DISGRACELAND - Michael Alig: If a Club Kid Kills, Stuffs the Body in a Box and Tells The World About It Will Anyone Listen?

Episode Date: June 19, 2018

In March 1996, promoter Michael Alig, the "King of the Club Kids," after appearing on TV’s Geraldo and on the cover of New York magazine, bashed his friend and DJ Angel Melendez in the head with a hammer. The body was then dismembered and stuffed into a duct-taped cardboard box. Alig proceeded to tell anyone who would listen—including his friends from the raging '90s NYC club scene—what he had done. The problem was, Alig’s well-known, over the top, and depraved behavior was such that no one believed him. “Has anyone seen Angel?” “He’s dead. I cut him up and put him in that box over in the corner.” To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. This episode was originally published on June 19, 2018. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. Club kids in the 90s lived shockingly decadive lifestyles. Their sense of spectacle went beyond their open drug use in flamboyant fashion. In public, they drank each other's urine, had sex with amputated limbs, obliterated gender norms, and packed large-capacity Manhattan dance clubs. Fueled by an endless stream of hard drugs,

in a new form of electronic music that was loud and abrasive. Club kids were propelled by aggressive beats, the perfect soundtrack for this new post-punk, post-disco, clubland decadence. It was great music. King of the Club Kids, Michael Allig, didn't make great music. In fact, he didn't make any music at all. He made nobody's into somebody's. He was a club promoter.

As much a Pied Piper as other rock stars you can think of, Michael Allig packed clubs, put an entire scene on his back, and wound up on the cover of magazines and splattered across television screens. He made headlines. He made people happy. He made people dance. He made people famous. And he made one person turn up dead in a box on Staten Island.

But he didn't make great music. That music at the top of the show? That wasn't great music either. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Samba Electric Organ MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Vision of Love by Mariah Carey. And why would I play you that kind of forgettable cheese by Miss Mariah? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on August 15, 1990.

And that was the day that Michael Alec launched Disco 2000, kicking off the Club Kid movement and setting into motion. a series of decadent events that would bring about what would come to be known as a disco bloodbath. On this episode, Samba Electric Organs, smoking hot forgettable cheese, a disco blood bath, club kid decadence, and Michael Alec.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Cards, Oliver People's glasses, bespoke Valentino suits, a table at Dorcia. Without these in 80s Manhattan, You're a nobody. At least you're nobody from the perspective of Brett Easton Ellis's brilliantly satirical Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. That table at Dorcia, it's hard to come by.

Harder than the money it takes to afford bespoke suits and trendy eyewear. You have to know someone. And you're from East wherever the fuck, so you don't know anyone. So you head downtown to find your place, but lower Manhattan hotswere. spots like the Odion or cafeteria are off limits because the running of the Wall Street bowls is in full effect. In the masters of the universe are rubbing coke straws with Jean-Michel Baskett and SNL cast members in the bathroom. And you're either too young, too broke, too openly gay, too unsexy, or too much of all of the above to fit in. And so you head over to the

Bowery to try your luck with the punks and the hardcore kids. But you'd rather eat G.G. Allen's shit than sit through some post-punk mediocrity with the offensively asex asexual crowd at CBGB's. Max is Kansas City is dead. The mud club is closed. Elaine's is where your mom would hang out if she could afford a bus ticket and shoes that didn't look like Tom McCannes stolen out of the discount section from Caldores. You're alone in New York City. You know nobody.

You are a nobody. And what do you do? Reinvent yourself into something outrageous and more decadent than Patrick Bateman, Jean-Michel Baskett, and even crazier than G.G. Allen. It worked for Michael Alec. In 1984, 18-year-old Michael Allig was alone in New York City, fresh off the bus from South Bend, Indiana.

He quickly found his place at Dancateria. Dancateria was the spot for Alec to reinvent himself. It was the epicenter of New York Cool. The Beastie Boys worked as busboys. L.L. Cool J was an elevator attended. So was actress Debbie Mazar. Chade attended bar and had her first performance ever there. But no performer is more associated with danceateria than Madonna.

Danceateria is where she honed her craft, where she became Madonna, and it's where Michael Alec became Michael Alec. As a busboy himself, he witnessed the exact kind of magic needed to attract young, horny, impossibly cool Manhattanites to a club on a nightly basis. The only problem, Alec had no talent. He couldn't play guitar or write or act. It didn't matter.

The creativity and free expression at Danceeteria taught him that you didn't need to be a performer to draw people. All you needed was a hook. What does the pre-feminism madmen character Bobby Barrett say to Don Draper? This is America. Pick a job and then become the person who does it. And that's what Michael Allen did. He picked the job of promoter because you didn't need to know how to sing or dance or any of that.

