RedHanded - Episode 188 - Michael Alig: Confessions of a Club Kid Killer

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

In a world where drug use was rampant and controversy was currency, confessions of murder weren't even enough to raise heavily painted eyebrows. This is the story of how one of New York's hottest promoters fell from grace to cause the death of a man and the death of New York's club scene. In this week's episode of RedHanded, we discuss the killing of Angel Melendez and how Michael Alig went from making TV appearances at the forefront of the groundbreaking Club Kid movement, to killing a man, and then chopping him up in exchange for ten bags of heroin.  Brand new MERCH out now: redhandedshop.com  Check out our Patreon: patreon.com/redhanded Sources: redhandedpodcast.com   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games and signature BetMGM service, there's no better way to bring the excitement and ambiance of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino. Download the BetMGM Casino app today.

BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge.

BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed, which is the first ever opportunity, I think, possibly. I'm going to be able to talk Red Handed, which is the first ever opportunity, I think, possibly, I'm going to be able to talk about Drag Race on today's show.

And I don't think I've been allowed to do that before. So I've engineered this entire situation so I can talk about RuPaul's Drag Race. I mean, I feel like we've definitely talked about Drag Race because I called it RuPals or RuPals or something. I said it wrong and then everyone was very upset with me. I'm sorry, people. There's a lot of viewing to be done and that's just not one yet that has made its way into my rotation because I'm so busy watching

fucking Event Horizon for some reason. I would be so interested to see what you think of it. I think I would probably enjoy it. I feel like it just looks like America's Next Top Model but like more fierce and less Tyra, which I'm fine with. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it is. It's America's Next Top Model,

but drag queens and arguably a bit less problematic than America's Next Top Model. Precisely. So maybe I am all here for it without knowing. But no, I'm excited. And before we delve into this rather glamorous but grisly case today. Just very quick announcement, people. Merch is available. It is at redhandedshop.com. We've got Try Harder, Be Better. We've also got a bunch of mugs. We've got a Fuck Off With Your Entire Life mug. I don't know if you've seen it yet. If you haven't, what are you doing with your entire life? You should go look at it and then go buy some. So go check that out. We are also bringing out doggy bandanas that say spooky bitch on them. By the time this episode goes out, they may be there. They may not yet be,

but either go buy them or be prepared. We're basically waiting on a supplier issue, but they're so cute. And if you are a Patreon patron of Red Handed, this week under the duvet is video. So exciting. We've decided that we've changed the format. To be honest, these boxes, we have a love-hate relationship

with them. They've brought us a lot of good things. They've made the show sound better. But we're trying to spend as little time in them as humanly possible now

because they are claustrophobic. And also, we just thought it would be much more fun if you could see us every week. And we've figured out now a magic way to do that. So Under the Duvet is now going to be video for $10 and up patrons.

For everyone else, you will still get it as an audio thing, but it will sound a bit different because we're in kitchens and not in boxes. It's super fun. And $10 and up people, if you don't want to look at our faces and you're like, I just kind of want to listen to the audio, you can still do that. It is available as an option to you. But why not look at our lovely faces when you've got the time? So we're in the 90s this week and I don't think we've covered something quite as like,

do you know what, why am I trying to explain it? Let's just do it. In April 1996, dismembered parts of a body in a cardboard box washed up on Staten Island, New York. The legs had been cut off and the head showed three half-moon-shaped traumas. In a haunting foreshadowing of the TikTok adventurers of today, the box was discovered by a group of kids. I forgot about those kids. What were they? What did they call themselves? It was called, it was like Nostronautical Naut, Nautilus. Geonauts?

A Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I can't remember. Oh my God. It was something. It was such a cool name. I forgot. Oh my God, it's gone. You're right.

It was cool, but I've also forgotten. It's like that whole crime of people playing fucking Pokemon Go and getting robbed when they get to a certain place thinking there's a fucking shiny Pikachu there. I don't know what I'm talking about, but you know what I mean. No, it's gone. Randonauts. Oh, yeah.

