Charges expected in unsolved 2002 murder of Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay, source says

Prosecutors are set to announce charges against two people in the unsolved murder of Jam Master Jay, the pioneering DJ of Run-DMC who was killed in 2002, according to a law enforcement source.

Jam Master Jay, born Jason Mizell, was shot and killed in 2002 at a recording studio in the Queens neighborhood of Jamaica. He was 37.

The US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York will hold a 2:30 p.m. news conference to announce the unsealing of a criminal indictment charging two individuals with his murder in a Queens drug trafficking case, the source said.

Jam Master Jay teamed up with Run (Joseph Simmons) and DMC (Darryl McDaniels) to form the hip hop trio Run-DMC. With Jam Master Jay at the turntables as DJ, they became the first hip hop group to reach mainstream popular music success in the 1980s, solidified by the rap-rock crossover “Walk This Way” with Aerosmith in 1986.

The crime has remained unsolved since 2002. In 2018, the Netflix documentary “ReMastered: Who Killed Jam Master Jay” reviewed his music legacy and reexamined the evidence from the killing.