How I Unravelled the Jam Master Jay Murder Mystery
In 2003, I disclosed that JMJ was murdered over a botched cocaine deal and identified his likely killers. Last Tuesday, a jury found two of Jay's friends guilty of his murder.
In the summer of 2003, I was sitting by a swimming pool in Las Vegas, bored and restless after finishing my first book Clubland, when the editor-in-chief of Playboy phoned. A former gangster-turned-screenwriter named Curtis Scoon had approached the magazine offering to supply inside dope about the murder of Run DMC’s DJ Jam Master Jay, who was shot point blank in the head the previous October in his recording studio in Queens, New York.
The local tabloids had named Scoon as a suspect in the beloved hip-hop icon’s murder based on New York Police Department leaks. The NYPD theorized Scoon had motive to kill the turntable maestro because of a bungled drug deal in 1995 involving the duo in which the drug supplier absconded with Scoon’s money. Scoon wanted to clear his name and help Playboy find the actual killer.
Playboy had originally assigned another writer to work with Scoon, but worried for his safety, he asked to be taken off the story. The magazine asked around who had the courage to complete the assignment, and my name popped up.
During the 1990’s, I had carved out a niche for myself writing about the criminal underbelly of New York nightlife. While at the Village Voice, I uncovered a Mafia-connected drug ring at the notorious Limelight nightclub. Angered by my reporting, the goons who ran the ring tried to kidnap me off the street. They planned to drive me to Staten Island to cut off my thumb to prevent me from writing, an idea they got from a scene in the movie, The Pope of Greenwich Village. Plus, I knew Jay from my time as a music critic when I interviewed Run-DMC for the British music weeklies. I only had a month to finish the story, so I hopped on the next plane to New York, eager to get started.
And so began a frustrating two-decades-long pursuit of justice for the slain DJ that ended last Tuesday when a federal jury in Brooklyn found the gangsters I deduced were Jay’s likely killers back in 2003, childhood friend Ronald “Tinard” Washington and Jay’s godson Karl “Little D” Jordan, guilty of murdering the hip-hop icon.
Once back from Vegas, I met Scoon in a midtown Manhattan hotel and tried to size him up. At six-foot-four and 250 pounds, he was an imposing figure. He was cordial enough to deal with, but you definitely got the impression his mood could darken in an instant. When I walked down a busy Manhattan sidewalk with him, the crowd parted like the Red Sea. Pedestrians were careful not to catch his eye.
Was Scoon capable of murdering somebody? Maybe. Did Scoon kill Jam Master Jay? Unlikely. The beef between the DJ and Scoon was well-known in Hollis, Queens, the neighborhood where Jay grew up and never left. But if the 1995 drug deal was the motive for the murder, why wait seven years to exact revenge? It didn’t make any sense.
“He paid the debt. I had to get a little heavy with him, but he paid,” Scoon assured me. “Jay did not owe me a dollar at the time of his death. I hadn’t been in contact with him for at least four years.”
Satisfied that Scoon was probably telling the truth, the next day we headed to a barbershop called Master Kuttaz in Hollis, Queens. Scoon wanted me to meet some of the local gangsters he knew. Hollis was a respectable address when Jay’s family moved there in the 1970’s, but after White flight and the arrival of heroin and crack cocaine, the area had turned into a suburban ghetto that boasted a bustling criminal underworld.
The gangsters I spoke with claimed they didn’t know who killed Jam Master Jay, but the consensus was it was probably a drug beef. It was common knowledge in Hollis’s criminal demimonde that he was dealing cocaine to make ends meet. The glory days of Run-DMC were behind him, but he still had an extensive network of friends and family that depended on him for money.
“Everybody in Jay’s inner circle knows that he was involved in arranging deals,” Scoon told me, “but nobody wants to talk about it because they don’t want to tarnish his image. He kept a gun on him because he was in a lot of business disputes. Everybody loved Jay except the people he did business with.”
Though the gangsters couldn’t identify the beloved DJ’s killer, they firmly believed the gunman was somebody he knew. The gunman got so close to Jay, there were powder marks on his shirt.
