Melania Trump’s Diamond Merchant Cuts Ties With Adoptive Son After Murder

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By Daniel J. Solomon November 22, 2016

Jeffrey Rackover, a Fifth Avenue diamond merchant who caters the stars, is cutting his losses on adopted son James Rackover, accused last week of committing a violent murder in Manhattan last week.

“Jeffrey is devastated, inconsolable,” a close friend told DNAInfo after James Rackover, a 22-year-old with a troubled past, was held on a $3 million bond for charges including hindering prosecution, evidence tampering, hiding a corpse and unlicensed driving.

Last Saturday night, a 26-year-old Stamford man, Joseph Communale, went missing after partying at James Rackover’s Manhattan apartment. Battered with multiple stab wounds, his body was subsequently found in a shallow grave on the Jersey Shore.

Witnesses connected James Rackover and Dilione to the incident, telling the police they saw the two drive off in a Mercedes Benz with a large duffel bag. Authorities continue to investigate the case, and have not said who committed the murder.

Jeffrey Rackover has peddled his gems to the likes of Melania Trump, Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Lopez. Never married and childless, Jeffrey Rackover claimed that James Rackover (born James Beaudoin) was his long-lost son, the child of a woman he once had slept with.

“Jeffrey was always lamenting that he was getting older, and wouldn’t have a family, a close friend said, explaining why he took James in,” the unnamed friend told DNAInfo. “He was always saying, ‘Who is going to take care of me when I am old?’… He thought, maybe, the kid was the answer.”

Celebrity detective Bo Dietl told the New York Post that James Rackover’s alleged crime had torn asunder his ties with Jeffrey Rackover.

“He doesn’t want to have anything to do with this kid,” Dietl, a friend of Jeffrey Rackover, said to the Post. “He tried to mentor this kid… No good deed goes unpunished.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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