Suspect in Jam Master Jay's 2002 Queens killing expected to take plea deal

John Annese, New York Daily News on Apr 16, 2026

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NEW YORK — The third and final suspect in the 2002 murder of Jam Master Jay is expected to take a plea deal in connection with the rap legend’s slaying, according to a federal court filing in Brooklyn.

The suspect, Jay Bryant, didn’t go to trial alongside co-defendants Karl Jordan Jr. and Ronald Washington in 2024, but he featured heavily in testimony about the Run-DMC icon’s shooting.

Prosecutors allege he walked into Jay’s Queens music studio on Oct. 30, 2002, and opened the rear door so Jordan and Washington could come inside and murder him.

Jordan and Washington’s defense team argued that Bryant, who confessed to his uncle that he shot Jay, and whose hat was found in the studio with his DNA on it, was the real killer.

A docket filing indicates that Bryant will have a change-of-plea hearing before a Brooklyn magistrate judge sometime in the future. It’s not clear what charge he’ll cop to, or what he’ll admit to in regard to his role in the murder.

Bryant’s lawyer, Cesar de Castro, did not return messages seeking comment, and a representative for U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella declined comment Thursday.

Jordan and Washington were convicted of Jay’s killing, but last December, Brooklyn District Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall overturned Jordan’s guilty verdict and acquitted him, ruling that prosecutors failed to prove that he killed Jay over a drug trafficking beef, a condition of the federal charges he faced.

The feds are appealing that decision.

The judge did not overturn Washington’s conviction.

The “It’s Tricky” rapper, born Jason Mizell, was playing a football video game in his second-floor studio on Merrick Blvd. in Hollis, Queens, when a gunman shot him in the head.

The five other people in the studio kept mum for decades, until finally taking the stand in early 2024 for Jordan and Washington’s trial. Bryant was added to the case in 2023, eight months before the trial began. In December 2023, he pleaded guilty in a separate federal drug trafficking and gun possession case.

Prosecutors contended that Jay recruited Jordan and Washington to sell coke for him in Baltimore, but the deal went sour when the rapper’s drug connection had bad blood with Washington and threatened to kill him. The government alleged that the two men sought to kill Jay, steal his drugs and take over the drug distribution plot in Maryland.

Jay’s friend Uriel “Tony” Rincon told The New York Daily News in 2007 he was inches away but never saw the killer’s face. But when Rincon took the stand, he named Jordan, who was the rapper’s godson, as the shooter, and said Washington was standing guard over the studio door.

Lydia High, Jay’s business manager, testified that Washington pointed a gun at her and ordered her to the ground during the shooting. She didn’t name Jordan during her testimony, but she described how the shooter had a neck tattoo similar to Jordan’s.