[ambient street noise]
[man 1] Joey was going out that Saturday night,
but I never got into details with him about where he was going.
He was 26 years old.
He's an adult.
[man 2] I met Joey Comunale my first year at Hofstra.
He was more than a friend to me. We became like brothers.
Joey at first was very quiet, but once you got to know him,
he was very outgoing, and everybody loved him.
That Saturday night, we had plans to go to a party.
And then last minute, he invited me to go to the city,
to go to the Gilded Lily with a small group of friends.
We got in a little argument about it. So we went our separate ways that night.
[woman] So on Sunday, I ended up texting Joey early that morning.
I knew he'd be sleeping,
so I knew it was gonna be a little while before he got back to me.
[man 1] Then twelve o'clock came.
Lisa came to me, said, "Have you heard from Joey?"
I said, "No, I haven't." I tried to call him and got no response.
I probably called him a half dozen times between 12:00 and 1:00.
I had to get my fantasy football team in by one o'clock,
and he always helped me with my fantasy football team.
I still didn't hear from him.
I'm thinking, "Maybe he went to go and stay with his friend Max."
I remember speaking to Pat on the phone, and he was definitely nervous,
as who wouldn't be?
But I was like, "Guys go out. They meet girls."
"They don't know each other. They all go back to a place."
"They party. It's nothing unusual."
I really didn't think anything of it at all.
As the day progressed into the early afternoon,
and there was still no sign of Joey,
is when I started to get a little nervous and worried.
[woman] As the day was going by,
we were hoping we were gonna hear from him.
We were just waiting, just waiting, but…
never happened.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Mooney] Our job is to make sure you can go home and sleep at night.
[Rivera] It's so important for a family to know who murdered their relative.
[chief] Compassion for the victims, that's the most important thing.
[Parrino] I've always liked the peek behind the curtain.
What really happened?
[McNeely] You want to find out the truth.
That's what detectives do.
[officer] Your instinct is to help people.
[Titus] In New York City, the NYPD…
this is it.
[music trailing off]
[tense music building]
[detective 1] I was a precinct detective in the 17th Precinct Detective Squad.
On November 14th in 2016,
we receive a phone call from the desk downstairs…
[phone ringing]
…in regards to a father who was there,
whose son had come to the city to party, and he hasn't heard from him yet.
[detective 2] Detective Castro and I are in the office,
and a uniformed officer is accompanying two gentlemen,
Pat Comunale and his brother, Joe Comunale.
They had a sense of urgency.
You know, you could tell by the look on both of their faces
that they were very concerned, very worried.
Pat tells us, "My son Joey has been missing for approximately 16 hours,"
and he's attempted to reach out to him multiple times
and was unable to.
And I asked his father, "Is this unusual of him to not speak to him?"
And, uh, Pat tells me, "I speak to my son regularly."
[Castro] To me, I was like, "All right, it's Manhattan."
"The kids come to party here."
"They're known to stay at people's homes, hotels."
"Some get drunk. They pass out on the streets."
"We'll find him."
[Chen] At that point, Yeoman and I kind of fork.
So, uh, Yeoman has Pat at his desk. I'm running everything in the computer.
I'm checking every single system for Joey's name, date of birth.
Different variations, John Does.
He wasn't in any hospital. He wasn't in any jail cell.
He was just off the radar.
[man] I told Detective Castro
that the night before, I got a call from Joey's friend
who said, "I know you're trying to get a hold of Joey."
"I have his phone."
I was like, "What are you doing with his phone?"
And he told me the story about what happened the night prior.
That they had gone into the city to, uh, go to the Gilded Lily,
which I had never heard of.
It was a nightclub.
And as they were leaving the Gilded Lily,
Joey was talking to three girls.
At the same time, his friend took Joey's phone
to call his girlfriend to see where she was.
I guess as that was going on, these two other guys came up and said,
"Do you guys want to go to an after-party?"
Two cabs pull up,
and Joey's friend says, "I have your phone."
Joey says, "Just give it to me tomorrow."
And so they all jump into the cab, and they went to this after-party.
That was the last time he saw him.
