DMC SLAY RAPS
Busts in ’02 Qns. hip-hop murder
Two men long suspected of killing Run-DMC legend Jam Master Jay have finally been arrested as chilling details emerged Monday in the nearly 20-year-old slaying of the hiphop pioneer at his Queens studio.
Local ne’er-do-well Karl Jordan Jr., 36, was identified as the triggerman in what has been one of the city’s most notorious unsolved cases.
The accused drug trafficker would have been around 18 years old when he allegedly shot Jam Master Jay — who grew up in the Hollis section of Queens as Jason Mizell — with a single bullet to the left side of the head in a drug deal gone bad.
Suspected cohort Ronald Washington, 56 — a career criminal who was so close to the 37-year-old Mizell that he was sleeping on his couch at the time of the murder — was charged Monday while already behind bars for an unrelated robbery.
The pair is accused of ambushing Mizell in his Hollis recording studio on the evening of Oct. 30, 2002 — reportedly hugging him just before the murder.
“Mr. Jordan and Mr. Washington walked into a music studio in Queens . . . and they murdered [Mizell] in cold blood,” Seth DuCharme, acting US attorney for the Eastern District, told reporters. “Today, we begin to answer the question of . . . why.’’
On Monday, prosecutors alleged in new court papers that Mizell — part of the famed 1980s trio rounded out by Joseph “Run’’ Simmons and Darryl McDaniels — had been dealing cocaine from 1996 until his death.
The motives for his murder were the oldest in the book: money and betrayal, the feds said.
In July 2002, “Mizell acquired approximately ten kilograms of cocaine on consignment from a supplier in the Midwest,’’ prosecutors said in court papers. “The cocaine was intended to be distributed in Maryland by Washington, Jordan and other co-conspirators.”
But when a dispute broke out between Washington and an unnamed player, Mizell told Washington “that he would be cut out of the Maryland transaction,” the feds said.
That’s when Washington, a k a Tinard, and Jordan, whose nicknames include Little D and Noid, plotted Mizell’s murder, they said.
It allegedly took the suspects several months to find just the right moment. They finally settled on the night before Halloween 2002, at around 7:30 p.m., according to the court papers.
The pair was buzzed into the studio because they were known locals, witnesses told authorities.
Once inside, “Washington pointed his firearm at one of the individuals located inside the studio and demanded that person lay on the floor,” the court papers say.
Then, “Jordan approached Mizell, pointed his firearm at him, and fired two shots at close range. One of those shots struck Mizell in the head, killing him.’’
Jordan was ordered held without bail in Brooklyn federal court Monday afternoon after pleading not guilty at his arraignment. He faces two counts involving Mizell’s murder while drug-trafficking and eight more narcotics raps.
Washington is scheduled to be arraigned later in the week on two counts in Mizell’s murder.
Both suspects face up to life in prison — or the death penalty — if convicted. US Attorney General William Barr has not said whether the government will seek their execution if they are found guilty.
Jordan, who was arrested Sunday at a home in Hollis, has no adult criminal record, according to the feds.