Something like that. These people are the OG randonauts, but with no tech, just eyes. And these kids thought that they might have stumbled across something valuable, maybe something that had fallen off a freighter, so they started to poke the box with sticks. These kids quickly stopped their pokefest when a large enough hole appeared in the cardboard to reveal a human arm. That would do it, wouldn't it? Just a human arm flopping out

of a cardboard box on Staten Island. No, thank you. I would swiftly stop any poking behavior immediately at that point. And if people are confused about this TikTok situation and the randonauts we're talking about, it was a case like late last year where a bunch of TikTokers found like, what was it, a suitcase on a beach in America and they like filmed it all on TikTok and released it and we covered it on in the news for Patreons last year and that's why we're talking about it. The person the boxed body parts belonged to had been missing for months. Someone had confessed to the murder multiple times, once on camera, but no one did anything about it. This is the story of how, according to the killer,

two good people can wind up doing bad things. It's also the story of a city, its legendary nightlife, and how it ended. The body in the box was identified as being male and East Asian, so the police took themselves off to Chinatown to ask some questions about missing persons. Meanwhile, in downtown New York City, the rumour mill was in full swing. There were whisperings of a decapitated head being kept in a freezer in Brooklyn,

some disembodied hands hiding on Staten Island and veins being indirected with Drano in Manhattan. Drano has come up a lot for, in true... Is there no other drain cleaner in America? Maybe it's like how when a brand just totally takes over, like how Americans will say Xerox when they just mean a photocopy, or they say Kleenex when they mean a tissue. That's what you want.

You want people to just say red-handed when they mean a tissue. That's what you want. You want people to just say red-handed when they mean a podcast. Iconic. Just every stand-up comedian that's ever existed. Oh yeah, I'm thinking about starting a red-handed. Precisely. That's what we need for total pod domination, Hannah. I'll put it on the five-year plan. These dismembered body bits rumours were bolstered by two things. One, the

fact that a young man called Andre Melendez, Angel to all of his friends, hadn't been seen for months. And two, that another young man called Michael Allig was wandering around the New York City club scene telling everyone who would listen that he had cut Angel up and thrown him in the River Hudson. Some people didn't believe Alec's murderous claims. The circles Alec moved in were rife with drug abuse and there's no delicate way of saying that people, quite often, just died. One of the major reasons that Angel was missed almost immediately was because he was a drug dealer.

His clients were the first to feel his absence. Angel was also a regular on the New York club scene, which in 1996 was just about to disappear, some would argue, forever. Angel would often be seen at the most exclusive parties in town, wearing huge angel wings. These missing wings were noted by many, but they assumed that Angel had just left town, or maybe that he'd been picked up by the police.

But when Angel's brother started to hand out flyers and ask for information on his brother's whereabouts, the club scene and those in it started to take Angel's disappearance a bit more seriously. Michael Allig, on the other hand, was well known for his publicity stunts. A nightclub party promoter by trade, his job was to get attention.

He appeared on talk shows, in gossip columns, his job was to get attention. He appeared on talk shows, in gossip columns and on the cover of magazines. Could Michael Alec have just staged the murder of Angel to end up in yet another Page Six article? But it did seem unlikely that Angel, a Colombian migrant who was very close to his family, would put his loved ones through that kind of trauma just so Alec could get in the papers. So as word spread through Clubland that Alec had murdered Angel, famed journalist and nightclub chronicler Michael Musto wrote an article called Looking for Angel, which blew up. If the murder of Angel Melendez was just a publicity stunt, it would have worked perfectly.

The only thing was, it wasn't. After the article ran, the Manhattan police started looking for a body. It would take them months to figure out that the Staten Island police had had it all along. The two paths had just never crossed because the body in the cardboard box had been misidentified as Asian. And of course, Angel was Latin American. As soon as the dots were connected on the 2nd of November 1996, Angel's body was identified via dental records

and the investigation into the death and dismemberment of Angel Melendez began. Almost instantly, the trail of clues led back to Michael Allig, the one who had been telling everyone that he had killed Angel the whole time. At the time of his disappearance, Angel had been living with Allig, who had several live-in drug dealers. Robert Riggs also lived in the same apartment. One-word names were common among this circle, and everyone referred to Riggs as Freeze,

so that's what we're going to do for the rest of the story, because it's what you see for everywhere else. On the hunt for Angel's killer, the police caught up with Freeze before they managed to find Alec. It was not a hard job. Freeze was ready to give up as soon as the police tapped him on the shoulder. There's a bunch of documentaries about this case, which we've linked below. One of them has the officer who arrests Freeze.

