Last week it was two men from Mizell’s old neighborhood was convicted of murder after a trial that exposed the predicament he was in before the murder.
As Run-DMC’s popularity waned, big paydays became more difficult for Mizell, known for pouring cash on family, friends and even acquaintances from his old home in Hollis, Queens. So he used his old connections in the neighborhood to run drug deals, a decision that ultimately led to his murder, according to courtroom testimony.
For some of those who knew Mizell the longest, the convictions were bittersweet. In the days after the trial, they wondered how different her life might have been if she had been able to leave behind the crooks and hangers-on of her past.
“That was my cousin’s downfall,” said Ryan “Doc” Thompson, who grew up with Mizell and was one of his closest confidantes. “It was too late to wash their hands of these people.”
Mizell’s childhood friend Wendell Fite, better known by his stage name DJ Hurricane, offered a similar approach.
“Jay was a person who thought he could help anyone, no matter who they were,” he said. “Jay always had a big heart, so he’s not here today because he surrounded himself with the wrong people.”
Kinship relationships
Mizell grew up on 203rd Street, one of three siblings, her mother a school teacher and her father a social worker. As a child, Mizell didn’t have to go far to visit one of his best friends, a boy known as Darren “Big D” Jordan.
“He lived directly across the street,” Ryan Thompson said.
The two went way back. Their mothers were best friends who attended the same church in Brooklyn. The Mizels moved to Hollis, a middle-class neighborhood at the time, to provide a better environment for their children.
Mizell ended up with a group of kids who burglarized homes, and he spent time in juvenile detention. When he got out, he focused on turntables and went on to become a founding member of Run-DMC.
However, he remained close to his old neighborhood friends. So when Jordan’s son, Carl “Little D” Jordan Jr., was born in 1984, it was no surprise that Mizell was like a godfather figure to him.
“That’s how close these two families have grown,” Ryan Thompson said.
But that was the way it was then. Almost Shakespearean Jordan Jr. He was one of two men convicted of Mizell’s murder.
The then 18-year-old shot Mizell in the head from inches away, a witness told jurors in what prosecutors described as an act of revenge for being cut out of a lucrative cocaine deal.
“It was an ambush, it was an execution,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Miranda Gonzalez told jurors in her opening statement.