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Third Suspect Indicted in Sutton Place Murder of Hofstra Grad

By Noah Hurowitz | December 6, 2016 5:55pm
 Max Gemma, 29, walks out of Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday afternoon after being released on $200,000 bond. He turned himself in to face charges in connection with the Nov. 13 murder of 29-year-old Hofstra graduate Joseph Comunale.
Max Gemma, 29, walks out of Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday afternoon after being released on $200,000 bond. He turned himself in to face charges in connection with the Nov. 13 murder of 29-year-old Hofstra graduate Joseph Comunale.
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DNAinfo/Noah Hurowitz

CIVIC CENTER — A third man has been indicted in connection with the murder of a Hofstra graduate in a Sutton Place apartment last month.

Max Gemma, 29, was charged Tuesday with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence in the murder of Joseph Comunale, who prosecutors said was killed in the East 59th Street apartment of James Rackover, the adopted son of a celebrity jeweler, and dumped in a shallow grave on the Jersey Shore.

Gemma's arrest came more than three weeks after the Nov. 13 disappearance of Comunale, 26, a Connecticut resident who was last seen partying in Rackover's 418 E. 59th St. apartment. Rackover, 25, and another man, Lawrence Dilione, 28, were arrested on Nov. 15, and according to prosecutors, Dilione told police where they could find Comunale’s body.

Neither man has been publicly charged with murder in Comunale's death.

Gemma was released after paying $200,000 bond. Prosecutors initially asked for $300,000 bond, saying Gemma was a flight risk because he had access to “substantial means.”

Gemma, a computer software salesman from New Jersey, was hanging out at Rackover’s apartment the night of Comunale’s murder. Authorities say he got rid of clothes he was wearing that night, which investigators later found in the garbage and is now being considered as evidence in the case.

But according to his lawyer, Mark Bederow, prosecutors are using flimsy evidence in order to try to squeeze Gemma into testifying against Dilione and Rackover.

“Nothing leads us to believe that he is a suspect in the actual homicide,” Bederow said in court. “He has not been charged with the horrible act, nor in how the body ended up in New Jersey.”

Gemma will be tried separately from Dilione and Rackover, his lawyer said.

Gemma paid the $200,000 bond less than 10 minutes after appearing in court with coiffed hair, black pants, black wingtip dress shoes, and a gray blazer underneath a gray coat. Staring straight ahead, he walked out of court as Bederow spoke with reporters, and stood with his back to the press while waiting for an elevator, flanked by Bederow and a bail bondsman.

He did not speak to the press as he left the courthouse, got into a black SUV and drove off.

Rackover and Dilione have been indicted on charges of hindering prosecution and concealment of a corpse, according to court records. Dilione was released on $300,000 bail on Nov. 23, but Rackover remains imprisoned at Rikers Island, records show. Both are due back in court on Dec. 13.

Gemma’s next court date is January 17, 2017.

Rackover, an ex-con originally from Florida who changed his name in 2015 from James Beaudoin, was initially described as a long-lost son of jeweler Jeffrey Rackover, who counts President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania among his clients.

But details of that relationship have become murky since the younger Rackover’s arrest, with some friends of the jeweler saying they were told James was Jeffrey’s biological son from an old fling. Others say they were told that Jeffrey met James at an Upper West Side gym and took him under his wing.