Two suspects have been indicted in the 2002 killing of hip hop artist Jam Master Jay (pictured), which until now had been one of New York City’s most notorious unsolved killings, two law enforcement officials told the Associated Press on Monday
Two suspects have been indicted in the 2002 killing of hip hop artist Jam Master Jay, which until now had been one of New York City’s most notorious unsolved murders.
Ronald Washington and Karl Jordan are facing charges of murder in a drug related homicide, New York federal prosecutors said Monday.
Jason ‘Jay’ Mizell, known professionally as Jam Master Jay, was shot dead at his recording studio in Hollis, Queens, on October 30, 2002.
‘Primarily this is a case about a murder which for nearly two decades had gone unanswered,’ Seth DuCharme, acting US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said at a press conference.
‘Today we begin to answer the question of who killed Jason Mizell and why.
‘What we’ve alleged in that indictment is that on October 30, 2002, Mr Jordan and Mr Washington walked into a music studio in Queens where Mr Mizell and others were working essentially, hanging out, and they walked in and murdered him in cold blood.’
Jordan and Washington are both facing 10 felony counts. Two of those counts are for Jay’s murder, and the others are related to distribution of cocaine.
Jay – whose real name is Jason Mizell – was gunned down at his recording studio in his hometown of Hollis, Queens, on October 30, 2002
Jay was a member of 1980s hip-hop sensation Run-DMC with Joseph ‘Run’ Simmons and Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniel
Washington, who had reportedly been living on a couch at Jay’s home in the days before his death, was publicly named as a possible suspect or witness as far back as 2007.
He is currently serving a federal prison sentence stemming from a string of robberies he committed while on the run from police after Jay’s death aged 37.
In court papers filed at the time, prosecutors alleged that Washington waved a handgun around and ordered people in Jay’s Queens recording studio to lie on the ground while another man killed him on October 30, 2002.
Washington ‘provided cover for his associate to shoot and kill Jason Mizell’, prosecutors wrote.
On Monday prosecutors confirmed that Jordan had been arrested by ATF officers on Sunday.
Jay was shot once in the head with a .40-caliber bullet by a masked assailant at his studio in Hollis, the Queens neighborhood where he grew up, police said at the time. He left behind a wife and three children.
Police identified at least four people in the studio with Jay, including the two armed gunmen.
The city and Jay’s friends offered more than $60,000 in reward money, but witnesses refused to come forward and the case languished.
Jay’s acquaintance with Washington upset his family. Before sleeping on Jay’s couch, Washington had been linked to the 1995 fatal shooting of Randy Walker, a close associate of the late Tupac Shakur.
ATF Assistant Special Agent in Charge Daryl McCormick offered a message for Jay’s loved ones at Monday’s press conference.
‘To family and friends of Mr Mizell who endured a heavy burden of grief over these many years, we hope that today’s arrests and indictments and this announcement will bring some measure of peace,’ McCormick said.
Jordan was scheduled for arraignment Monday afternoon, prosecutors said, and Washington is expected to appear at a hearing later in the week.
Police are pictured outside the recording studio where Jay was shot dead on October 30
Run-DMC’s hits included It’s Tricky, Christmas in Hollis and the Aerosmith remake collaboration Walk This Way. The trio are pictured in New York City in May 1985
Jay shot to stardom in the 80s as a member of 1980s hip-hop sensation Run-DMC with Joseph ‘Run’ Simmons and Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniel.
Their hits included ‘It’s Tricky,’ ‘Christmas in Hollis’ and the Aerosmith remake collaboration ‘Walk This Way.’
Run-DMC became known as the pioneers of hip-hop in the early eighties, popularizing the then-underground music movement for the masses.
The trio went on to become the first hip-hop act to have a gold album, a platinum record, Grammy nomination and, in 2009, they became only the second hip-hop group in history to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, after Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Run-DMC were the first rap group to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone, and they were the first to appear on American Bandstand and have their videos played on MTV.
It was Jay who is credited for creating the band’s distinctive style of wearing heavy gold chains, black hats, and Adidas shell-toe sneakers minus the laces, once saying, ‘How I dressed in high school is the way we dressed… My vibe is our vibe.’
Their reign came to a tragic end in 2002 after Jay was shot and killed.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding Jay’s death were chronicled in a 2018 Netflix documentary called ReMastered: Who Killed Jam Master Jay?
The film failed to come to a conclusion about who committed the killing.
Fans visit a wall of tributes outside Jay’s studio in the wake of his death aged 37