Michael Alig Released Today

Today Michael Alig will be released from prison after serving eighteen years for the murder of his former friend and drug dealer, Angel.

Michael was the founder of the “Club Kids” movement of New York and Disco 2000 in the 1980s and 90s. Young people would flood into the city to be apart of his legendary parties. Drugs, drink, nudity, sex; nothing was taboo and the party goers were always demanding more.

A lot of people have come to know this story through the 2003 film Party Monster starring Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green. But the film is now over a decade old and I fear the newer generation don’t know about the Club Kids, Michael Alig or even his murder victim. Films also sensationalise, dazzle and bewilder the viewer and it is all to easy to forget that this story is based on true events. This is one cautionary tale everyone should be made aware of.

I have just written the key points of the story to keep it at a digestible level. If you want to know more, please follow the links dotted throughout this piece. Details of all the people mentioned have been heavily documented. There are many clips on YouTube, films made and books written. There is even the hand-written confession by Freeze listed online.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin…

James St James, Michael Alig and Richie Rich

Like every generation there is one spark, one force, one person with just that little extra to get things started. In 1980s New York, Michael Alig was that spark. As a wide-eyed Indiana boy, he made his way to NYC on a college scholarship. Realising he was different from most people, he didn’t want to become just another face in the rush hour traffic. Instead he began working at the infamous after hours club Danceteria as a bus boy. It was there he observed and befriended one of the club scene’s most colourful characters, James Clark. (AKA James St. James.)

James mentored Michael in the socialite nuances of New York’s club scene and with his and club owner Peter Gatien‘s help, Michael Alig started his own club nights. The nights were held at Peter’s club The Limelight and spawned a new generation of people who were dubbed as “Club Kids”. Regardless of sexuality, age, looks, race or background, The Limelight was a safe-haven for anyone who wanted to shift from conformity. Night became their day and drugs were always on the menu. This hedonistic way of life called to the masses all across America and people would arrive in New York with no money and nowhere to live but with one wish; to be a part of this new and exciting lifestyle.

Michael’s parties celebrated the fantastic, outrageous, macabre and even horrific. He even held Bloodfeast nights where clubbers would dress as the dead or dying. Coffins, blood and guts would adorn the stage and dancefloor and people would dance around the “corpses”.

Bloodfeast Promotional Image

Of course, this lifestyle still needed to be paid for and many turned to dealing drugs or working on the club scene. For some, they were even employed by Michael himself. Michael thrived on attention and hated to be alone, he also knew he needed help to run the club and maintain his own lifestyle. Keoki Franconi (Michael’s then boyfriend) became Superstar DJ Keoki and is still a successful DJ today. James St. James became his friend, house-mate and resident club kid, he is also the writer of the best-selling novel Disco Bloodbath which was adapted for the film Party Monster. RuPaul performed at his club nights and appeared on TV with him, Richie Rich became a well known club kid and now fashion designer and The Limelight was put back on the New York map making Peter Gatien a very rich man. And to keep feeding his seemly endless drug addiction, Michael made Andre Melendez into Angel the drug dealer. Angel is known for wearing huge wings earning him his nickname. He is also known as the man who Michael Alig and Robert “Freeze” Riggs killed in 1996.

Michael and his club kids gained a lot of media attention and publicity. Michael revelled in the spotlight and fame, as did his protégés.

Michael 1990

Guest spots on The Joan Collins Show, Donahue and even Geraldo where the revelation that Michael had given his mother ecstasy was exposed. But all this exposure was doing wonders for the club. Yet with all this good exposure, inadvertently bad was also created. The DEA began watching the king of the club kids and Peter Gatien. In 1995 The Limelight was closed down suspected of drug trafficking and Peter was arrested on tax evasion. The club did reopen several times throughout the 90s but after a sixty day stint in prison and a fine of $1.6 million, Peter was deported to his native land of Canada.

Michael’s drug intake reached new lows by the mid ’90s. Ketamine and ecstasy had always been his drugs of choice but now he was taking anything he could get his hands on; including heroine. He even continued taking heroine in copious amounts after overdosing and almost dying. At this point in his life he was sharing his flat with many club kids and it had come to resemble a trashy drug den. James St. James, Robert “Freez” Riggs and Angel were just three of the crowd who resided there. In March 1996, Michael “borrowed” over a thousand dollars worth of Angel’s drugs for him and his friends to use while Angel was away. When Angel returned and demanded the money or the drugs, Michael refused. Angel hit Michael and threw him into a glass cabinet. He proceeded to bite and punch Michael while the glass slashed at his skin. Michael’s shouting for help awoke Freeze who had been sleeping in another room. He aided Michael and the threesome scuffled and threw punches but Angel wouldn’t let up. Freeze hit Angel with a hammer but it only made him angrier. It took three blows until Angel fell to the floor. Michael stuffed a shirt into Angel’s mouth either to stop him from biting or to asphyxiate him and when things became calmer, Michael and Freeze took more of Angel’s drug stash and got high. It was later when the drugs wore off they realised Angel still wasn’t moving or breathing. While Freeze was looking for a medical book, Michael poured Drano into Angel’s mouth – he later said it was to embalm the body.