Intriguingly, they told me about a teenage burglary crew that Jay belonged to which targeted houses in Jamaica Estates, a wealthy enclave near Hollis where Donald Trump grew up.
Initially, Jay's involvement in the robberies was limited to concealing the stolen goods in his parents' basement. However, one night, he joined his accomplices in a break-in at a doctor's house. As he was leaving, a security guard spotted him and discharged several shots, narrowly missing him. Consequently, he was arrested by the police while attempting to flee the crime scene.
After a short spell at the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx, Jay left, vowing to leave the criminal life behind and concentrate on his music. He bought his first turntables with proceeds from the robberies.
The crew included four close associates: Ronald “Tinard” Washington, Darren “Big D” Jordan, Randy Allen, and a mysterious individual everybody called Yakim. Even after achieving international fame as the DJ for the pioneering rap group Run-DMC, these individuals remained steadfastly in his orbit. Big D served as Run DMC’s road manager, Tinard joined Jay in the dope business, Yakim — as I would soon find out —played a pivotal role in the events leading up to Jay’s death, while Allen acted as his right-hand man and business partner, with Allen's sister, Lydia High, fulfilling the role of manager for JMJ Records, Jay’s record label, further solidifying the bond.
The burglary crew could be the key to the story, I thought, the alliances and rivalries forged in the members’ teenage days might provide clues to unraveling the mystery of Jay’s death. I suspected one or more members of the crew was involved in his murder, a hunch that would later pay off.
In the meantime, I started working my own sources. I talked to Run-DMC’s publicist Tracey Miller, one of the few publicists I’ve met who cared about the welfare of their clients. She told me that Jay’s financial situation was even worse than I thought. While Tracey didn’t know anything about his drug dealing, she recounted how Jay was in deep trouble with the IRS. A six-figure tax bill incurred during his Raising Hell heyday steadily accumulated over time to nearly $500,000.
“Jay couldn’t keep up with all the penalties and interest,” said Miller. “It kept compounding and compounding. Eventually the IRS put a lien on his earnings. He was allowed to keep a portion to live on, but most of his performance fees went to the tax man.”
I knew Jam Master Jay was dealing drugs. I knew the reason why Jay was dealing drugs. But I had yet to establish the identity of his killers.
Randy Allen, who was in Jay’s recording studio the night he was murdered, was an obvious suspect. He was the one who put out the story that Scoon killed Jam Master Jay. Why would he lie if he didn’t have something to hide? He also had a motive. According to multiple sources, Jay was about to fire Randy because he found out that Randy was stealing money from the record company bank account.
There was also a persistent rumor Randy killed his childhood friend to collect on a life insurance policy. The problem with this theory was I couldn’t even confirm the existence of the policy, let alone that the policy led to a murder. Anyway, when I interviewed him, he didn’t strike me as a killer. A liar. A thief. A conman. Sure. But a murderer? No.
“I didn’t steal from Jay,” he told me. “I made money for Jay. Do you think Jay would have kept me as his business manager for more than a decade if I was stealing?”
Ronald “Tinard” Washington was a different case. Like Randy, Tinard was a childhood friend. He subsequently did a long stretch in prison for dealing heroin. After he got out, Jay allowed him to stay in the family home where he grew up. Notably, prior to Jay’s death, Tinard was dating the DJ’s sister, Bonita.
According to Hollis street lore, Tinard had at least one murder under his belt, the killing of Tupac’s best friend, the rapper Randy “Stretch” Walker, during a high-speed car chase through Hollis, Queens in which Tinard allegedly sprayed a car carrying Walker with an automatic rifle, causing the vehicle to overturn and crash.
I reached out to Tinard’s lawyer, Susan Kellman, to arrange an interview. Much to my surprise, he agreed to talk. The revelations he shared during our conversation would change the course of the investigation.
Speaking from behind bars where he was awaiting trial on robbery charges, Tinard began by telling me about a road trip to Washington D.C. that he and Jay took three months before Jay’s death. The purpose of the trip was to meet a major-league drug supplier known as Uncle. In a DC hotel room, Uncle gave Jay ten kilos of cocaine on consignment. Uncle expected the DJ to pay him back within seven days, according to Tinard.
