MANHATTAN — Two men were arrested Thursday for killing a Connecticut man who was stabbed 15 times in a luxury Upper East Side apartment and for burying him in a shallow New Jersey grave, NYPD officials said.
The pair, James Rackover, 25, and Lawrence Dilione, 28, were charged with murder, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence, police said.
Dilione, of Jersey City, was also charged with hindering prosecution, police said.
Lawrence Dilione is walked out of the 13th Precinct after being charged with murder. (DNAinfo/Ben Fractenberg)
Investigators believe they had killed Joseph Comunale, 26, who'd been partying Saturday with them in the apartment of Rackover, the son of a celebrity jeweler who counts President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, as his clients and friends, police said.
The Monmouth County Medical Examiner's office said Comunale had been stabbed 15 times and had a broken pelvis. The pelvis injury is consistent with a fall, and sources say they believe Comunale's body was dropped out the window as his killers tried to hide his body.
Comunale's body was found Wednesday afternoon buried behind an Oceanport, New Jersey, flower shop, police said. It appeared that his killers tried to burn his body with gasoline to remove evidence, sources said.
Rackover's relationship to jeweler Jeffrey Rackover remains unclear. DNAinfo reported earlier on Thursday that Jeffrey Rackover introduced James to his family and close friends as his long-lost son he didn't know he had.
Jeffrey, a lifetime bachelor, told friends that James showed up at his door one day a few years ago, saying he was the son of a Florida woman who had a brief affair with Jeffrey two decades earlier.
James, whose real name is James Beaudoin, took Rackover as his last name after Jeffrey took him in and introduced him to a lavish lifestyle that included first-class trips to Europe and summers in the Hamptons.
Records show Beaudoin hails from south Florida, where he has been arrested at least eight times, including for armed robbery, burglary and driving without a license.
Beaudoin was busted in 2007 for armed robbery with a deadly weapon while wearing a mask and for criminal possession of synthetic pot, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office. He was busted less than a year later for violating his probation, according to arrest records.
In 2009 the Broward County Sheriff's Office arrested him again for burglary of an unoccupied dwelling and a probation violation, records show.
Since 2009 he has been re-arrested at least five times by the Broward County Sheriff's Office for violation of his probation, records show. His most recent run-in with the sheriff's office was in 2011.
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