All you needed was a friend who could DJ, a club looking to sell drinks on an off night, a little creativity and decadence. Lots and lots of decadence. In 1988, Michael Allig was hired by New York City nightclub owner, Peter Gation, to work as a party promoter at his club, The Limelight. Alec's parties were the most outrageous, the most decadent, and quickly became wildly successful. In part, because Allig created what became known as the Club Kid. It's impossible to describe the look of a club kid.

Remember that rave you went to in college? The one where you were certain you were getting dosed by the sketchy dude wearing lipstick, frosted tips, an astrological sign choker, and leopard print creepers. Okay. A club kid is who that guy was trying to look like. A club kid is an even more outrageous version of sketchy roofy dude from college. But throw in a mix of drag queen, Japanese anime, heroin chic, B-grade horror, an address stolen from your little sister's American girl doll collection, and you're getting closer to the club kid look.

Club kids took hard drugs, designer drugs, and took on flamboyant, ludicrous personas. Michael Alex's friend and fellow club kid, James St. James, was a self-proclaimed celebrity, meaning he was famous for well being famous. This was the early 90s, way before internet ubiquity, social media, and just at the cusp of 24-7 news and infotainment.

To be famous for no good reason, and in the absence of talent, you needed to be over the damn top. St. James described the club kid vibe as part drag, part clown, part infantilism. In addition to St. James, Alex's club kids included among others, superstar DJ Kiyoki, who sometimes clad in nothing more than glitter in a diaper, would provide the soundtrack for Alex's parties. The stunning, Genitalia, who was prone to big pink dresses, big black boots, and big

blonde wigs, worn over a shaved head, which, when revealed, made her even more attractive. And a little known at the time, drag queen, who went by the name Rupal, whose stint as a club kid, came before his supermodel of the world

glamazon status. And Amanda Lepore, who, like other club kids, not only bended gender lines, but completely scrambled them with their undeniable and over-the-top sexuality. In the late 80s and into the early 90s, these and an army of other club kids owned the New York City nightclub scene. It was a scene defined by over-the-top public displays of sex, overindulgence of hard narcotics and designer drugs, and an overthrow of the highly codified, stale rock and roll by a new form of electronic music that was loud, abrasive,

and propelled by relentlessly aggressive beats that kept the party going well into the morning. At Limelight and at other Peter Gation-owned clubs, Michael Alec was the straw that stirred the ruffin-all drink. His Wednesday night party, Disco 2000, featured over-the-top acts to draw further attention. with characters like Floyd the Human Money Tree, who would strip naked, pin $100 bills to himself,

and run through the crowd into a grabby free-for-all. Or Ernie the Pea Drinker, who, you guessed it, would openly piss in a glass in front of the crowd and gleefully slurp it all down. Allig himself would frequently piss on his crowd from the balcony at Limelight and pass out cups of his own urine to unsuspecting clubgoers. No behavior was too shocking.

It was all done in the name of hedonism and decadence, and it worked. The word was out on the club kids. Michael Musto from the Village Voice noted that Alec's hedonistic minions had filled a void in New York City nightlife left behind by Andy Warhol's death. New York Magazine put Allig on its cover. Geraldo and Joan Rivers had them on their television shows. The Limelight and Gation's bigger club top. tunnel remained packed. As the notoriety of the club kids grew, so did Alec's appetite for the

outrageous. He staged elaborate outlaw parties in public places. Manhattan Burger Kings and subway cars were suddenly out of nowhere overrun by club kids and drag queens for instantaneous dance parties. And Alec began producing other events beyond Disco 2000. There was unnatural acts where one night, Woody, the dancing amputee, lost his prosthetic while performing a dance, only to be joined on stage by a female clubgoer who had sex with both his prosthetic and his stump. The depravity and decadence was way out in the open.

Anything went. Overt sexuality, bisexuality, homosexuality, pansexuality, any sexuality. And the drug use kicked up a notch. Special K was everywhere. Club kids boasted of snorting six-inch lines off of eight-inch dicks. Punch bowls were laced with acid. Balloons filled with ecstasy descended from the ceilings and onto the dance floor.

And Allig promoted another night called Blood Feast. With a flyer depicting him dead on the floor, dismembered and covered in blood, club kids would show up, dressed in homage to their favorite serial killers, and in a sign of the horrific reality to come, Allig would arrive in a wheelchair covered in someone else's blood. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Because of Michael Allig, the limelight was making Studio 54 seem like a cute suburban key party your parents might have attended back in the 70s.

