It's been nearly 25 years since Run-DMC's Jam Master Jay was fatally shot in his Queens recording studio at the age of 37. Yesterday (April 27), 52-year-old Jay Bryant pleaded guilty to a federal murder charge. He explained to a judge that he helped other people get into the studio so they could ambush the DJ.
“I knew a gun was going to be used to shoot Jason Mizell,” he told a federal magistrate, per NBC News. “I knew that what I was doing was wrong and a crime.”
Bryant's role in the murder was first revealed in 2023 when he was charged in a superseding indictment. “More than two decades after the coldblooded, execution-style killing of Mr. Mizell, an exhaustive investigation revealed Bryant’s role,” US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement.
Bryant did not name the other people he claims to have helped. In 2024, however, two other men were convicted in Jam Master Jay's death: Ronald Washington and Karl Jordan Jr. Jordan's conviction was overturned in December.
Who Killed Jam Master Jay?
"After a review of the trial record, the court finds that the government’s theories of Jordan’s drug-related motive to kill [Jay] or drug offense-related motive to use a firearm are impermissibly speculative and just conjecture," Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall stated at the time. "Jordan has met the heavy burden [under federal rules] to be granted a judgment of acquittal."
Earlier this month, Judge DeArcy Hall granted him a $1 million bond. For now, however, he remains behind bars on separate drug charges. “There's a real chance, Mr. Jordan, that you may be released in the very near term,” U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall told him in court. “I wish you luck. And you will stay out of trouble.”
Jordan could have been released shortly after that, but prosecutors ended up appealing his acquittal of two federal murder counts. As for Washington, his guilty ruling still stands.