The next day, he and Jay drove to Baltimore where Jay had somebody lined up to sell the coke. Tinard claimed that Jay gave the drugs to the Baltimore connection, but he ran off with the drugs. Tinard wouldn’t say who this person was other than it was somebody they grew up with in Hollis. “Me and the Baltimore guy used to be real close until we had a falling out,” said Tinard. [In fact, Tinard was lying about the Baltimore connection stealing the cocaine. As I would find out years later, the real reason the drug deal fell apart was the Maryland connect refused to work with Tinard because of bad blood between the two of them. So Jay cut Tinard out of the deal, thus setting up the motive for his murder.]
Curtis Scoon told me Tinard was likely referring to Yakim, who after his time breaking into houses with Jay, Randy Allen and Tinard as part of the teenage burglary crew, moved to Baltimore where he became a major player in the local drug trade.
Flash forward to the night of the murder: Tinard claimed that he was returning to Jay’s studio after purchasing bullets for the DJ’s gun, when he heard gunshots. Not long after, he saw Jay’s godson, Karl “Little D” Jordan, rushing down the fire escape of the building where the studio was housed
“I’m positive it was Little D. I looked him right in his face before he ran off,” Tinard told me.
Later that evening, he claimed he bumped into Little D on the street and asked him what had happened: “Little D told me, ‘My pops wasn’t supposed to shoot Jay. That wasn’t supposed to happen’.”
Daren "Big D" Jordan, Little D's father, and I had been acquainted since his time as Run-DMC's road manager. Although I could easily believe that Big D was capable of murder, his physical description did not match the information released by the NYPD regarding Jay's killer, as Big D was significantly larger. Little D, on the other hand, did match the description of the killer. The hot-headed youngster was only 18, but he already had a reputation as a gunslinger.
I was left with the strong impression that Tinard was falsely implicating Big D to deflect attention from his own role in the murder. However, I had no reason to believe that he wasn’t telling the truth about Little D, though why he would implicate his co-conspirator remained a mystery.
In December 2003, Playboy published my article under the headline “The Last Days of Jam Master Jay.” The reaction in the hip-hop world was largely negative. How dare I claim that Jam Master Jay was a drug dealer. Jay was a good guy. He spoke out against guns and drugs.
Despite the criticism, I firmly believed in the truthfulness of my reporting. By attempting to portray Jay in a positive light, his supporters were inadvertently hindering the investigation. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t be a drug dealer and a decent person at the same time. Not every drug dealer is a scumbag.
Def Jam honcho Russell Simmons was furious with the story for another reason. In the article, Run-DMC publicist Tracy Miller blamed Simmons, who was Run-DMC’s manager, for Jay’s financial woes for not instructing him on how to manage his finances.
“I did the best I could,” Simmons said. “I’m not a business manager. I couldn’t force him to pay his taxes. He was a grown man.”
A few months after my Playboy article was published, I received a call from the FBI, requesting an interview. At the time, I had relocated to the North Fork of Long Island to work on a a book about crystal meth. An agent traveled from the city to meet me and escort me to the Eastern District of New York office building located in Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn. Inside, I faced a panel consisting of prosecutors, agents, investigators, and a solitary NYPD detective. They subjected me to a rigorous interrogation, scrutinizing the contents of my story.
They said they thought my Playboy story was largely accurate, although not entirely. The fact the case had gone federal suggested to me that they must have believed that Jay's murder was connected to the fallout from the failed Baltimore drug deal. This case had evolved from a simple murder to a crime committed as part of a drug conspiracy that spanned multiple states, which explained the involvement of the FBI.
During the interrogation, they bombarded me with questions about Uncle. Did I know his real identity? No, I didn’t. What about the name of the hotel where Uncle and Jay met? Again, the answer was no. Did I know where Uncle was from? I’d heard he was from the Midwest but was now living in Los Angeles. What about Yakim? All I knew was that he was part of Jay's burglary crew, had relocated to Baltimore, and was known for moving heavy weight. They asked to see my notes. I told them there was no point. Everything important was in the story. I wasn’t in the habit of leaving out the best bits of my reporting.