[man] After I had spoken to Pat,
I went to Instagram, and I clicked on the Gilded Lily.
I just started looking at tagged photos, which there are hundreds of them,
just to see if I could find Joey in the background of somebody's picture,
or get a clue, because we had nothing to go off of.
I saw this one, and there was three girls and a guy that I know.
So I called him.
He was like, "Those are the girls Joey was with last night."
Gave me this girl's number, Jenna.
I texted her, and I asked her, "What happened with Joey last night?"
"Any idea where he is? Is he with you?"
She said, "No."
"We were at this party."
And then a few hours after, Joey and this guy, whose name was Larry,
walked the girls to an Uber and waved them goodbye.
Pat was actually able to give me
the name and phone number of the last person Jenna saw with Joey.
And his name was Larry Dilione.
So I called Larry, and I explained that we're looking for Joey Comunale,
who he was partying with at the after-party.
He says, "Yeah, I met him outside of Gilded Lily,
invited them to this after-party
for this rich kid that lives on the Upper East Side
at the Grand Sutton apartment building."
[foreboding music playing]
Larry told me the last time he had seen Joey
was when he left the building to walk Jenna and her friends to an Uber
to send them back to New Jersey.
It was 6:30 in the morning,
and all he remembers is he walked back into the building alone.
So then I gave Jenna a call,
and Jenna described the after-party in apartment 4C,
and the host was James Rackover.
[McNeely] According to Jenna, when the group arrives,
she gets into the apartment, and there was a male in there.
His name was James Rackover, and James was shirtless.
And according to Jenna,
he never bothered to put a shirt on the entire night.
At one point, she said James claimed to have been a, uh, male stripper,
and he wanted to give Jenna a lap dance.
And, fortunately, you know, one of the girls videotaped it.
[moody dance music pulsing]
[Castro] You know, James has no shirt. He's giving one of the girls a lap dance.
He's competing with Larry Dilione.
Who gives the best lap dance?
[woman laughing]
She said that Larry Dilione was in possession of a folding knife
that he was snorting cocaine off of.
And she kept noticing that Joey's calm,
but he appeared to be extremely inebriated.
That he was consuming a lot of whiskey and beer,
but he wasn't having any issues with any of the people in the apartment.
[Castro] Jenna does recall that after the party,
once she got to the Uber, they get inside,
I guess she's looking back to say bye,
and she sees that Larry and Joey fist bump each other.
And then she assumed he either walked off or went back inside to the party.
So Jenna painted a great picture of what was going on in the after-party,
but she never answered the crucial question, which is,
"Where is Joey?"
[tense music playing]
So I could tell Pat was concerned.
I have sons of my own, so I'm like, "You know what?"
"Let's go take a ride to the building."
[Pat] Detective Castro really was conscientious.
He took an interest and, no bullshit, he wanted to know what was going on.
He knew there was a problem.
We jumped in his patrol car and went over to Grand Sutton.
So the Grand Sutton apartments is located on East 59th Street.
For those people that aren't aware of that area,
that is known as Sutton Place.
And it's not for the rich.
It's for the filthy rich.
[Castro] So at 11:00 a.m., we arrived in front of the Grand Sutton.
You walk in, it's almost as if you're walking into a hotel.
They've got a doorman, a concierge.
We decided, "Let's go to 4C, James Rackover's apartment."
We knock on the door. The cleaning lady opened the door.
James wasn't there.
So I said, "Listen, there was a party here last night."
"There was a kid that's missing."
"Do you mind if I take a look?"
She goes, "No problem." Opens the door.
It's a small apartment, not very big.
We went in. It was very clean.
We didn't see anything that would have raised any flags.
We didn't find Joey in there, and we exited the apartment.
So I call James Rackover.
He says he doesn't know Joey Comunale.
He's a stranger.
He came for the after-party with Larry
and one of Larry Dilione and James Rackover's friends, Max Gemma,
and the three girls that he had met at Gilded Lily.
All he knows is Joey walked out of the building
with Larry and never came back.
[detective] And when we spoke to Max Gemma, he says,
yes, he's at this after-hour party, but he gets tired,
and he basically falls asleep on the couch.
