Third Person Charged in Murder of Run-DMC's Jam Master Jay

Two men were indicted for the 37-year-old's 2002 shooting in 2020

BY Megan LaPierrePublished May 31, 2023

A third person has been charged for their involvement in the murder of iconic rap trio Run-DMC's longtime DJ, Jam Master Jay.

On October 30, 2002, the DJ was shot and killed at his Queens recording studio at age 37. In 2020, two men — Ronald Washington and Karl Jordan Jr. — were indicted for their connection to Jay's murder after 18 years of the killing going unsolved.

A third individual has now been indicted, The Associated Press reports. Yesterday (May 30), Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York filed a superseding indictment charging 49-year-old Jay Bryant in the DJ's death. Bryant was already in custody on unrelated federal drug charges.

According to the letter filed with the court [via AP], Bryant was seen entering the building with Washington and Jordan on the evening of Jay's death, and the new indictee's DNA was also recovered at the scene.

Authorities believed that the DJ's murder was tangled up in a drug deal that went fatally wrong at the time of the previous indictments, wherein Washington and Jordan were charged with murder while engaged in drug trafficking.

Born Jason Mizell, Jay joined the influential hip-hop group in 1982.

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