Hustlers, grifters and greed: How Jam Master Jay met his tragic end

One evening in the late 1980s, Carlis Thompson showed up at a New York City apartment owned by his cousin, the pioneering DJ Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC.

The group had a show that night, but when Thompson walked into the apartment, he wasn’t greeted by Jay, Joseph “Run” Simmons or Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels. The men hanging out were strangers to Thompson, and they instantly rubbed him the wrong way.

“You could tell they were grifters,” said Thompson, who would go on to become a warden at the Rikers Island jail complex.

Thompson walked into the bedroom and embraced his cousin, who was born Jason Mizell. They caught up for a bit, Thompson said, and then it was time to head to the club.

“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “Jason pulled out an Uzi from a closet.”

Thompson was stunned — and alarmed.

“Cuz, are we going to a concert or are we going to war?” he asked.

“You never know,” Mizell replied, according to Thompson.

The exchange proved prophetic. Mizell was shot dead inside his recording studio in Queens in 2002, a killing that stunned the hip-hop world and went unsolved for nearly two decades.