He wakes up. He doesn't see Joey. He doesn't see anybody else.
He just goes home.
[Castro] So I go back to the lobby to start looking at video surveillance
from the Grand Sutton.
Just looking for any evidence, clues to let us know where Joey may be.
[mysterious music playing]
[Pat] And from time to time, he would call me over and say,
"Is that Joey?"
We're watching the video. He goes, "That's Joey right there."
[mysterious music playing]
[Hahn] You see the group arrive at about 4:30 in the morning,
and go into the Grand Sutton, and go up to the fourth floor.
And then at 6:30,
you see Joey Comunale, Larry Dilione, and the three girls.
[Castro] And they come down the elevator.
We switch the camera angle.
We go to the exterior.
We see them walking out, and they walk to the curb line. Perfect.
If he makes a left, if he makes a right,
then we'll get more video from next door and start tracking him.
And as we're watching the video play, we see Larry Dilione walking back in,
and Joey is with him.
And I was like, "Wait, you told me he didn't come back."
[music trailing off]
At that point, I knew there was a problem.
And I said to my brother,
"He didn't walk out of here alive."
[stifled sob]
I don't know why.
Excuse me.
It was just a hunch I had.
Joseph was my first son, and he was always a great kid.
[somber music playing]
Joey and I always got along because of our love for sports.
I was a big hockey fan, and I took him to his first hockey game,
and he caught the bug.
And he, uh, started skating at five years old.
He started playing competitive hockey at eight.
Every year, we took a trip,
whether it was a New York Giants football game,
or a Ranger game, a Yankee game.
We always connected through sports.
[woman] Joey loved his food, Italian food.
Even after he moved out,
most nights, he was here for dinner.
And he was a bit…
Even though he loved his sports, he would always put on the Food Network
to see what was good to make, and what was…
what I could make for him.
[chuckling]
[Pat] Joey graduated Hofstra with a business degree.
Fortunately for Joey and his friends,
I owned a security business on Long Island.
And if you talk to his friends, they'll tell you he was the HR director.
He placed all of his friends in my company,
knowing that they would get a start there.
He used to bring a lot of girls over to see if I'd give 'em the thumbs up.
Every one I gave the thumbs up, I was hoping he'd get married.
But he goes, "Dad, not till I'm 35," is what he'd always tell me.
One of the qualities about Joey is when I talk to his friends,
they always told me that Joey was their best friend.
And I was like, "How is it possible that one kid could have 40 best friends?"
You know, I think they always say,
"You never judge a man by how much money he has…
but by how many friends he has."
He had a lot.
[somber music playing]
[Castro] Pat was visibly upset.
At this point, I just paused the video,
and I asked his brother Joseph to take Pat and go back to my precinct
and just wait for me there.
[tense music playing]
[Hahn] Once the detective's suspicion level starts getting raised,
that's when they call the Homicide Squad.
Detective Castro was the assigned detective
from the 17th Detective Squad,
and I was the detective from the Homicide Squad that caught this case.
But it's not just us.
All the detectives in that squad
and all the detectives in Homicide Squad work together
to investigate the case.
[Chen] Yeoman calls me.
He goes, "Marty, come over here. Help me with this."
So I go over to the building.
[Castro] There's only two options.
Either Joey's still in the building, or he left the building.
We need to search the building from top to bottom.
[Chen] I grab the super, and I'm like,
"Let's go to the roof. We'll start at the roof and come down."
We go upstairs, exit the elevator.
But, uh, I'm afraid of heights.
I could see in the corner of my eye the 59th Street Bridge, Ed Koch Bridge.
And I'm trying to not look over
to realize exactly how high I am off the floor.
And then once I was satisfied that Joey was not on the roof,
we started doing searches floor by floor.
Down 36 flights of stairs,
down into the basement, into the cellar, into the courtyards.
And I'm hoping to run into Joey and be like, "Hey, wake up. Go home."
And, uh…
it never happened.
I go to the parking garage, and I ask the parking attendant,
I go, "Hey, James Rackover, apartment 4C, does he park his car here?"