He's like, literally, all I did was put my hand on his shoulder and I could feel him just, like, explode with relief. Angel had been dead for 10 months at the time of Freeze's arrest. So that meant Freeze had been running away from guilt for 10 months, and he had had enough. Freeze was taken to the station and made a written confession in which he admitted that in a fight over drug money, he and Michael Allig had killed Angel Melendez.

This wasn't the only confession kicking around, of course. Allig had been confessing for months. There is video footage shot three months before his arrest of Alec claiming that he killed Angel. He seems agitated in the footage and he's sort of like bouncing, but Alec at this stage in his life is absolutely drug-addled. So, I mean, he just looks like someone who is a drug user, is what he looks like, not necessarily someone who's guilty.

So he says, oh, I killed Angel Angel and then he follows it up with quote that's the kind of thing that gets me in trouble not meaning murdering gets me in trouble it's saying things like that make people think that I am a bad person but I'm only joking you mean saying that you've murdered somebody shooting your mouth off about a murder is what gets you in trouble. That would get me in trouble. That would get all of us in trouble. Yeah, exactly. I don't think anyone is impervious to that kind of trouble. You see in a lot of articles, oh, and Alec went on TV saying that he'd killed Angel and still nothing happened. I personally have not been able to double confirm, which is what we like to do on Red Handed, if it went on TV and if it did which TV show it went on, it's just recorded footage.

It does prove, however, that Alec was definitely in the confessing business before he was tracked down by police. Which is, you know, we're obviously saying like that would get anyone in trouble, but then it does spring to mind immediately. A Jimmy Savile-esque character who's just like, no, I did it. I did it. And everyone's like, no, you didn't. Stop saying that.

Shush. Silly Jimmy with your tracksuits and your pedo haircut. Here, just take another knighthood. Did he have a knighthood? He had some stuff, didn't he? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Was he fucking Sir Jimmy Savile? Sir Jimmy Savile, yeah.

Oh my God. Do you know what, guys? Tell us how you feel about this. We have our 200th episode of Red Handed, Red Handed, because we're not going to call it podcast anymore. It's just Red Handed. How do we feel about a big old deep dive into the Jimmy Savile case? Sir Jimmy Savile?

I don't know. Let us know. Yeah, and someone get hold of Louis Theroux so we can interview him for it. That would be a real good one. Let's see what Jamie and Spencer do on their BBC sound show and just be like six degrees of get us to Louis Theroux someone listening knows Louis Theroux personally I can feel it in my bones go and find him yes please stand outside his house don't do that if you want to see this confessional clip of Michael Alec you can find it it's called Party

Monster the shockumentary on YouTube they themselves called it the shockumentary on YouTube. They themselves called it the shockumentary. Yes. Yes. Okay. There are a collection of quote unquote documentaries about this case, right? The best one, in my humble opinion, is called Glory Days of Life and Times of Michael Alec. That one is about two hours long, but it really gives you an amazing idea of what the club scene was actually like in their late 80s, early 90s. And a very well-rounded picture of Michael Alec himself, I think. However, the shockumentary, I don't even really know what to say about. Watch it at your own risk is the only thing I can say.

And I do think that there's something quite unique about this case that like so many people who were around moving in the same circles when it happened have like run with it. I don't know. I don't know whether he just hung around a lot of creative people. So they were like, let's do a creative thing with it. But I don't know. It feels odd. You can find it on YouTube. It's not difficult. So we might as well find out who our central character is. Michael Alec was very, very famous in his time. And I wouldn't know about him if I didn't know about Club Kids. And I wouldn't know about Club Kids if I didn't watch RuPaul's Drag Race. And that's not a statement about Drag Race being the be all and end all of drag. We all know that that's not true.