Simultaneously, unknown to me, investigators made a substantial breakthrough in the case when Lydia High, Randy Allen's sister, identified Tinard as one of the gunmen responsible for Jay's murder. Six individuals were present at the recording studio on the night of the murder. Three of them—Randy Allen, rapper Mike Bonds, and aspiring R&B singer Yarrah Concepcion—were in a recording booth and didn't witness the murder. However, Lydia High and Uriel Rincon, a gofer, were eyewitnesses to the incident as they were in the reception area where Jay was killed.
In the aftermath of Jam Master Jay’s murder, NYPD detectives grilled Rincon and High. Fearing for their own lives, both of them lied to the detectives when they said they didn’t recognize the assailants. Police threatened to arrest them for obstruction of justice.
Following pressure from friends in the music industry, High revealed the truth to investigators. She identified Tinard as the gunman who stood guard at the studio door and pushed her to the floor after she attempted to escape. High was acquainted with Tinard from their neighborhood and his regular presence at the studio.
The government convened a secret grand jury in 2005. Lydia High testified. But the jury mustn’t have found her testimony credible because jurors declined to issue an indictment.
Two years later, the feds publicly identified for the first time Tinard as one of the gunmen who murdered Jam Master Jay. Tinard was on trial for armed robbery when prosecutors alleged that he pointed his weapon at those in the studio, ordering them to lie on the ground while providing cover for his accomplice to carry out the shooting.
Prosecutors additionally stated that his girlfriend, Daynea McDonald, provided information indicating that her boyfriend had disclosed to her he was responsible for the murders of both Jam Master Jay and rapper Randy "Stretch" Walker.
The judge was perplexed by the government's decision to bring up Jay's murder in an unrelated robbery case rather than prosecuting Tinard for it. I had hoped the government would follow the judge's advice and indict Tinard, but no indictment was forthcoming. Prosecutors likely determined they did not have sufficient evidence to proceed to trial.
For nearly a decade, the case of who killed Jam Master Jay appeared to grow cold. The perception in the hip-hop world was law enforcement had given up on solving the murder. Just like Biggie and Tupac, it looked like the Jam Master Jay case would never be solved. This perception was fueled by the lack of visible progress in the case and the absence of any significant developments or arrests.
Part of the challenge investigators faced was the reluctance of Jay's associates to come forward with information. Some feared for their lives given the people rumored to be involved in his murder. Others were hesitant to tarnish his image by revealing details about his involvement in drug trafficking. By holding on to an idealized perception of Jay, they significantly contributed to the lengthy delay in bringing his killers to justice.
But just when I’d given up on justice for Jam Master Jay, in April 2016, I received a phone call from Michael Cassidy, an investigator for the US Attorney’s Office. He said the government had developed information from a source that Uncle—the man who supplied Jam Master Jay with the ten keys of coke that got him killed—was Terry Flenory, co-founder of the Black Mafia Family.
Before the Drug Enforcement Administration broke up the organization, BMF was one of the largest cocaine distribution groups in America. The organization was notorious for investing in hip-hop businesses to launder drug money. It’s long been rumored that the start-up cash to fund Bad Boy Records was provided by BMF.
Now, it started to make sense why Uncle would give Jay ten keys of coke without asking for payment upfront. He was hoping to use him as a front to wash drug proceeds.
The prosecution received another big break when in the same year, Uriel Rincon, after years of claiming he didn’t see the killer’s face, finally identified Karl “Little D” Jordan as the man who fired the fatal bullet.
The investigation was reactivated. A second grand jury was convened but it took another four years before an indictment was finally handed down
In the summer of 2020, my faith in the justice system to deliver accountability for Jay’s death was renewed when the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York charged Ronald “Tinard” Washington and Karl “Little D” Jordan, both members of the DJ’s inner circle, with the murder of Jason Mizell, better known as Jam Master Jay.
The government claimed that three months before the murder, an unnamed person — referred to in the indictment only as “a supplier in the Midwest” — gave Jay ten kilos of cocaine on consignment: “Mizell recruited Washington and Jordan to sell the cocaine in Maryland. Following a dispute, Mizell excluded Washington from the deal. In retaliation, Washington conspired to murder, and ultimately executed, Mizell.”