He goes, "Oh yeah, he drives a big, black Mercedes."
I go, "Is that the car parked over there?" He goes, "Yeah, that's the car."
It looked pristine, clean,
except that it was covered in dust, brown dust, maybe a little like dirt.
I took a look around, and I noticed that there was brown smudges,
like fingerprint smudges on the rear trunk lid.
And I'm like… [scoffs]
Something didn't sit right with me.
I said, "We're securing this car until we can figure out what went on."
But the parking attendant says, "James Rackover, he doesn't own this car."
"It's owned by a gentleman
who lives in apartment 32B, Jeffrey Rackover."
So the name Jeffrey Rackover kind of rang a bell
because he has a billboard
when you come outside of the Midtown Tunnel going into Queens.
He would sell jewelry to Oprah.
He helped Trump get his engagement ring for Melania.
So he was known to be the jeweler to the stars.
[Chen] I'll be honest with you.
Everyone was like, "Oh yeah,
Jeffrey Rackover, he's the jeweler to the stars."
I don't know who he is. [laughs]
Yeah, I don't buy jewelry in that, uh, income bracket.
[Castro] The concierge, Eduardo Souza,
told us James Rackover was the long-lost son of Jeffrey Rackover,
who recently, over the past few years,
had come back into his life.
Around 2014, James started to come around the building with Jeffrey.
Then he started spending more time there.
After about two years, Jeffrey was looking to get James his own place.
So he came down and inquired if there was any apartments available.
And then he officially moved in.
And then that's when we learned that he was the long-lost son.
He had had a relationship with a woman in the late '80s or early '90s
that had resulted in a mystery son
who had mysteriously appeared at his doorstep.
I found it strange.
But as the concierge,
we don't delve too much into people's personal lives.
Once James moved into his own apartment in 4C,
the parties ramped up considerably.
[Chen] We watched hours and hours of video
just hoping to see Joey appear on one of those screens.
[Castro] While we're still reviewing video surveillance,
the concierge, Eduardo Souza, taps me on the shoulder and says,
"That's James Rackover coming in."
So I peek up. I see him.
As he's walking by, he makes a statement, "Good luck getting the video,"
and keeps walking.
So now I was caught by surprise. I'm like, "Wait, what?"
I looked over at Detective Castro. I go, "What the fuck is that?"
He gives me the same look. "I don't know what the fuck is…"
[Souza] I was shocked he was that cocky. I was like, "Why is he so fucking cocky?"
Walking through with his shoulders back, cockier than I had ever seen him.
That's when the concierge says to me, "James had called me yesterday."
[phone ringing]
[Souza] The night before, James had called me
and asked me about the length of time that the cameras record for.
And I said, "That's a strange question. Why… Why would you ask that?"
And he told me that he had had an argument with his girlfriend,
and suspected her of stealing something, and he wanted to check the tapes.
And I had told him that they record for 24 hours,
and then we change the tape.
I think maybe James understood that after 24 hours that tape was taped over.
But we wouldn't erase them.
We would just change the tape, and that would be the record for that day.
I think his assumption was that the video for the past 24 hours had disappeared,
when in fact we had access to that video.
So that just was throwing off alarms.
So my phone rang, and it was Detective Castro.
And he said, "Look, I need you to bring me some of Joey's clothes."
"We're gonna get some dogs to see if we can pick up Joey's scent
to see where he may have gone."
I went to Joey's place.
I grabbed a towel and some of his other clothes.
And I remember I held out a sliver of hope.
Maybe it's not what I think it is.
[dark, mysterious music playing]
[officer] I was requested to search inside of a garage area of the Grand Sutton.
I put the collar on my dog. I'm like, "You wanna work?"
He looked at me. His ears went up. I deployed him.
So the dog took himself to the back, and he started working.
I know my dog when he works. His tail, it just keeps going.
Then all of a sudden, I see his tail going faster.
So to me, he's on an odor.
He went to the four-door, black Mercedes-Benz.
He threw his nose right into the trunk area, and he went…
He barked. Like, real…
[growls] You know? It came out.