It's entirely possible to be good at drag and bad at Drag race look at Trixie Mattel what an icon and also like who cares about my opinion it doesn't matter but the point is no one in Britain knew who Michael Alec was in the 80s or the 90s he was famous in the states but his fame didn't cross international borders until quite a questionable film called Party Monster was made with Macaulay Culkin playing Michael Alec. And to be honest, the distribution of the Alec story was limited even then. I think I remember Party Monster coming out. Yeah. I had no idea what it was or any inclination to see it. No, absolutely not. Until I read this particular script that you put together, I did not know that the two were even connected. Not that I've seen Party Monster, I did not know that the two were even connected.

Not that I've seen Party Monster, I'm just aware of it. So, Alec was born in a place called South Bend, Indiana. And we're not going to dwell on his childhood too much. Alec himself certainly didn't, because he left South Bend as quickly as he humanly could for the bright lights of New York City. Alec got himself a scholarship to Fordham University, which is based in the Bronx, and he got a job as a busboy at the legendary four-floor club, Dancetaria. Once Alec saw all of the party promoters hanging around,

getting paid to dress up, go out, and get punters through the doors of the clubs, his university career died a death. Michael Alec started his promoting career by organising small parties at a venue called Tunnel. Studio 54 and the scene that went with it was just about starting to wane at this time. And I guess like Michael saw that as a gap in the market, like he can take over as the new era of club promoters. That's like his mentality at this time.

Absolutely. So Michael, you can see from a very young age at this point, he wants to be famous. He wanted to be an Andy Warhol's celebutant, famous for being famous. And one of the biggest names associated with Andy Warhol's studio, The Factory, was actress Edie Sedgwick, who you can all thank for popularising the miniskirt. Hannah, would you like a fun fact about how economics meets fashion when it comes to hemlines? Yes, please. Was that convincing? Yes. Thank you for that.

OK, good. So the Hemline Index is an economic theory that was proposed in 1926 by an economist called George Taylor. And basically, the Hemline Index is this theory that states that you can predict the strength of an economy by the fashionable length of skirts that women of that time are wearing. So basically, if the economy is doing really well, and it's an economic boom, that women wear shorter and shorter skirts. And if the economy is in the fucking bin, then women's hemlines get longer and their skirts are longer. That is interesting. Isn't it interesting? And this isn't just like, I mean, there is obviously the old adage that, you know, the economy needs economists as much as the weather needs weathermen. We're just saying random shit. But this has been studied and the empirical data does back it up.

In the 1920s, the 1960s and the 1980s, all periods famously of economic booms in the US and in Europe do reflect this theory. Like fashion wise, you had like the flapper girls with their tiny skirts in the 20s, then in the 60s, then in the US and in Europe do reflect this theory. Like fashion wise, you had like the flapper girls with their tiny skirts in the 20s, then in the 60s, then in the 80s, you had the mini skirt, like it does match up. But I would say that there is usually a few years of a lag. So it's more of a reflector of the economy than it is like a predictor. So you can't look at a woman's skirt and guess what the economy is going to be in the future. But it might be doing quite well slash doing quite badly. So Hannah, get your fucking maxi skirts out. For when we emerge. Yeah, I was just gonna say. Just wear blankets. We're gonna roll blankets around ourselves. We're gonna have trains. The economy's so bad. Absolutely. You can transform yourself into a true blanket tag

for when we emerge post-COVID. But no, sorry, slight economic sidetrack. I had to throw it in. I was never going to get another opportunity to talk about that. No, I love that. The first night that Alec hosted in his new gig as an aspiring club promoter, it wasn't a flop, but it also wasn't quite the massive success

that Michael Alec probably hoped that it would be. He dressed up, and this is just fantastic, he dressed up for this night as little Lord Flantleroy, which is just something very special. Apparently about six or seven other people also joined him in fancy dress, but you know, it didn't quite take. But when he retells the story Alex says that they weren't really dressing up they were just doing it to make fun of Andy Warhol's factory superstars because they did dress up sounds a bit hollow to me yeah I mean I love dressing up maybe one day I will get to do it again and if you do nothing else after listening to this episode, just search hashtag club kid on Instagram and just look at the amazing costumes.

