Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Famous Jeweler Sued For Alleged 2016 New York Murder Cover-Up

Renowned jeweler Jeffrey Rackover allegedly provided cleaning supplies and a car to a man brutally killed someone, a lawsuit filed Sunday by the victim’s father states.

The lawsuit alleges that James Rackover, 26, had an “intimate relationship” with Jeffrey Rackover, 57, who claimed to be his “parent,” the New York Post reported. James Rackover allegedly stabbed Joseph Comunale to death in November 2016 in his Upper East Side apartment, and that Jeffrey provided cleaning supplies to James and lent him his black Mercedes-Benz to transport Comunale’s dead body to New Jersey.

James Rackover petitioned to change his last name from Beaudoin to Rackover in 2015 because he wanted to distance himself from his past as a convicted felon and because he had learned Jeffrey Rackover was “my real father,” according to DNA Info.

Both James Rackover’s lawyers and Jeffrey Rackover declined to comment to the Post.

The Comunale family’s suit alleges that Jeffrey Rackover gave James Rackover “drugs, money and other benefits” in exchange for “sexual pleasure.”

Contact Erica Snow at [email protected] or on Twitter @ericasnoww.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.