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Chapter 1: What happened to Joey Comunale on November 12, 2016?
Joey's missing. He's somewhere. He's gotta be somewhere. Hey, where's Joey? Have you heard from Joey?
This isn't like him to not call me back.
There's something really wrong.
Let's go back to November 12th, 2016.
A bunch of people were going out to New York City. Joey would go into Manhattan a good amount. He would meet all of our friends there. He had hundreds of friends. Hundreds of friends.
Joey always had this positive outlook on life.
When you were with him, you felt like you could fly. He was an athlete, loved sports. Bright future, smart kid. That night, we went to the Gilded Lily.
The Gilded Lily is in the Meatpacking District.
It's a lounge. It has club-type music.
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Chapter 2: How did Joey's friends react when he went missing?
I get approached on my right side by two guys and they try to start some conversation with me. Joey's on my left and they kind of form a group on that side.
He jumped in a cab and went off with these two guys. Why do you think he did? Do you know?
I just don't know, but I guarantee they're saying that they have a penthouse apartment. There's girls. This guy's dad's a jeweler.
And that jeweler was the jeweler to the stars. Oprah! You're talking about Oprah Winfrey. You're talking about Jennifer Lopez. He sold an engagement ring to Melania and Donald Trump.
Saturday night came and went. I can't get in touch with him. Has your son ever gone a whole day without texting or calling you?
Nope. I started getting phone calls from a bunch of our friends. Have you heard from Joey? Have you spoke to Joey? Joey's with you, right? They thought he was at my house. What happened? So I went on Instagram. I went on Facebook. I called everyone on my phone. We go and we just start looking for them. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday.
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Chapter 3: What details emerged about the party at apartment 4C?
Wednesday. Everyone was still trying to get a clear-cut answer as to what was going on.
Sources say 26-year-old Joseph Comunale came to this building early Sunday morning with friends. Why?
Why were you there? Why did you meet them?
Why did you go out that night?
You were invited to go to Sutton Place. You would want to go there. It's like its own private enclave that only money can penetrate.
Kaminali's father reported him missing when he never came home.
What's now going through your mind? The worst. The worst. Yeah. What do you think happened in apartment 4C?
Something went terribly, terribly wrong.
I met Joey freshman year of college. We've been best friends ever since. Joey was one of my best friends. My best friend. Best friend. Everybody called him their best friend. But I was his best friend.
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Chapter 4: How did Joey end up leaving the club with strangers?
I think he took a nap for like three hours.
But then Joey's college buddy, Preetam Devakabharbu, a part-time promoter, texted and offered Joey VIP treatment at the Gilded Lily, a club then located in the chic meatpacking district in downtown Manhattan.
I was working, so I'd be able to take care of everyone that came in.
Did you ever worry about him?
I worried about Joey because I loved him, but I knew that he always surrounded himself with good people.
Elisa Libretto dated Joey Cominelli on and off, but mostly on, for five years. First at Hofstra University, and later when Joey became a sales associate at his father's security company, and Elisa became a teacher. He is like the rest of us. He wants to have fun, doesn't want any problems. But that particular Saturday, she and Joey, like a lot of longtime couples, were taking a break.
We had a little bit of, like, a disagreement, and I was like, you know what, I just need a little bit of space. Like, I'll talk to him in the morning.
So Joey headed into Manhattan from Stanford, Connecticut.
We hop on the Merritt Parkway, shoot down in New York City.
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Chapter 5: What were the events leading up to the confrontation in apartment 4C?
Hours later, on Sunday afternoon, back in Stephen's apartment, Joey's phone began ringing.
It was his father. He said, hey, where's Joey? And I said, he stayed in the city.
And he was like, all right, well, if something happened, find him for me. So then I went to Joey's place, and he wasn't there.
Did you talk to him every day?
Yeah, every day. We talked about the Yankees and the Rangers and... Sorry, Pat.
Stephen got in touch with Preetham, who tracked down the phone number of a guy named Larry who had been at the party.
Larry told us that he doesn't know where Joey went.
That's when the vast network of Joey's friends got to work, homing through social media, searching for any scrap of information. Friend Mike Mullen says they plugged Larry's phone number into Google and got a last name.
And actually, his Facebook popped up, Lawrence DeLeon. Is this the kid?
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Chapter 6: What evidence did the police find in the investigation?
As I was scrolling, I landed on this picture.
And why did this catch your eye?
This caught my eye because I happened to know him in the middle.
By total coincidence, Mac spotted a friend, Alvin. But that's not the only reason he stopped at this photo.
I know the type of girls Joey chases, their dark features, and I just had a punch. I screenshot the picture and I sent it to the group of the guys that were out at the club with him the night before.
And what'd they say?
They were like, yeah, it's that girl right there on the right. And I was like, wow.
That woman had also gone to the Sutton Place party that night. Max called his friend Alvin, who had her phone number.
So I then hit her up. Do you remember being with Joey last night? Like, we can't find him. He's missing. And she told me, like, yeah, we were with him last night.
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Chapter 7: How did the suspects dispose of Joey's body?
He'd go to the Yankee games. He'd go to the Giant games.
Pat Cominale lives in a tony part of Connecticut, but he's a Bronx kid at heart. He moved here, met his future wife, Lisa, and founded a successful security firm that he later sold for more than $400 million. But that meant nothing now that his only son was missing. How important is family to you, Pat?
Yeah, family's important.
That's... That's everything. Tell me about his relationship with his dad.
I have never seen a person admire their father so much.
I've never seen a father admire their son so much.
They were inseparable. By Sunday evening, with Joey now missing about 10 hours, Pat phoned Larry DeLeon, who had been at the Sutton Place apartment with Joey.
Larry says they walked the girls out to the car, and that's the last they saw of them.
But then, DeLeon provided one small additional detail about Joey that, to Pat, seemed off.
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Chapter 8: What were the outcomes of the trials for those involved?
You're not expecting an issue in Sutton Place. Sutton Place is a beautiful place to live.
No one would disagree. Over the years, the neighborhood's been home to a parade of celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, and rock star Freddie Mercury.
What could go wrong on the Upper East Side?
Do you know anything about Larry DeLeon or James Rackover or Max Gemma at that point? Nothing. You know nothing about them? But as the days passed, the police would find out a lot more about the three young men, all in their 20s, who partied that morning with Joey.
The three young men in this story are young men of privilege.
Larry DeLeon worked in real estate and came from a well-off New Jersey family that owned thoroughbred horses. Max Gemma was a computer software salesman whose father was once the mayor of Oceanport, New Jersey, and had been in business with Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law. But no one appeared to live a more charmed life than James Rackover, who was living in Sutton Place.
His father, Jeffrey, who had a much larger apartment in the same building on the 32nd floor, specialized in getting one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry for the world's rich and beautiful.
I grew up in the same town with Jeffrey Rackover. We grew up a block apart. And while we weren't close, our families knew each other. He not only cultivated becoming a jeweler to the stars, he wanted to be among them. He was friends with Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. He came to know Oprah. His apartment has photographs of himself with all these personalities.
James enjoyed the good life. He was an aspiring model working in the insurance business, loved boxing, and even had a boxer named Gloves, of course.
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