This, during a time when Rudy Giuliani, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and then mayor of New York City was doing everything in his considerable power to restore social norms and law and order back to Gotham City. And in Gotham City, Michael Allig, king of the club kids, the pajama boy Compaid Piper, could give two fucks about Rudy Giuliani. In Alec's myopic drug-addled view of the world, he was a prince. He had the power. after all he determined who got past the velvet rope who sat next to him on heraldo who got mentioned to the village voice and who he graced with his presence the decadence and all the drugs created an alternative reality for alec one where he was immune to any surrounding pressure or a sense of right and wrong he didn't know from rudy juliani alec had no sense of right or wrong or decency it was all right or

all about the party and the shock and the headlines. He didn't understand or care about the pressure his boss and benefactor Peter Gation faced to clean up his act at limelight or else be closed. All Alec understood at this point was getting high. When pressed by Gation to get clean or else be fired, Allig tried striking a compromise, where he promised to only smoke crack while taking heroin. Or was it he'd only take heroin while smoking crack? It didn't matter. It all came crashing down.

Giuliani turned the screw and Gation was forced to close limelight. Alec flamed out of rehab and descended into a drug stupor that would have made Courtney Love jealous. Cocaine, Special K, heroin, and crystal meth were all swimming through Allig's system while he holed up in his luxury West Side apartment, paid for by Peter Gation, with fellow club kid Robert Freeze Riggs, and the two were nearly out of drugs. This was a problem. So was the fact that Alec owed his drug dealer, Angel Melendez, money. Maybe this was why friends of theirs recounted that Alec was running around town, casually mentioning that he wanted to kill Angel. Angel Melendez wore wings, literally. That was his club kid stick. He also dealt heroin. He'd hung out

with the punks at CBGB's before finding his way to the rough trade over at the piers on the west side. A peer queen and street smart, Angel was by all accounts a sweet kid who is saving his drug profits to break into the movie business and break away from the madness of Clubland. Problem was, collecting drug debts was a real headache, and Michael Alex's debt was becoming a real problem. It wasn't just that he owed Angel thousands of dollars. It was the that he was being a real prick about it, disparaging him in public, not letting him into the parties he was hosting. And then, the little bastard found out where Angel was stashing his drug cash and managed to steal 18 grand, only to go and blow it all on furniture. Furniture.

Alec and Freeze were renovating their apartment. Angel was pissed, and rightly so. Angel Melinda showed up at the Riverbank West luxury apartment complex, where Michael Allig was holed up with Robert Freeze Riggs on March 17, 1996, demanding his money back. Michael mocked him and insisted on more heroin. Freeze told Angel that he and Alec only let him hang around because he had drugs. This enraged Angel, a struggle ensued. Angel bit Michael and threw him into a china cabinet. A huge shard of glass from the cabinet pierced his back.

Blood spewed everywhere. Freeze then grabbed a nearby hammer and swung hard at Angel, coming down on his head three times. More blood. Angel fell to the ground. Michael pounced. He wrapped his hand in a sweatshirt and began pummeling Angel in the face. Then he strangled him. At that point, one of them grabbed the Drano. They held Angel down and poured it into his throat. To be sure that he swallowed it, they duct taped his mouth shut. Exhausted, Michael and Freeze flopped on the couch, while Angel lie on the floor choking to death. The official cause of death was asphyxiation.

After a brief rest, Michael and Freeze dragged Angel's body to the bathroom tub. In an effort to mask the coming smell of Angel's dead body, they covered him in ice, baking soda, and more draino. Then they get down to the business of getting high as fuck. Turns out, when you kill your drug-dealing friend, you inherit a stash. And what a stash it was. For eight days, Michael and Freeze sat around the apartment doing nothing but heroin, while Angel's body sat in the tub, rotting. The stench became unbearable.

Something had to be done, so it was decided that Freeze would head down to Macy's to buy some butcher's knives. When he returned, he and Michael did more heroin to blunt the reality of what they were about. to do next. Stumbling into the bathroom, through the haze of rotting flesh and swarming flies, Michael Alec, king of the club kids, got down on his knees and wielding his Macy's butcher knife began sawing the limbs off of his friend, Angel Melendez. He started with the legs, removing them from the tub and placing them into a duffel bag. They placed them, along with the torso, into an empty television box.

and secured it shut with their trusty duct tape. The box was then placed in the living room, where briefly doubled as a coffee table. To mask the smell, man, that smell, they sprayed Calvin Klein eternity everywhere. The irony, eternity, to mask the stench of death. Needless to say, the flies remained. But the flies couldn't stop the drug binge.

