BROOKLYN (CN) — Ronald Washington, who is accused of conspiring to kill Run-DMC deejay Jam Master Jay, confessed while serving a sentence in a Brooklyn federal prison, a fellow inmate said Wednesday.
Jason “Jay” Mizell, known professionally as Jam Master Jay, was shot and killed in his Queens recording studio on Oct. 30, 2002. After the case sat for nearly two decades as one of New York City’s most infamous unsolved murders, federal prosecutors indicted Washington and Karl Jordan Jr. in 2020. A third man, Jay Bryant, was charged in the murder last year but will be tried separately.
Yusuf Abdur-Rahman said he met Washington in the television room of Brooklyn federal prison in 2011.
“What did he tell you?” US Attorney Miranda Gonzalez asked Wednesday.
“That he had murdered Jam Master Jay,” Abdur-Rahman said.
Abdur-Rahman had also testified in front of a grand jury in 2020, Gonzalez said, that Washington told him there was a girl in the studio “but she was unharmed because that wasn’t what we were there to do.”
Earlier this week, Mizell’s business manager Lydia High testified she saw him get murdered. According to High’s testimony, Washington pointed a gun at her and told her to get on the ground when Mizell was shot.
Abdur-Rahman was previously arrested for refusing to comply with a court summons. In recordings played in court, he told a federal investigator that he didn’t want to testify because he felt he was “misled” by the government.
“I was misled,” Abdur-Rahman said in the recording. “I thought it was only for the grand jury proceeding … I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to do it.”
In the recording, he adds that he doesn’t want to testify against anybody in this case.
“I’m not going to be embarrassed and humiliated, labeled as a snitch,” Abdur-Rahman said.
Jay Bryant’s uncle, Raymond Bryant, was also called to the stand Wednesday. Despite his nephew not being tried in these proceedings — his trial is set for 2026 — Raymond Bryant said his nephew confessed to killing Mizell.
While at his niece’s house in the Bronx a couple of years after the murder, Raymond Bryant said his nephew told him that he “did it.”
“And he said he wouldn’t have killed Jason Mizell if Jason Mizell hadn’t reached for his gun. Correct?” Michael Hueston, Jordan’s attorney, asked.
“Yes,” Bryant said.
But federal prosecutors claim that Jordan, not Bryant, shot the gun. Additionally, none of the eyewitness testimony presented at trial has placed Bryant in the room.
Other evidence presented at court, though, has placed Bryant at the scene of the crime including a hat with Bryant’s DNA that law enforcement officers found in the recording studio.
In opening arguments, prosecutors claimed that Bryant was able to slip into the building unnoticed and let Washington and Jordan in through a rear fire escape entrance.
Tanya Davis, who worked for a financial services company in the same building as Mizell’s studio, testified Wednesday that she saw a man slip into the building behind a woman who appeared to be headed for the studio.
Davis worked at the front desk of Primerica, which had a glass window that allowed her to see directly into the building hallway, along with a security monitor that showed the building’s front entrance and stairwell.
Davis said she saw a young woman, who prosecutors confirmed was Lydia High, enter the building and a man grab the door behind her. But during High’s testimony, she said that she doesn’t remember anyone coming in after her.
“She was in the front, so she opened the door, and he grabbed it and came in behind her,” Davis said.
The man appeared to be tall, lanky, had braids and was wearing a “light blue tracksuit,” Davis added.
Davis also said that he “appeared to be dragging his leg a little bit.”
Shortly after she saw the pair walk by, Davis said she heard gun shots.
“And what happened after that?” U.S. Attorney Mark Misorek asked.
“A woman screamed,” Davis said, adding she saw the man in the blue tracksuit go back down the hallway and exit through the building’s front door.
The defendants face a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of life in prison. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland directed the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York to not seek the death penalty.
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