Like incredible. Just spend an hour and be inspired. The whole like Andy Warhol factory thing is really interesting. I went through a phase in university of being obsessed with Edie Sedgwick and just the fashion and all of the imagery that came out of the factory, hanging out with beautiful people and making them famous because they were beautiful, like which at the time was pretty revolutionary. And this shows you how much of a big deal it was. Like when Andy Warhol died, the Village Voice ran an article called The Death of Downtown. Like Andy Warhol's death was directly linked to like nightlife being decimated. That's how central he

was as a figure. But Michael Alig was poised, waiting to grab the nightlife baton and run with it. In his later years, Alec seemed pretty obsessed with the farcical nature of the club scene, that everything was a joke. Nothing was serious. Everything was tongue in cheek. So like they're not really dressing up. They're making fun of people who are dressing up. But by doing that, you are dressing up. Like it's a really cyclical argument. And that argument gets a lot harder to pull off when you actually kill someone and cut their legs off. By his own admission, Alec became the very thing he began his career satirising.

A fame-hungry drug adult, famous for being famous-for-being-famous celebrity, desperate to stay relevant. But in the beginning, he was a success. Every week, the numbers at Alec's Tunnel Night doubled. So they had to move to a bigger room, and then to a bigger club, and then eventually the parties moved outside. These outside parties, sometimes with Ferris wheels included, were Alec's famous outlaw parties. They took place in Burger King, subway trains, Dunkin' Donuts, swimming pools, abandoned houses, almost anywhere you could think of. Alec and his team would spread the word about the location and then hundreds of people, all dressed up in the most outlandish outfits you could possibly imagine, would just show up when they were told to. And then there'd be an alfresco flash mob party at the designated location. And then Alec,

usually dressed in an arseless play suit, would lead all of the revelers to whatever club was paying him, like a demented Pied Piper of Manhattan. Alec and his troupe were briefly dubbed the Fun Touchables, which I think is pretty good. That is pretty good. I'll give him that. But not for long. By 1988, Michael Alec adorned the front pages of New York's tippity-top publications with the banner Club Kids. And the Club Kids were a movement, and the message was one of inclusion. The vibe was very, if you're different, come to New York, dress in whatever you want, and you will find your tribe. In the late 80s and early 90s, getting actual kids, so like actual children, as in 16-year-olds, into clubs was very en vogue. The 21 years old drinking age was only introduced in 1985 in New York. In 1982, it was 19,

and before that, it was just 18. Like a lot of things in New York clubland, IDs were also not required. And neither were inhibitions. My experience in everywhere I've gone in America, LA less so, but certainly in New York and Boston, IDs all the time. In Boston, I was refused entry because they wouldn't accept my British driving license because it wasn't an American one. So I think I always just assumed that the 21 year drinking age had been very blanket forever and not at all. No, I would have thought the same. I think we talked about this possibly in Under the Duvet last week when you were obviously doing the research for this. But I would have thought that it came out of America's like quite like puritanical background and it had always just been 21 but yeah interesting. Alec really made his name when he was employed by nightlife impresario Peter Gation who wore an eye patch like a supervillain and owned the now legendary

and defunct club the Limelight. There were limelights in New York the one we're talking about and also in London and in Chicago and do you know where the London Limelight is? No. So it's now called the Chapel and it's where I want to do a live show. Oh, interesting. It's called the Welsh Chapel now. If you Google the Welsh Chapel, that's where Limelight used to be. Peter Gation used to own it.

Not to be confused with Slime Light, the goth club at Electro Works in Angel, where I went when I was a student. Different. The Limelight in New York had been around for a while, but despite its gothic church aesthetics, it had never been cool. Michael Alec changed that. And just to give you an idea of like just how high tier Alec's work was, within the Lime Lightight like Mugler designed a room in there so did like loads of amazing designers were commissioned to just make rooms within the limelight itself so this isn't like grotty club times it was a really like quite cutting edge at the front of a movement the limelight and later club usa they're different clubs they didn't change the name became a mecca for club kids.

