2 men indicted in 2002 killing of Run-DMC DJ

NEW YORK — The question of who killed Jam Master Jay, the DJ for pioneering rap group RunDMC, has remained a mystery for nearly 18 years.

But federal prosecutors Monday afternoon announced the indictment of two men whom investigators have long suspected of participating in killing the DJ, whose real name was Jason Mizell, inside a Queens recording studio.

The men, Ronald Washington and Karl Jordan Jr., were charged with murder while engaged in drug trafficking in a 10-count indictment unsealed Monday.

The indictment says the two men “together with others, with malice aforethought, did unlawfully kill Jason Mizell, also known as ‘Jam Master Jay.’ ”

“They walked in and murdered him in cold blood,” said Seth DuCharme, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, at a news conference Monday afternoon.

Mr. DuCharme said, without giving specifics, that authorities had faced challenges in pursuing the case.

“This is a case about a murder that for nearly two decades has gone unanswered,” he said. “Today, we begin to answer that question of who killed Jason Mizell and why.”

On Oct. 30, 2002, new court papers say, Washington and Jordan, both armed, broke into Mizell’s studio in Queens. As Washington forced a person in the studio to the ground, the papers say, Jordan fired a bullet into Mizell’s head, killing him almost instantly.

Prosecutors claim that the two had “executed”

Mizell, 37, after he sought to exclude them from “a multikilogram, multistate narcotics transaction.” In July 2002, just months before the murder, court papers say, Mizell had received about 10 kilos of cocaine “on consignment” from a supplier in Maryland. Washington and Jordan were supposed to have been his partners in the deal, the papers say, but after a dispute, Mizell threatened to cut them out.

“There was a beef — it didn’t go as planned,” one official said.

Washington, 56, is already serving a federal prison sentence for robbery. Jordan, 36, was taken into custody Sunday.

If convicted, Washington and Jordan each face a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison, or the death penalty. Prosecutors said in court papers that Attorney General William Barr had not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty.

Jordan is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday via teleconference because of coronavirus-related precautions. Washington, who is imprisoned in Kentucky, will be arraigned later this week, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors have asked that both be jailed pending trial.

A law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said two witnesses were now cooperating in the case.

Detectives explored several possible explanations for the shooting, including that it stemmed from a grudge against rapper 50 Cent, who was a protege of Jam Master Jay’s. That theory was later discounted.

The case went cold a few years later but was reopened in 2016.