He's telling me that he has an odor
of some sort of human decomposition, blood,
um, anything that indicated human decomposition.
But you have to get a search warrant to go into that vehicle
and check out to see if there actually is
evidence or a body inside that trunk.
[Colecchia] After the garage, the detectives asked me,
"Can we do the apartments to see if he indicates an apartment?"
I grabbed the dog. We went up to the fourth floor.
I gave him the word "search."
He went to the left, down the hallway, and then the dog indicated.
He scratched really hard on the doorjamb, 4C.
And then James opens the door, James Rackover.
He was like, "Fuck you, you scumbags, you cops."
"You come in and… You need a warrant."
"You… Fuck you. Fuck you."
And, uh, to me, I'm like, "Is this guy a jerk-off?"
[Castro] Once I learned that the dog had given an active alert,
I knew that he was giving an active alert on blood,
and something had occurred there.
Meanwhile, other members of the 17th Precinct Detective Squad
from my office
began sifting through the garbage from every apartment.
So we put the dog on the bags so that we can identify bags
that he gives an alert, and we'll search those first.
[Hahn] The dog hits upon a bag that had not been opened yet.
Inside the bag is like a comforter cover.
And it also has the name "James Rackover" on it.
Crime scene starts finding, like, paper towels and towels
that appear to be soaked in blood.
They open up a second bag.
Then we find, covered in blood, articles of clothing that belonged to Joey
that matched the video surveillance.
[Castro] His gold chain is in there, his bank card.
And they found Joey's ID in that bag as well.
[Hahn] Once you find those things, you need to get that search warrant,
and you need to go back with a crime scene unit,
and you need to go into that apartment.
[Chen] While Yeoman goes to get a search warrant,
I'm back at the office doing computer checks on James Rackover,
Lawrence Dilione, and Max Gemma.
What we learn about Max Gemma is he comes from, basically, privilege.
His father was the mayor of Oceanport, New Jersey at one point.
He lives in an apartment with Larry Dilione.
Larry Dilione,
he basically is very much like Max Gemma.
He comes from a good family in New Jersey.
They had owned thoroughbred horses.
There were stories that he had gotten in some fights at certain times,
but other than that, he didn't have
what you would consider substantial criminal background.
[mysterious music playing]
When we looked into James Rackover, it turns out he's not James Rackover.
His name is James Beaudouin.
And he doesn't come from New York.
He comes from Florida,
where he had numerous arrests, and had done time.
About a year and a half in jail for burglary down in Florida.
We found that he was given bail, left Florida,
and ended up in New York.
After digging a little bit more into James Rackover's background
and his name change,
we were able to learn that
Jeffrey Rackover is not the biological father of James Rackover.
And Jeffrey Rackover had petitioned
to have James Rackover, uh, take his name.
I believe Jeffrey met James at a gym close to our building.
[curious, intriguing music playing]
They became friends, and was introduced over the weeks
as first "my friend," and then "my nephew," and then "my son."
[Hahn] We didn't know what to make
of the relationship between Jeffrey and James, quite frankly.
The story that James is the long-lost son of Jeffrey,
and somehow they found each other after all those years, and…
It's not the truth.
And you start to look at it, and you're like,
"What is the truth about this relationship that they have?"
[Souza] They did not in any way resemble, um, father and son.
The way they would act with each other…
You know, I love my father, but there were ways that
they were affectionate with each other that I wouldn't be with my father.
When you look at everything involved with James,
it definitely raises the level of red flags.
James comes from almost nothing,
is working a menial job in Florida,
and in a relatively short time is transformed into James Rackover.
And he's living in this building, and he's driving this car,
and he's at these clubs and these restaurants,
and you don't want to lose that if you're James.
Everyone else is still gonna have their family.
They're still gonna have the money their family's in,
but James could lose everything.
He's, I think, willing to do anything to maintain his life
and the style he has going on.
While we're waiting for the search warrants,
we looked at video from the garage,
and we know that James leaves at about 9:45 on Sunday night,
the night after the party,
and takes Jeffrey Rackover's car.
When we did the background check on James,
we were able to determine that he had a suspended license.