People wanted to be seen there and it was difficult to get in. Also, one of my favourite things when we go to the States is to watch the adverts on TV. And also, if I'm using a VPN, watching American adverts is like my favourite pastime because they're so different to what we have here. And Club USA had TV adverts that was like, come to our night on blah, blah, blah. Like, mental. That would never happen.

Are you even allowed to like advertise bars here? It just seems so odd to me that a nightclub would have a TV advert. I mean, I don't think there's any restrictions against it, but it would be a very odd thing to see for sure here. Essentially, the way these nights works were, if you weren't fabulous, you couldn't get in. And if you were deemed fabulous by the people on the door, not only were your drinks free, so were any drugs you wanted. And one of the articles I read for this episode, which is obviously linked below, they make a comment of how being a club kid is actually a very American thing because in the late 80s, early 90s, club kids were getting paid to be at clubs.

They were getting paid to be fixtures of nightlife. And I think that is quite an American idea, which is what this article says. You have to pay me to be here because I say so and I'm amazing. Obviously, you want me to be a part of your thing. It's really interesting because all of this scene, which I was absolutely not aware of, is very much like the precursor. This and obviously also Andy Warhol's kind of

celeb-utant vibe is all just very much a precursor for the kind of celebrity that we see today, like the Paris Hiltons who kicked it off and then now the Kardashians, that whole idea of pay me to be here and being famous for being famous and just being famous for being rich and attractive which is fascinating to see where this came from yeah like was Edie Sedgwick the first ever influencer probably it's a really interesting thing to look at and something I hadn't thought of before but

like this idea of famous for being famous has been around for a lot longer than people think yes i know edie sedgwick was like an actress as well but like only afterwards come on so drugs let's talk about drugs don't do them but they were not an initial factor in the club kid movement there are a lot of anecdotes kicking around from alec's friends some of whom are now dead from overdoses that in the the beginning, Alec hated drugs. If anyone had them at a party, they would get flushed. But his anti-drug stance did not last. Staying out all night is difficult without a bit of help. And eventually, Alec found all of the help he needed in ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, and ultimately, heroin. This is quite astonishing. In the 90s, Alec's most famous parties were called Emergency Room

and they were blatant drug extravaganzas, complete with inflatable syringes. Like, nobody is hiding what is going on here. Alec later claimed in an interview, yet again, that the club kids being on heroin and ketamine was all part of the shtick. It turned out to be a very difficult shtick to shake. And is it a shtick if you're actually doing heroin? I don't know.

Yeah, I don't think like rampant heroin abuse is a shtick. It's not quite a gimmick, is it? It feels like a lifestyle choice. So, oh, we're satirising celebrities who go out and get fucked up and take drugs. So we're going to go out, get fucked up and take drugs. But it's a joke. So it doesn't count. So you can YouTube club kids on talk shows like Phil Donahue and Joan Rivers. It is usually Michael Allig, Walt Paper and Jenny Talia, all dressed up in part drag, part fancy dress, part infantilism, and part performance art. They were perfect fodder for the daytime talk show,

and all the TV appearances followed the same exact pattern. The talk show host would ask the audience at home if they really knew what their children were doing at night, and then they would parade out the freaks. Some audience members were supportive, some were disgusted. One woman in the studio of the Phil Donahue show asked in a pretty snarky tone whether RuPaul was the idol of the club kids, which is an important moment. RuPaul, along with Lady Buddy, Richie Rich and Amanda Lepore, definitely was a club kid, but they were not, as some claim, given a start by Michael Alig. The single supermodel, You Better Work, that catapulted RuPaul to mainstream fame

came out in 1992. RuPaul had been performing in New York, particularly at the Pyramid Club, since the mid-80s, before Alig was on the scene. Michael Alc appeared as a guest on Phil Donahue in 1993. RuPaul had his own talk show on VH1 in 1996. You'll see a lot of like, oh, well, like RuPaul wouldn't be anything without Michael Alec. And like, I just don't think that's true. I think that they knew each other. They were kicking around the same scene at the same time. I don't think they liked each other very much. There's a story that people repeat quite a lot about Michael Alec pissing into RuPaul's drink on several occasions, some people claim, and then on one particular occasion, refusing to pay RuPaul for a performance. If you venture into