There was too much heroin to do. Friends came by and remarked on the smell. Alec blanted on faulty sewage in the building. And when friends inquired to Angel's whereabouts, Alec would casually mention that he killed him, chopped him up, and stuffed him in a box. Look, that box right over there is a matter of fact. No one believed him.

So Michael Alec did what he did best. He kept the party going. According to multiple sources, in the days and weeks following Angel Melendez's death, Michael Allig was telling anyone who had listened that he had killed him. But nobody thought it was true. This was, after all, the guy who promoted a club night called Blood Feast, where people were literally drinking their own urine on stage, showing up dressed as serial killers,

or in costumes with bloody, dismembered, disempered, whims. So when Michael started telling fellow club kids, the grisly details of the crime he'd just committed to one of their friends, people thought it was all a put on. But village voice nightlife calmness Michael Muster thought otherwise. He knew where Michael Alec lived, on the corner of narcissism and drugged out madness, right between unhinged reality and the gaping hole of insecurity. And so Moussto published a blind item in the village voice on April 23, 1996, called nightclubbing. In it, he addressed the swirl of scandal surrounding Allig

and frees' rumored crime against Angel Melendez. Page 6 then picked it up. The voice followed up a couple months later with their own cover story. At this point, Allig started to realize the gravity of this situation and began denying his earlier claims, telling people that it was all a ruse, a prank. but the heat intensified. So Allig took the money he'd made

from selling the furniture he'd bought with the money he'd stolen from Angel and hit the road. NYPD detectives were on him in no time. They found him holed up in a sleazy New Jersey hotel. And so Michael Allig and Robert Freeze Riggs played nice with authorities and pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

They were sentenced to 10 to 20 years. Allig served 16 of them. Released in 2014, Michael Allig is, well, Michael Allig. He's up on YouTube with a show called P.U., where he and fellow club kid, Ernie Glam, super-served nostalgic clubland fans with decadent tales from the 90s. And where they promote Aleg's recent ventures, like his new club night at Manhattan's mega-club space Ibiza. And where they dispute rumors about Aleg, like his supposed purposeful spreading of H.I. as claimed by Lucian Winchrich,

and where they set the record straight about Alec's recent drug bust, the one where he was busted in a Bronx park at two in the morning with Special K, valiantly on his way to return the drugs to a drug dealer from a friend supposedly trying to get clean. What a guy. Rehabilitated, worthy of parole, after mercilessly dismembering the body of his friend, you be the judge. One thing I know to be true

is that Michael Alec is definitely still Michael Alec Even post-prison Watching the YouTube videos It's easy to catch a glimpse Of the 20-something provocateur In Alec's more world-weary eyes As he attempts to make use of modern technology To shock and engage an audience

And most of all remain relevant The smart ass is still there Sure it's without the assless chaps but if Alec feels any real remorse, the YouTube videos make it hard to build a case that prison had any real rehabilitative effect on his character. I wonder how members of Angel Melendez's family feel about all of this. When that late night, unprocessed grief knocks,

and they head to social media to catch a glimpse of their loved one. Maybe they punch Angel Melendez Club Kid into the YouTube search box and head down the rabbit hole. There's Angel on Geraldo, big red angel wings, big eyes, big boots, Brando Biker Hat. And there's Angel with RuPaul at a Burger King Outlaw party. You click on the Joan Rivers link, but no angel, because search algorithms are insensitive beasts.

They know so much about us, but how can they possibly know about our grief? They can't. Which is why, below the Joan Rivers clip, there's a clip from McCulley Culkin's feature film on Angel's Death, Party Monster. And below that are a couple of shockingly graphic documentaries that you'd rather not watch again.

And finally, at the bottom of the search, more general club kid videos start to pop up. And there's 2017 Michael Alec, three years out of jail and looking barely worse for wear. He's got a fresh new haircut. A trendy t-shirt that is a size too small and is drinking what must be an $8 coffee from some hot shit gentrifying barista.

He's regaling us with fabulous details from his latest trip to West wherever the fuck and imploring us to come party with him at his new dance night in Manhattan, where you and thousands of his closest friends can live out impossible to imagine decadent fantasies in real life. You can do that. You can.

Allig gets to do that. Angel Melendez does not get to do that. He's dead. He's no longer stuffed in a duct-tape TV box. His remains have been interred somewhere more respectable. Close by, though. Right over there, as a matter of fact. And Michael Allig, he's still doing what he does best,

keeping the party going. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours, and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

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