So that gave us an avenue to be able to place him under arrest
for driving without a license.
[reporter 1] James, why did you kill him?
[reporter 2] What happened, James?
[Castro] But unfortunately, once we place him under arrest,
he immediately invoked his right to counsel,
so we weren't allowed to speak with him.
That little glimmer of hope that we had that he might tell us where Joey is,
it was… We weren't getting it.
So on Tuesday the 15th, we had the search warrants for apartment 4C.
[Hahn] Crime scene comes in.
As they start conducting their search, they're processing the scene with luminol.
So under certain light, you can see blood.
When the crime scene unit processes the bathroom,
the entire bathroom lights up.
All over. On the walls, in the bathtub, and on the floor.
Indications that there's been a lot of blood cleaned up.
[Castro] Same thing in the living room. They spray luminol by the sofa, the floor,
and they find drops of blood.
They test it,
so they see if they can determine who that blood belongs to.
[Hahn] So the crime scene team had collected steak knives
that were inside the dishwasher that had been run and cleaned.
Those kitchen knives were then taken to the lab
to see if there was any blood
that would have seeped into the handle itself.
When you have what you found in the garbage,
and then what you have at the scene,
you know something bad has happened to Joey,
and we know that he's probably dead.
You can't be alive at that point.
With all of the things that we had found so far,
James not telling us anything,
and Max Gemma has no information to give us about where Joey may be,
because he's claiming he was asleep on the couch,
we focus our attention on Larry Dilione.
Being that we already have James in custody,
maybe Larry now wants to get his opportunity
to maybe speak first and tell us what happened,
not knowing what James may be saying.
And he came in.
So once Larry came in, we asked him if he could shed some light
on to why we found so much blood.
He's keeping the same story that he had said earlier,
not knowing where Joey is.
[Hahn] You can accuse someone all you want, or, you know,
"You might be guilty, but he's more guilty,"
and try and get a statement out of him that way.
But Larry didn't want to answer those kind of questions.
So we tried to appeal more to his human side,
saying Joey Comunale's family is concerned about him,
and they want to bring him home,
and how would you feel if this was somebody in your family?
[Castro] Once Larry heard that,
he decided to tell us that he could lead us to where Joey is.
Well, he wouldn't tell us how the incident occurred.
He gave us an address behind a florist shop
in the town where he used to live in Oceanport, New Jersey,
and that's where we should look.
[sirens wailing]
We caravaned with lights and sirens.
And we're doing 80, 90 miles an hour out to this location.
We arrived at this florist shop.
And we headed to the open area at the back
where Larry had given a description
of where we would be able to locate Joey.
[tense music playing]
We approach over,
and the crime scene detectives begin to move dirt slowly.
And the first thing that I see is a…
a hand, uh, kind of like a half-fist.
The way you see in the movies where it's coming out of the ground.
And as they continue to move dirt, you start to see Joey's face,
you start to see his chest,
and you can tell that he was charred.
So he was lit on fire.
[Chen] At this point, we haven't really slept in days.
We were exhausted. We were exhausted, but this was something we needed to do.
We needed to tell the parents before anyone else did.
[Castro] Myself and Detective Chen get in the car
to go from Oceanport, New Jersey, to Stamford, Connecticut,
to go and speak to Pat Comunale and let him know
that we located Joey.
[somber music playing]
No one said a word on that car ride.
You feel the emotion, but you have a job to do.
So you just push it aside…
and you keep going.
We were sitting right here. I…
I heard the car doors.
And I knew why they were coming.
[Castro] We walk into the house, and Lisa comes down.
They're hanging onto every word, looking at you.
The two detectives told us they…
found him.
And it's our worst… our worst nightmare.
I've never seen so much hurt in someone's eyes, mother and father.
Wave at Daddy.
That type of pain, you never want to wish upon anybody.
[Lisa] Joe!
Joe!
-Did you have fun? -All right!
It was, uh…
We already… I already knew,
but this was the start of the next chapter,
which was getting justice for Joey.
That's all I could think about now, was…
making sure these three sons of bitches get everything that's coming to them.
