Man pleads guilty in murder of Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay
A New York man has pleaded guilty to taking part in the 2002 killing of Jam Master Jay, a pioneering hip-hop star from the famed group Run-DMC, as part of a dispute over a drug deal, according to U.S. prosecutors.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said that 52-year-old Jay Bryant, who appeared in court in Brooklyn, confessed to his role in the shooting death of Jason Mizell, better known by his stage name Jam Master Jay, and faces up to 20 years in prison.
Bryant was accused of opening a locked fire escape door to allow two gunmen into Mizell’s New York City recording studio, where one of them shot and killed the hip-hop star.
Two men, Karl Jordan and Ronald Washington, were convicted of killing Mizell in 2024 while smuggling drugs.
Last year, a US federal judge overturned Jordan’s conviction, ruling that prosecutors failed to satisfactorily prove their case.
Mizell and his Run-DMC bandmates helped break hip-hop into the pop mainstream in the 1980s with hits like It’s Tricky and a cover of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way from 1986’s best-selling album Raising Hell.
As Mizell’s success in show business waned in the 1990s, he turned to cocaine dealing to finance his music career, according to evidence presented at trial.
In 2002, Mizell purchased cocaine for distribution in Maryland by his godson Jordan and his longtime friend Washington and others. Prosecutors alleged that Mizell left Jordan and Washington out of the nearly $200,000 drug deal because of a disagreement between Washington and one of his co-conspirators in Baltimore.
The dispute led to Mizell’s death at the age of 37 when Jordan fired the gun that killed him, according to prosecutors.