any comment sections about this topic, you'll see people saying that Alec's parties weren't even the best ones in New York, that he wasn't king of the club kids, etc, etc, etc. We can't confirm or deny those things. We weren't there. But he was definitely a huge part of the club kids, etc, etc, etc. We can't confirm or deny those things. We weren't there. But he was definitely a huge part of the scene. And there's always going to be no sayers, hey? Pissing in drinks was something that Michael Alec did quite often. Quite a lot of the time, he was a total arsehole. He would claim that this was just part of his character. But where he stopped and where his character began was almost impossible to determine. At his nights, he would fall over dramatically on purpose quite a lot to draw attention to himself. Can't help think of Jennifer Lawrence.

Oh, shots fired! To the same end, his outfits got more and more outrageous. Sometimes they were clowns, sometimes he would dress like something out of the Rugrats, and sometimes Alec would turn up covered in blood. Alec's parties often had themes, promoted via posters and flyers, because in the club kids' time, there was no internet. Alec really made his name when he started running a night called Disco 2000. It was on a Wednesday, and the club took more money that night than any other night of the week. Outrage was the name of the game. Alec in like later

interviews when he's grown up a bit he's like it was always what's the next thing like how can it be bigger better more shocking and that's how he ends up with inflatable syringes and people just walking around giving people cocaine on the dance floor. Like it wasn't even a particularly slow process. Like he was just trying to be as outrageous as humanly possible, which as a party promoter at the time was his job. Yeah, absolutely. So obviously the club kids became very influential and people wanted to be where they were. So the club kids started making paid appearances.

Some even claimed that they weren't club kids club kids started making paid appearances. Some even claimed that they weren't club kids. They were nightclub personalities. If you weren't paying them, they weren't going. And just in the sense of like more and more shock factor coming into things, one poster for one of Alec's nights really stood out. It was called Bloodfest, after the 1960s splatter horror film of the same name that Alec was a fan of as a child. And the poster features Alec's brain being eaten and the rather unfortunate foreshadowing font, red legs cut off.

You couldn't make it up, could you? What does that even mean? It's like, so the poster is like Alex lying on the floor and then someone who I don't know who it is is standing over him like his skull has been cut open and this person is eating Alex brain with a spoon in this photo right it looks like it's been made on Microsoft Word to be honest which like maybe it was and there's just like little text boxes of like gore blood legs cut But obviously, because he does go on to cut someone's legs off, some people point to that as like, oh, he wanted to cut people's legs off the whole time. It was

already in there, which might be a stretch, in my opinion. There is footage of that night in the multiple documentaries and YouTube collections cataloguing the club kids. There was real blood being poured over people. There was piss drinking, cage dancing, and extremely open drug consumption. And also champagne enemas, which, sure. Yeah, I mean, you can see stuff like that in London. Not now. Definitely when I was at uni, you could go and see nights like that. I don't think it's like that outrageous. At Heaven, they have Gay Porn Idol. Do you want to know about Gay Porn Idol?

Yes, I'm speech. I mean, maybe I'm just super square, but I'm like, okay, where? I wouldn't even know where to begin to find these things, but cool. Soho's a good start. Okay, so Gay Porn Idol happens at Heaven, which is under the arches next to Charing Cross. The bouncers hate me and my cousin. But I think if you haven't got thrown out of Heaven, you haven't lived.

So basically gay porn idol is they get like celebrity people. Like usually there's a couple of drag race girls that are there and they just judge how hot people's bodies are. And Heaven's massive. I've also been to a pool party at Heaven. Like there's just like a swimming pool, like in the middle of the club, which I didn't go in because that's really unsanitary and gross. But you can find shows of champagne enemas in London for sure. Definitely. Like at the box. Easy peasy. I am so, so fine for that. No, thank you. No, thank you to everything that was just said. So we are not going to be able to accurately describe these parties, especially I am not going to be able to accurately describe these parties. You will have to go and see for yourself. So go and watch Glory Days, The Life and Times of Michael Alec and you will get a very good idea. According to our journalist from earlier, Michael Musto,