The medical examiner in New Jersey conducted the autopsy,
and what he found was that Joey Comunale had 14 stab wounds,
some of them postmortem.
He had broken bones.
He had bruising on his hands, a large cut on his shoulder,
which we believe they might have been trying to, uh, dismember him.
And his body had been burned.
I can't make rhyme or reason why this would have happened.
It was inhumane.
It was vile.
It's disgusting to think that
they would treat another human being like garbage.
[tense music playing]
After testing those kitchen knives that were found in the dishwasher,
they were determined to have Joey's blood inside of the handles.
Also it was determined that the blood in the apartment was Joey's blood.
Finding the murder weapon,
coupled with the autopsy report matching to the evidence in the apartment,
gave us answers to how he would have been murdered.
But now the key question was, how did they get him out of the building?
[tense, mysterious music playing]
We pulled so much video that we had to sift through,
and we still couldn't see it.
[Chen] The one video that we couldn't get was a video camera
that belonged to the building next door
that coincidentally was corrupted.
Finally, this video gets recovered.
And it answered a huge part of our question.
[Castro] As we begin to review that video surveillance,
you can see James Rackover
park the black Mercedes in front of the Grand Sutton.
[chilling music playing]
Rackover takes the luggage cart.
Then he leaves the camera frame.
And when he reappears,
there's a large duffel bag on the luggage cart,
which then he places inside of the trunk of the black Mercedes.
[Chen] And if you look out the window of apartment 4C,
you look towards 59th Street and the front of the Grand Sutton.
When I saw that, and I spoke with Yeoman,
I went, "Holy fuck!"
"These guys…
pushed him out of the window."
So it wouldn't be suspicious coming out of the front lobby,
which was the only exit out of the building.
[Hahn] When you see the video, they're in it together.
They're both acting together
to take that body and to… to hide it.
[reporter 1] Did you do it?
What happened in the apartment? What happened that night?
-Did you do it? -[reporter 2] Did you kill him?
[reporter 1] Did you stab him?
[Hahn] On May 10th, both Larry and James were arrested
for murder in the second degree,
hindering prosecution, and concealment of a corpse.
James was already in custody for driving on a suspended license,
and Jeffrey didn't put any money up for him to get out.
I do think that at some point he realized he'd made a mistake
having a "son" that was a… a murderer.
We didn't have any cause to believe at that time
that Max Gemma had anything to do with the homicide.
We actually had statements from Larry
saying that Max had nothing to do with it.
He was arrested for hindering prosecution.
[attorney] Ultimately, it was clear to us that he had been involved
in trying to obstruct, essentially,
the ability for the police to get evidence,
but I don't think that the senior lawyers or myself were convinced we could prove
Max, beyond a reasonable doubt, was involved in the homicide.
[Castro] Once the murder charges came, it became a finger-pointing
"he did it, he did it" back and forth at each other.
[Hahn] We still had to try and determine who did the stabbing.
And we don't know what the role of James was
or what the role of Larry was.
You just need the doubt of one person on a jury to not have a conviction.
So while James is waiting for the trial,
we got jail calls from James speaking to a friend of his.
And in these calls, he's very confident he's getting off.
[James] I start trial in September,
so I'm looking at being home around October-ish.
My rep's gonna be up there, bro.
Like, my… when I hit the street.
They're gonna be like, "Yo, this kid just…
beat this **** like Rocky?"
"And he's home? Oh my God!"
[man] Yeah, see?
He seems fine. "Yeah, I'm gonna get off."
"I'm gonna be out soon, and everything's gonna be great."
Towards the end of the investigation and getting ready for trial,
we were able to locate a witness, and his name was Louie Ruggiero.
He was a friend of James Rackover.
Louie Ruggiero states that,
on the day we're searching the building, he was at the gym,
and James Rackover came up to him and told him he needs to speak to him.
He's gotta tell him something.
Louis tells us the story that James had told him,
which was that, on the day of the murder,
while they're sitting there in the apartment,
Larry had a dispute with this guy.
Turns out to be Joey.
And Larry gets so upset he punches Joey and knocks him to the ground.
Knocks him out.
James then says, "I'm not going back to jail."
