Witnesses: Wild night out led to man’s killing
Stephen Naso and Joey Comunale knew each other since the third grade.
The Stamford residents played baseball and traveled the world together.
Even on nights like Nov. 12, 2016, when Comunale wasn’t feeling well, he still agreed to head into New York City for a night out with his longtime friend.
Despite the countless good times, Naso testified Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court about the last time he saw his friend.
During the second day of testimony in the murder trial of James Rackover, Naso wiped away tears and struggled to contain his emotions. He described how he and Comunale were separated after partying with a large group of friends at the nowclosed Gilded Lily nightclub.
Comunale ended up with a group of people he just met at Rackover’s Manhattan apartment, where police said he and Lawrence Dilione got into a drug-fueled argument over cigarettes.
Police said Dilione knocked Comunale unconscious and Rackover, an ex-con from Florida, killed the 29-year-old because he feared going back to prison.
Rackover and Dilione have been charged with murder, accused of beating, dismembering and burning Comunale before dumping his body in a shallow New Jersey grave.
Naso said he and Comunale met Dilione and his friend Max Gemma at the nightclub. Naso said he left Comunale to find his girlfriend because she was lost.
“That was the last time I saw Joey,” he said.
During the first two days of testimony, three women described a night of excessive drinking and cocaine use among several groups of friends who mixed with strangers in the hours before Comunale was killed.
One of the women had a sense the night might take a bad turn, snapping a selfie during a cab ride with Dilione and texting it to friends with his name, hometown and even the last four digits of his Social Security number.
“It was like a joke, but it was like, ‘Hey, we really don’t know these people. If something happens to us, this is the guy we were with,’ ” Katherine Conroy testified Friday.
Three women — Conroy, Samantha Guardiola and Jenna Stisi — testified how they ended up at Rackover’s Sutton Place apartment early on Nov. 13, 2016.
They said Dilione invited the group of mostly strangers to Rackover’s home, where they drank heavily and took drugs. They also described the relationship between Dilione and Rackover with them intent on participating in friendly competitions with each other.
They challenged each other to a weightlifting contest in the apartment complex and even gave Stisi competing lap dances, trying to out-do each other, the women testified.
The women said there was nothing unusual about the night and there also didn’t seem to be animosity between Comunale and the other men in the apartment.
Conroy, however, described one incident that made her feel uncomfortable.
As she snorted cocaine off a key, Conroy said Dilione tugged her hair back aggressively to get it out of her face.
“‘OK, psycho,’ ” Conroy recalled telling Dilione.
“It was the only thing that really bothered me,” she said.
The women’s night started at the Highline Ballroom around midnight Nov. 12 when they and three other friends got a table and ordered two bottles of vodka.
While at the club, Stisi had cocaine that she and Conroy took, the women testified.
“We were all just having fun,” Conroy said.
The group eventually left and went to The Gilded Lily. After about an hour, they walked across the street where they met Dilione, Gemma, Charan Balaji and Comunale.
Balaji and Comunale had just left the Gilded Lily where they were with a large group of friends. Comunale was in the same Hoftstra University fraternity as Balaji’s cousin, who was among those at the club.
The women testified Balaji was the first to approach them and Dilione invited them all back for a party at Rackover’s apartment.
The women testified Rackover was on the couch wearing jeans and no shirt when they arrived at his apartment.
“We were told we were going to a penthouse party and this was not that,” Conroy testified.
Conroy said Rackover repeatedly brought up his father, celebrity jeweler Jeffrey Rackover, whose clients include Oprah Winfrey and Melania Trump.
She said he talked about it so much, it became irritating.
“At that point I was like, ‘We get it. Your dad’s a jeweler,’ ” she said.
The Comunale family has filed a civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Rackover, claiming he helped to cover up the crime and that he and James were lovers.
Dilione is expected to go to trial after Rackover. Gemma will go to trial last on hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence charges.