Jam Master Jay Murder: Guilty Plea After 20 Years

0:00It's April 27, entertainment and celebrity news, today starts now, AI powered in Spotlight Ready. I'm Cory with the story. J. Bryant, a 52-year-old from New York, just pleaded guilty to helping set up the murder of Run DMC's Jam Master J back on October 30th, 2002. That's Jason Mezel, the DJ shot dead at 37 in his Queens recording studio. Bryant admitted in Brooklyn Federal Court he knew a gun was coming and that it was straight up wrong. This comes more than 20 years after the killing tied to a messy drug deal gone sour. Prosecutors say Mezel got 10 kilos of cocaine on consignment for a $200,000 flip in Maryland, but he cut out his guts on Carl. Jordan Jr. and Buddy Ronald Washington after some beef. Folks are feeling the weight of this closure, especially hip-hop heads who remember Jam Master J pioneering the turntables. The U.S. attorney called it an execution-style hit, praising the team's grind for justice no matter the decades.

1:01Bryant let the killers slip in through a locked fire escape around 7.30 pm. Then Jordan and Washington stormed the studio, guns blazing. Jordan shot Mezel in the head, Washington held someone down. Both got convicted by a jury in February 2024. Now Bryant's looking at 15 to 20 years minimum, sentencing TBD, while prosecutors plan to appeal Jordan's overturned conviction over, drugling issues, hip-hop history gets a piece of reckoning after all this time.