NEW YORK (AP):
Nearly a quarter-century after rap star Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC was shot to death, a man admitted in court on Monday to a role in a killing that stymied investigators for decades.
Jay Bryant pleaded guilty to a federal murder charge, telling a judge that he helped other people get into a recording studio to ambush the DJ, whose give name is Jason Mizell.
“I knew a gun was going to be used to shoot Jason Mizell,” Bryant told a federal magistrate. “I knew that what I was doing was wrong and a crime.” Bryant’s admission brings some closure — but also adds complexity — to a knotty case.
Bryant didn’t name the other people with whom he acted. But a jury in 2024 convicted two other men, Karl Jordan Jr and Ronald Washington, yet a judge subsequently cleared Jordan. Washington has also challenged his conviction. His lawyer, Susan Kellman, noted on Monday that evidence against Bryant included his DNA on a hat at the crime scene and witness testimony that Bryant once claimed he fired the gun himself. Jordan’s lawyers declined to comment.
Bryant, 52, is expected to face a sentence somewhere between 15 and 20 years in prison for killing plus unrelated drug and gun charges to which he pleaded guilty earlier. No sentencing date has been set. Prosecutors had no immediate comment.
Mizell handled the turntables in Run-DMC, a pathbreaking trio he formed with friends Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels and Joseph Simmons, known as DJ Run and Rev. Run. With such 1980s hits as It’s Tricky, My Adidas, and a version of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, they helped rap climb the ladder from an urban genre into mainstream popularity. Run-DMC was the first rap group with gold- and platinum-selling albums, a Rolling Stone cover, and a video on MTV. The trio was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. Mizell also mentored other hip-hop artistes, including a young 50 Cent.
At 37, Mizell was gunned down in his studio in the Queens neighbourhood where he’d grown up. His October 2002 death followed the late 1990s killings of two other hip-hop greats, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.
