authorities for years because they were afraid. Their lack of action later became a sticking point for the defense, which questioned their memories.

Defense attorneys' opening remarks focused on the integrity of prosecution witnesses, arguing that some of them were testifying through “cooperation agreements” and challenging their recollections. Jordan's attorney, John Diaz, said he believed some of the witness statements had changed over time. Ezra Spilke, of the Washington team, told the jury that the testimony was based on events that took place more than 10 seconds ago 21 years ago.

When Rincon and High took the stand, however, both said they vividly remember those events. Their testimony, along with that of other witnesses, provided a mosaic of what happened the night of the shooting, corroborating the prosecution's allegations. Even as witnesses testified against them, the defendants both appeared upbeat and unfazed during the weeks at their trial.

Rincon, who was Mizell's business partner, told the jury that he saw the studio door open and that Mizell warmly greeted the man who had entered. “He went right up to Jay and did a possible handshake — half a handshake — and at the same time I heard some gunshots,” Rincon said. “At the same time, my mom called me. I dropped my cell phone and looked at him at the same time. I see Jay fall.” He said he remembered hearing the DJ say “Oh shit” just before the shots. One of the bullets struck Rincon, whose eyes watered during the deposition, just above his left knee.

After identifying both Jordan and Washington, Rincon said he told High's brother, Randy Allen, who was in the control room, which way the shooter had run. He told prosecutors he didn't immediately tell authorities who the killers were, even though he could see them clearly, because “I was amazed at who I saw and what happened.” He also said he fears for his and his family's safety. She did not tell authorities that she had seen Jordan and Washington at the scene of the murder until 2017.

Allen testified that he ran after the killers and eventually gave up when he saw no one. He had grabbed Mizell's gun, but hid it before running to the nearby police station. When defense attorneys asked why she didn't just call 911, she said she felt it would be faster to go to the area. (That claim drew a flurry of skepticism from the gallery, and defense attorneys questioned Allen about why he didn't call 911, but he consistently said he thought it would be faster to go to the area.)

High's testimony was similarly emotionally charged, with her saying she did not feel comfortable naming the two defendants as the killers because she was afraid. Like Rincon, she recalled seeing Mizell initially smile when the killers entered. “[Mizell] picked up and gave the person a pound,” he said. And then he heard the shots and tried to escape. “I got to the door and the person standing there told me to get down on the ground. It was Tinard,” she said, referring to Washington by a nickname. “[He had] a gun.” He told her to get down on the floor. She was in tears on the witness stand as she recalled how two men jumped on top of her, making their way out.

While he could not name Jordan specifically as the shooter, he said the shooter had a tattoo on his neck, like Jordan's. However, he had no difficulty in recognizing Washington, since he had known him for years and could see him clearly. She said she did not name him to the police out of fear, and that he had even moved away from New York after the shooting. (Defense lawyers testified to inconsistencies in statements she had given police in the past, and she, like Rincon, said she was worried about who she saw as the killers. She added that her advantages over a couch and the floor made her men look bigger than they are, that's how he described them to the police.)

Allen recalled witnessing a horror show immediately after the shooting. “I saw my sister [High] lying on the left side of the door, crying and screaming,” he said in his deposition. “I saw Tony hopping on one leg, and I looked over at Jay, and he's laying there. They shot him. Blood was coming out of his head… [Lydia] she was just crying hysterically.”

Allen said both High and Rincon confided in him the identities of the killers, but he withheld that information from authorities because he thought it was to tell their stories. Once, in the past, when she tried to talk about the night of the shooting with High, she told the jury that she stopped talking to him for two years. “She's very, very emotional,” he said. “It was up to her to say.”

Other witnesses described Mizell as appearing “upset about something” in the days before he was killed. One of Mizell's cousins, Stephon Wotford, testified that around the same time, Washington had said, “Something bad is going to happen.” When Washington attorney Susan Kelman asked Watford how he could remember that time so well, he said, “2002 was a tragedy in my life.”

Ralph Mullgrav, the convicted drug dealer who cut Washington out of the deal, reluctantly testified. He spoke of Mizell's alleged plan to smuggle drugs into Baltimore and said that when he saw Washington, whom he had known since childhood, he ran for a gun. But he defended Mizell's memory. “Jay was not a drug dealer,” Mulgrave told the jury. “He used it to get by now and then.”

Daynia McDonald, who used to date Washington, told jurors that she had “basically” confessed to killing Mizell during their relationship. When she asked him how he knew details of the murder, he told her, “Because I was there.” McDonald's testimony, however, almost upended the entire process, as one of the prosecutors' main questions prompted Washington's attorney, Kelman, to plead for a mistrial. Judge DeArcy Hall denied the request and reprimanded the prosecutor for its wording.

There were also multiple law enforcement officers, including one who responded to the studio immediately after the crime. He described a chaotic scene, made worse by the lack of video evidence. There was no video from the building's security cameras, he testified, because the VHS system had not recorded.

Defense attorneys called only one witness, a memory expert who tried to explain how one's perception of events can change over time.

Mizell's death came at a time when Run-DMC was trying to make a comeback. The trio had taken a break after 1993 Down the King, since gangsta rap was on the rise, but they had re-committed in 2001 with a new album, Crown Royal, and songs produced by Kid Rock, Jermaine Dupri, Stephan Jenkins and, of course, Jam Master Jay, among others. Mizell was also trying to make ends meet with his label JMJ Records, which had just signed Rusty Waters, a group that included Allen. Mizell was supposed to go on tour with Rusty Waters the day after he was killed.

At the time of his death, New York authorities offered a $50,000 reward for any information that would help solve the murder. Music industry executives, as well as Eminem, Jay-Z and Aerosmith, among others, have teamed up to contribute an additional $250,000. Still, it took decades to close the case.

The DMC released a statement in 2020 praising the law enforcement teams that worked to indict Jordan and Washington. “It's been a difficult 18 years not being around him knowing his killers have yet to be charged with this heinous crime,” she said. “I commend the NYPD, the NYPD, the federal agents and all law enforcement involved in this case, who did not give up and worked to bring justice for Jay. I realize this is a first step in the legal process, but I hope Jay can finally rest in peace.”