And gets a knife from the kitchen,
and stabs Joey to death.
So in this statement that he tells Louie,
he's admitting he's the one that actually kills him.
Another amazing statement that he makes is Joey's still in the apartment,
and after that, he ordered pancakes and ate them without any problems.
Then they took the body to New Jersey, and they dumped it.
The evidence showed that their actions were intentional.
That attack resulted in Joey's death, even if they played different roles.
Two people can be responsible for the death of one person.
And ultimately, James went to trial first.
[suspenseful music playing]
The trial for James Rackover started in the Manhattan courts.
[somber music playing]
[Castro] Pat was there every day,
and he would fill the whole courtroom with family and friends.
It was all of us, fraternity brothers,
his friends from home, colleagues, work people,
would come and support Joey.
The support we got from a lot of individuals was just incredible.
Nobody on James Rackover's side, which spoke volumes.
[Vance Jr.] Ultimately, after a lengthy trial involving James,
the jury found him guilty of second-degree murder,
or intentional murder.
I remember to this day, Pat, I had to hold him down.
Me and my lieutenant are holding each arm because he sprung up with, like, this…
joy that it's finally over
and they're gonna pay for what they did to his son.
And I was very, very happy for them. Very happy for them.
[Pat] When I saw James,
all I could think about was, "I hope your nightmare's just starting."
'Cause I gotta take mine…
for a lot longer than him.
[Vance Jr.] James Rackover was sentenced to 28 years,
which he's still serving.
-Step away, please. Mr. Comunale. -Okay.
[Lisa] We were glad with the outcome.
And we just wanted it, you know, to be over.
I want to thank the Manhattan DA's office for doing an incredible job, uh,
the NYPD, who worked around the clock,
and, um, I appreciate everybody's support.
[voice breaking] My family, friends…
I think Larry could see that his odds of conviction
were gonna be very high.
Larry chose to plead guilty as opposed to going to trial.
He ended up taking a plea deal to murder two for 23 years.
[Hahn] February 2019, Max Gemma pleads guilty to hindering prosecution,
and he receives a sentence of six months in jail.
[Pat] I think all the papers all said he got a sweetheart deal.
And I actually agree with them.
I don't know why.
I don't know why, but…
he's gotta live with himself.
[Hahn] I think Max Gemma
definitely has more information about what happened in that apartment.
[somber music playing]
[Castro] Every detective has a case in their lifetime.
In the 19 years that I've been in the police department,
this case has been the case for me.
Just learning about Joey
and how much he was loved by all his friends and family.
Pat misses Joey every single day
like if it was the first day that it happened.
And he has
this love for Joey that I can relate to,
because when he speaks about Joey,
and his daughter,
and it's like they're his world, and that's who my kids are to me.
[voice breaking] We think about him every day.
And, um, we just try to, you know,
keep his memory alive,
and tell my grandson all the time,
"This is Uncle Joey."
His friend started getting a tattoo with the number nine.
And that was his number.
And the irony is I always said to him,
"I'll pay for your college under two conditions."
"You graduate, number one, in four years, and you never get any ink."
And he didn't get his tattoo, but I got his tattoo.
I thought it'd be a great way to just be with him every day…
which I am.
[music trailing off]
The phone rang. Jeff says, "Is Irene with you?"
He said, "She has been missing since twelve o'clock."
Suddenly, everybody was at a loss
that the lady of the home is gone.
Irene Silverman was an 82-year-old woman that was as sharp as a tack.
She was a socialite, and if she liked you, you were part of her family.
We had information that a mother and son
had Irene Silverman's identification.
[detective 1] We do a background check.
You couldn't believe the horrific things that they did.
We don't know where she is. We're innocent.
And if just given our rights, we will prove it.
It certainly didn't appear to be a mother-son relationship.
[detective 2] They're holding hands.
[detective 1] Staring into each other's eyes.
Are you fucking kidding me?
[woman] I interviewed the son.
And before I know it, he's across my neck.
I could feel his heart pounding.
He said to me, "This is a hostage situation."
You may think you know me, but you do not.
[dramatic outro music pulsing] you do not.