November 30, 2022 — Federal prosecutors out of New York subpoenaed Black Mafia Family co-founder Terry (Southwest T) Flenory earlier this year to testify in the highly-anticipated Jam Master Jay murder trial scheduled for February, per multiple sources familiar with the case. The complex case surrounding the slaying of historic hip-hopper Jam Master Jay on Halloween eve 2002 has been two decades in the making and now includes one of America’s most powerful drug bosses of all-time.

Terry Flenory and his big brother, the iconic Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, started the BMF organization on Detroit’s far Southwest side in the early 1990s. By the dawning of the 2000s, the Flenorys had established BMF outlets in more than a dozen states across the United States and were the biggest dope boys in the country. They were frequently rubbing elbows and socializing with rap and hip-hop luminaries and in some cases, actually doing business with them, according to sources and DEA records. Jam Master Jay was one of the rap-world figures that was slinging “BMF” cocaine.

Ronnie (Tinard) Washington and Karl (Little D) Jordan are charged with the October 2002 first-degree homicide of Jason Mizell aka legendary DJ and Run DMC member, Jam Master Jay, in what the U.S. government contends was a vendetta spawned from a BMF drug deal gone bad. The beloved 37-year old Mizell, who began distributing narcotics when his music career cooled off, allegedly cut Washington, a hardened felon and childhood friend of his from Queens, out of a 10-kilo cocaine deal that Terry Flenory was personally fronting, per the prosecution’s theory. Neither Flenory, nor his brother or anyone else in or linked to BMF, are suspected of playing any role at all in Mizell’s murder.

Considered the straw that stirred the drink for the pioneering rap group Run DMC, Mizell attained international fame and fortune by the time he was 21. Run DMC was single-handedly responsible for bringing hip-hop music to the masses in the 1980s. The Adidas-gear, gold-chain wearing trio made up of Mizell, Joe (Rev Run) Simmons and Darryl (DMC) McDaniels, became the first rappers to reach Gold, Platinum and Multi-Platinum status in record sales and was the first corporate-embraced hip-hop entity, validating the craft to Wall Street and the music industry simultaneously.

Mizell was shot to death execution style on the night of October 30, 2002 inside his custom-built Queens recording studio. British investigative reporter Frank Owen has broken most of the news regarding the Jam Master Jay homicide investigation through the years, beginning in an exclusive for Playboy Magazine in 2003 and continuing as recently as last year when he was the first to identify Terry Flenory as Jam Master Jay’s BMF wholesale cocaine plug on his Substack blog.

According to the murder indictment and Owen’s reporting, money problems in the mid-1990s brought Jam Master Jay into the drug game. His first attempt at constructing a wholesale cocaine deal in late 1995 went sideways fast and he was beaten and robbed, per Owen’s sources. At some point in 1996, Mizell met Terry Flenory and began brokering drug deals for friends and associates, eliminating any cash-flow issues he had previously encountered.

The drug deal that cost Mizell his life can be traced back to the summer of 2002. Earlier that year, Mizell had helped BMF shot callers create a Baltimore satellite crew, staffed with people from New York. Upon Mizell’s boyhood friend, notorious Queens stick-up kid Tinard Washington, returning to town from a prison stint in February 2002, Mizell bought him clothes and a car, gave him a place to live and promised him a job in the Baltimore crew.

The problem was the leader of the Baltimore crew, another Jam Master Jay confidant, had personal issues with Tinard Washington and didn’t want him involved in any BMF drug activity. In July 2002, Mizell took Washington with him to a meeting in Washington D.C. at a luxury hotel with Terry Flenory where they collected 10 kilos of cocaine on consignment and earmarked for sale in Baltimore. The 10 kilos were worth $250,000. Flenory had heard bad things about Tinard Washington, didn’t vibe with him in their Washington D.C. trip and made his feelings about him known to Mizell following the encounter, according to GR sources.

Mizell chose to remove Washington from the deal and that decision resulted in Washington wanting to kill him. Washington, 58, is alleged to have recruited “Little D” Jordan to be the triggerman. Jordan, 40, was once an aspiring rapper who had recorded with Mizell in the years before Mizell was slain. Jordan’s dad, “Big D,” acted as Run DMC’s tour manager.

Due to the increasing security concerns and the difficulty in tracking down subpoenaed records from two decades ago, the trial was pushed back from its original September 2022 start date to February 2023. Last month, Owen reported on his Substack blog of witness-intimidation tactics allegedly being deployed by Washington

BMF was dismantled courtesy of the DEA’s historic 2005 Operation Motor City Mafia bust, which netted more than 175 convictions. Big Meech and Southwest T Flenory both pleaded guilty in the case and got 30-year prison terms. As they built their drug empire, the Flenory brothers kept multiple interests in the rap game, aiding in the music careers of groundbreaking acts and labels in New York and Atlanta, per DEA records.

Terry Flenory, 52, was released from prison in May 2020 on a medically-related home-confinement pass. Big Meech, 54 and often name-checked in rap anthems by a who’s who of rap legends, isn’t set to be let loose until May 2029. The smash hit scripted television series BMF premiered to huge ratings last fall on the Starz Network.

This article was originally posted here