Following the indictment, I undertook a new investigation to supplement my original Playboy story. Surprisingly, I discovered that Jay’s drug operation was much more expansive than I originally thought. The botched Baltimore deal was not a one-off event, but an attempt by Jay to expand into a new market.
Jay didn’t directly deal drugs, but acted as middleman, putting together sellers and suppliers. His main supplier was Uncle. While it’s unclear how Jay first met Uncle, Uncle supplied him with multi-kilo cocaine loads (as much as 20-30 kilos at a time) on consignment, which he entrusted to his associates to sell.
A source who worked with Jay selling drugs described a typical transaction. Jay made a call to Uncle and then he called the associate with a phone number. The associate would then fly to a stash house in St. Louis to pick up the load. The same source said once he sold the cocaine, he either drove back to St. Louis to pay for the consignment, or Black Mafia Family members came and picked up the money.
The price per key was $18,000, reduced to $17,000 if the money was brought within 30 days, and to $16,000 if it was brought in fifties and hundreds. Smaller bills were not welcome because they were difficult to move.
As for Jay’s end of the deal, he got $3,000 a key. “If I did a deal for 10 keys, that’s $30,000,” said the associate. “Jay didn’t have to do shit except make a phone call.”
Asked why the DJ risked his career and serious jail time, he told me: “When you find a unicorn, you’re not going to walk away from it. Uncle was a unicorn.”
I also discovered how the feds found out Uncle was Terry Flenory. An unnamed partner who was instrumental in Jay's drug operation, despite having never met Uncle in person, asserted that they had spoken on the phone approximately twelve times. Even after Jay's demise, this partner continued to communicate with Uncle. However, all of a sudden, Uncle mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace behind.
In 2005, the DEA arrested sixteen members of the Black Mafia Family. Among those arrested were the organization's co-founders, Terry Flenory and his brother Demetrius Flenory. The DEA accused BMF of trafficking thousands of kilograms of cocaine, with a street value exceeding a quarter of a billion dollars.
One evening, the partner was engrossed in a documentary about the Black Mafia Family entitled BMF: The Rise and Fall of a Hip-Hop Drug Empire, which featured a wire-tap of Terry Flenory, secretly obtained by investigators.
“I nearly fell off the couch,” he told me. “I knew that voice. It was Uncle, it was fucking Uncle. So I called the FBI and said, ‘This is going to sound crazy, but I believe Uncle is Terry Flenory’.”
The most surprising thing about the Jam Master Jay murder trial for anybody who had been following the case was how anticlimactic it was. It wasn’t like in the movies. There were no shocking new revelations. There was no last minute witnesses. The long-awaited dramatic showdown between the prosecution and the defense failed to materialize. The story the prosecutors told had already been written, the ending preordained. There was one exception.
In my hubris, I assumed I knew everything there was to know about Jam Master Jay's murder. However, I failed to anticipate the involvement of a third individual in the killing—a friend of Tinard's named Jay Bryant. On the night of the murder, Bryant unlocked the rear door of the building where the studio was housed, allowing Little D and Tinard inside, according to the government.
The problem for the prosecution was Bryant was the only one of the trio whose DNA was found at the crime scene. Plus, Bryant bragged to a relative he pulled the trigger. (Bryant’s case was severed from the others. He’s set to go on trial in 2026) This provided an opening for the defense. The feds had the wrong men, they claimed. Jay Bryant murdered Jam Master Jay.
During her opening argument, assistant US Attorney Miranda Gonzalez told jurors that as Run-DMC's popularity waned, Jay's income dwindled, prompting him to turn to drugs as a means of generating money. She further stated that Jay had excluded Tinard and Little D from a $200,000 cocaine deal, thus providing the motive for the murder.
The centrepiece of the government’s case was the testimony of the two eyewitnesses: Lydia High and Uriel Rincon.
Rincon was the first to take the stand. He testified that he was sitting on the couch with Jay playing a video game when Little D walked into the studio wearing a hoodie and greeted Jay with a “half handshake.” Just at that moment, Rincon reached down to answer his cell phone, when without warning, Little D pulled out a gun, and before the DJ could reach for his own gun which was lying on the armrest of the coach, shot him in the head. Rincon testified he heard two or three shots, One of the bullets hit him in the left leg. He also described how Tinard forced Lydia at gunpoint to drop to the floor. He said he recognized both of them but was too afraid to come forward in the immediate aftermath of the murder because he feared for his own safety.
