DA tosses gripe by mogul ‘son’ about slay-case rat
HIGH-ROLLER James Rackover, only hours after a guest at his posh East Side apartment turned up in a shallow grave, knew his life in the lap of luxury was over with a murder rap to come, but prosecutors are chucking his admissions, the Daily News has learned.
“I’m f---ed,” the surrogate son of jeweler to the stars Jeffrey Rackover reportedly told an undercover cop as they sat side by side on a bench in the 13th Precinct stationhouse.
“My friend talked,” the accused murderer whined on the night of Nov. 17. “They wouldn’t know anything if he didn’t talk. (I had) a good life and now it’s over.”
Joseph Comunale, 26, of Stamford, Conn., was stabbed to death at Rackover’s home inside a luxury 36-floor apartment building on E. 59th St. and First Ave. on Nov. 13, cops say.
Newly unsealed court papers show the Manhattan district attorney’s office will not even attempt to put the dialogue before a jury.
It was not immediately clear why an undercover cop was alongside Rackover when state law explicitly prohibits people who have asked for an attorney to be questioned by police.
The fact that Rackover didn’t know he was blabbing to a cop may have complicated matters further.
When the undercover Midtown South Narcotics officer told Rackover that things would be “all right” and he would make bail, the suspect cut him off. “No bail for murder,” Rackover said.
Court papers obtained by the Daily News included details of the alleged conservation as the two men sat together for close to eight hours.
But the admissions from Rackover — who continued to deny any involvement in Comunale’s killing in a jailhouse sitdown with The News last month — may as well have never happened.
The DA’s office, in a very rare move, said in court papers that it would not try to introduce the damaging evidence.
A source connected to the case said the reason for withholding the conversation was obvious.
“If you have a statement that potentially damning, why wouldn’t you use it unless it’s inadmissible?”
The documents also revealed that Rackover’s friend and co-defendant Lawrence Dilione — in directing police to Comunale’s charred corpse — coldly declared there was “enough (left) for the family to take home.”
Comunale, who was stabbed 15 times in the chest and set afire, was discovered in a 4-foot-deep grave near Dilione’s old home in Oceanport, N.J.
After the slaying, authorities alleged Rackover and Dilione tried to cover up evidence at the crime scene .
Dilione, 28, and Rackover, 26, were charged with murder last month. They were held without bail after the new count was leveled, although Rackover has been locked up since November.