The alleged young lover of a Manhattan jeweler was sentenced to consecutive maximum prison terms Wednesday for the brutal slaying of a Connecticut man in a fancy Upper East Side apartment.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice James Burke excoriated Florida ex-con James Rackover, 27, before sentencing him to 28 2/3 years to life behind bars.
“This is precisely the rare kind of case that maximum consecutive sentences are reserved for, and no other lesser sentence would make much sense,” Burke said.
The alleged lover and adopted son of celebrity jeweler Jeffrey Rackover, 57, showed little emotion as Burke handed down his fate for the barbaric slaughter of Joseph Comunale, 26, after a night of drug-fueled partying.
Prosecutors argued that Rackover and his co-defendant Larry Dilione, 30, who will be tried separately, slaughtered the Hofstra graduate after an argument over cocaine on Nov. 13, 2016.
A third defendant, Max Gemma, who was present during the killing but did not take part, is facing lesser raps for helping to cover up the crime.
Dilione met Comunale for the first time early that morning and headed to Rackover’s luxury Grand Sutton pad for an afterparty.
After an argument likely sparked by their dwindling supply of cocaine, according to prosecutors, Comunale was dead.
The two men relentlessly beat him until he was unconscious before dragging him to the apartment’s bathtub and stabbing him 15 times, Assistant DA Antoinette Carter argued at trial.
After trying to bleach the crime scene and placing bloody bags of evidence in a trash room, they feasted on a takeout order of organic burgers and fries as Comunale’s corpse lay in the tub.
In a final attempt to conceal the horrific crime, they ditched the body in a shallow grave in Oceanport, New Jersey, doused it in gasoline and set it alight.
Rackover’s fate was sealed at trial after the son of Fox5 “Good Day New York” host Rosanna Scotto, Louis Ruggiero, testified that his ex-pal copped to the crime a day after the murder.
“I slit his throat and stabbed him,” Rackover confessed after frantically asking to meet him.
Defense lawyers Maurice Sercarz and Robert Caliendo said Dilione was the actual killer and that Rackover was only guilty of helping to cover up the heinous act.