Angel

Angel’s body laid rotting in the bathtub for the next two weeks. The bathroom was borded up, the flat cleaned and with Angel’s money, new furniture was bought. Parties were still held in the flat while Angel decayed mere meters away from the drug-fuelled masses. Michael even confessed to the killing to anyone who would listen, even his close friends but no one knew whether to believe him or not. Even with a clean flat, the smell was something that couldn’t disguised. The two murderers decided to chop Angel up, place him in a box and throw him into the Hudson River. After taking a few grams of heroine, Michael began work cutting off Angel’s legs and genitals. The legs were put into a plastic bag and the rest of Angel into a huge box; although his genitals were never recovered.

If hacking up a rotting corpse wasn’t bad enough, Michael and Freeze proceeded down to the ground floor with the box in the main elevator and through the main door. They then flagged a taxi and enlisted the driver’s help in putting the box in the boot. The bag containing Angel’s legs sank to the bottom of the river but the box floated away only to wash up on the shore a few months later.

It wasn’t until December 1996 that the police closed in on the two murderers and with Freeze’s confession both were sentenced to ten to twenty years in prison for first degree manslaughter.

And this is why the drugs really did mess up everyone’s lives. Angel did attack Michael in his flat and could have intended to kill him. What Michael and Freeze did was in self-defence to stop the attack. If they had called the police at this point, recorded the crime and given evidence, they probably wouldn’t have had to serve time and Angel might even still be alive. Unfortunately their minds were clouded over and their drug-fuelled thought process made this into something else entirely. If there ever was a story to showcase just how dangerous drugs can be, this would be it!

Michael has had two parole hearings both in 2006 and 2008 and both times denied. It is rumoured that parole officers denied his requests after seeing the feature film Party Monster.

So what does that mean for the world today? Michael was incarcerated eighteen years ago. The club kids and indeed the club scene has moved on and surely the forty-eight year old will not want to return to that world anyway. I imagine thoughts about Michael are divided; at one end of the spectrum you have a fantastical, even mythical character who was heralded as the king of the club kids. He brought the underground world into modern culture. Then of course we have the dark and sinister side. Many of Michael’s club kids and even close friends were left without a place in the world once the club days had ended. Gitsie who was a close friend of Michael’s died from a heroine overdose in 1998 and through drugs and greed he and his friend murdered Angel. Michael unwittingly brought gay, drag and trans communities in to the spotlight and showing them as real people who just wanted to have fun. But that damage he did when he killed Angel undid everything he had worked towards over those ten years in New York. Drugs overwhelmed the club kids and the real world ceased to exist until it smacked them in the face.

Michael 2014

There is so much documented about Michael’s life before prison, but what kind of man he has become? Without the drugs, strobe lights and endless nights of partying; has he had time to reflect on his youth?

It will be interesting to see what – if anything – Michael does once he is a free man. I expect he will receive a lot of offers for book deals maybe even film rights. Has he even read James St. James’s book Disco Bloodbath?

Michael has joined the 21st century while in prison and has been counting down the days until his release. He said on April 18: “Feeling grateful & fortunate 2B given second chance at life-thank you to all those who’ve believed in me & my rehabilitation over the years.” More recently he announced that World of Wonder wanted to film him watching the Shockumentary. WOW intend to re-release the DVD with his reactions. He has been having twitter conversations with Keoko and James St. James who are both looking forward to his release. On Friday he tweeted this: “So overwhelmed: A 15-person van filled with friends, writers, photogs, film crews & WOW will pick me up from prison on Monday. #gulp” It would seem that – at least in the short-term – Michael will once again be under the spotlight.

The world has changed so much since Michael’s incarceration eighteen years ago, and I’m sure there will be a huge period of adjustment. I can’t imagine being hidden away through the advent of so many technological advances and cultural shifts. But for all our progresses, there is still so much regression. Even with the internet and social media, the majority of the world are left in the dark with poor education and misleading information.

Michael once had the power to change the way we thought and how we perceived each other. Whether this was his intention or not, his reign over the club kids was met with media attention and public awareness. Men and women who had lived in fear and been forced to hide in their underground societies were being shown for who they really were; human beings and valued members of society. After all these years locked away, perhaps he has been able to reflect on his club kid days and see this for himself; and there’s no reason why he couldn’t use this knowledge as the driving force for his future. Michael can never bring Angel back or undo the horrors of his past, but his future has yet to be written; and who knows what he could do.

Only time will tell.

#TerryGee

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