Tinard and Little D's lawyers attempted to portray Rincon as a dishonest witness, emphasizing that he had initially claimed not to know the shooter for several years, including in a 2007 newspaper interview.
Asked why it took him fourteen years to finally identify Little D as his friend’s killer, he said: “I was scared.”
Lydia High's nervousness was evident as she took the stand. Her voice quivered, and she paused frequently to compose herself. She testified she was sitting across from Jam Master Jay, giving him paperwork to sign, when the gunman entered the studio.
“Jason smiled. He smiled. And he kind of gave the person a pound,” she said. “And then he said, ‘Oh shit!'”
Lydia didn’t see the gun go off but she did hear it. In the ensuing chaos, she screamed and bolted toward the door. Someone blocked her escape, pointed a gun at her, and ordered her to get on the floor.
“It was Tinard,” she said.
Lydia didn’t identify Little D by name as the shooter who fired the fatal shot, but described the killer as a light-skinned Black man sporting a neck tattoo. (Little D has a tattoo on his neck. He wore a turtleneck during the trial.)
After Lydia and Rincon left the stand, the trial was effectively over.
The government called some additional witnesses to bolster their case, among them an inmate from the Metropolitan Detention Center, who claimed Tinard had confessed to him in 2011. Tinard's girlfriend, Daynea McDonald, also testified, stating that her boyfriend had admitted to being involved in the murder of Jay.
Most chillingly, a chauffeur who regularly ferried Little D to pick up drugs, testified that during one trip, Little D said that if Jam Master Jay was still alive, he would kill him again.
During the trial, I finally learned the real identity of Yakim after years of searching: Ralph Mullgrav. At first, Mullgrav defied a government subpoena but after several days behind bars, he reluctantly — very reluctantly — took the stand to testify about the Baltimore drug deal that led to Jay’s death.
In August 2002, Jay asked Mullgrav to sell 10 keys of coke for him, but Mullgrav refused because the DJ wanted to include Tinard in the deal and there was bad blood between the two of them.
When Jay showed up for a meeting with Tinard in tow, Mullgrav rushed to get a gun he’d stashed in the tire well of a car parked nearby. When asked what he planned to do, Mullgrav said, “Shoot Tinard.”
Prosecutors alleged Tinard and Little D murdered Jay because he excluded them from the deal at Yakim’s insistence.
Noticeably absent from the trial was Black Mafia Family co-founder Terry Flenory. The feds did subpoena Flenory, but they must have decided his testimony wasn’t necessary. After all, Flenory may have supplied the drugs but he had nothing to do with the murder. A former member of BMF was called to testify but only to confirm that the organization provided the DJ with a steady supply of cocaine.
Except for putting a memory expert on the stand, Tinard and Little D’s lawyers decided not to mount a defense, presumably fearing their clients would fold under cross-examination, so the case went straight to closing arguments.
“Twenty years is a long time to wait for justice. Twenty years is long enough. Don’t let this go on another minute,” said assistant US Attorney Artie McConnell before urging the jury to find the defendants guilty as charged.
The jury deliberated for three days before returning a guilty verdict, confirming what I had known from the start: Ronald “Tinard” Washington and Karl “Little D” Jordan murdered Jam Master Jay in cold blood.
They say journalists shouldn’t get emotionally invested in their stories but it was difficult not to feel a sense of profound relief and gratitude after all this time. Kudos to the investigators and prosecutors for not giving up. And kudos to Lydia High and Uriel Rincon for doing the right thing.
“I can’t believe that after twenty years, we finally got justice for Jay,” said Eric “Shake” James, one of Jay’s closest friends who testified at trial about Jay’s drug operation. “Those dirty motherfuckers finally got what what they deserved. And Jay’s family finally got closure.”
He added: “I’m definitely going to be at the sentencing.”
Frank, I love your writing and have read everything on your page. Do you have any other sites to read more of your work?
Do you know any journalists that operate in your sphere that you would recommend?