Rackover ‘all-in’ for slay: DA

The surrogate son of a celebrity diamond dealer was a full participant in the beating and knifing death of a 26-year-old Connecticut man in an Upper East Side luxury apartment in 2016, Manhatta prosecutors argued Thursday.

James Rackover, 27, who is on trial for Joseph Comunale’s murder, did more than clean and cover up the crime as his defense team argued at trial, prosecutors said in summations after a two-week trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Both Rackover and codefendant Lawrence Dilione, 30, who will be tried separately, are fully responsible for the Nov. 13, 2016, murder, prosecutors said. “All of the evidence supports the conclusion that they did everything together,” said Assistant District Attorney Antoinette Carter.

Rackover and Dilione “took extraordinary lengths to get Mr. Comunale out of that apartment, and I submit you would not do that unless you were all-in,” Carter told jurors.

Both men, she argued, are responsible for Comunale’s tragic end in spite of Rackover’s claim that he only participated in the second act — the disposal of the body and cleanup of his E. 59th St. apartment where the murder took place.v“It doesn’t matter who did what or who did more,” the prosecutor added.

Comunale’s parents broke into sobs and his mother left the gallery when Carter put an autopsy photo of her slain son’s stab sounds on a large TV screen.

The Hofstra graduate, who met Dilione earlier that night at a club with a group of friends, was ruthlessly beaten and stabbed later that night at Rackover’s apartment after an argument, prosecutors say.

The suspects then tried to dismember him. His battered body was wrapped in a blanket, tossed from a fourth-floor window and taken to an isolated spot in Oceanport, N.J., where they poured gasoline on the body and set it on fire, prosecutors say.

Carter used the graphic examining room image to support her claim that there were two “constellations” of knife wounds — a set of nine on his right chest and six in the center.

She said it was proof that both men stabbed Comunale.