Michael Alig was the one that everyone wanted. He was very much an it person. And Michael Musto would go out and think that people were calling his name only to find out that he was not the Michael they were interested in. Like a typical manipulator, Michael Alig was an expert at exploiting the insecurities of those around him. Once, Musto overheard Alec talking about him behind his back. But when he confronted him, Alec said, how do you know we're making fun of you? Which put Michael Musto right back in his box. What a horrible thing to say. But like also

that immediately disarms the person who's accused you, doesn't it? Like, why do you think you're so important that I would waste my breath on you? Ouch. But that's what manipulative people do. They destabilize and make you think you're the issue. And once you've noticed it, once you've clocked someone in your life as being a manipulative person, you won't be able to unsee what they're doing. And they think that you can't see it. So that gives you the upper hand. Someone's been doing some research. Yeah, I have. I have.

I have. And I'm not ashamed. I'm Jake Warren. And in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple

of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan,

we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.

This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul,

the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. By 1995, Alec was self-admittedly out of control. And if what had happened next had not happened, he probably would have ended up dead.

He had started out addicted to fame, but now he was full-blown addicted to heroin. Big time, like multiple bags a day. He needed a hit of heroin every few hours to stop him from going into agonising withdrawals. So evident was his drug use and his inability to have his shit together that Michael Alig was fired by Peter Gation. Rudolph Piper, another New York nightclub owner and legend, cut all ties with

Alec because he did what sensible people do. Especially businessmen, they just look at you like, no, you're going to bring everything down around you and I don't want to be anywhere near it. Michael Alec's very out in the cold at this stage of the story. His house of cards was beginning to fall, which ironically was the theme of one of his final club nights, for which Alec built a giant house of cards in the middle of the club. In September 1995, the limelight was raided by the feds and Angel Melendez, who was a drug dealer in residence there, was fired. So like Peter Gation, allegedly, according to this story, had drug dealers on his payroll.

You were paid to be in the club and make sure that everyone had drugs. After Angel got fired, he moved in with Alec and according to Walt Paper, then Club Kid, now visual artist and owner of the biggest glow up of all time. I could not believe it. Like Walt Paper is in all of these YouTube clips

as Club Kid when he's super duper young. I think he was also Alec's assistant for a while and then the difference from that to him now is astronomical just look it up maybe we'll do a before and after on Instagram so you can just appreciate the glow up because it is one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen so according to Walt Paper the glow up man there was a storm in March 1996, which meant that Alec and Freeze were snowed in for days with Angel's stash. And predictably, they did it all. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of heroin was gone. Angel was not happy, and then Angel disappeared.

Afterwards, even though there was no Angel, there were still drugs and all of his clothes that Alec had no problem wearing. And to the observer, it seemed odd that Angel would just leave behind all of his money and his possessions if his disappearance was because he had left town. When asked why Angel was letting him wear his clothes, Alec just said that he had killed Angel, so he didn't need his clothes anymore. Everyone just took this as a joke, apparently, even though Alec's apartment smelled incredibly odd. And even though a mysterious cardboard box had appeared in the living room. Friends who came over to Alec's apartment to hang

out and take drugs were not that fast. Cleanliness was not exactly at the top of their agenda. Heroin was, and Alec had heroin aplenty. In Alec's own words, he moved in a circle where, quote, anything was tolerated. Freeze was not innocent of this flippant bluffery either. When asked if he had fucked Angel's dead body, he replied, I wouldn't have fucked Angel alive, let alone dead. Which is particularly chilling when you consider what actually happened. It's so strange that like everyone knew. And I don't think that they actually thought Alec was joking. I really don't. I think they all knew and they were too scared to say anything. But the way Alec tells the story is like, what a funny joke. No one actually thought I did it. I pulled it off. But like. I think they all knew and they were too scared to say anything. But the way Alec tells the story is like, what a funny joke.

No one actually thought I did it. I pulled it off. But I think they definitely did know. They just didn't care or did do anything about it. Yeah. I mean, I guess like if you are hanging around with people who are very preoccupied with heroin, then maybe even if they believe you, they're just like, I've got bigger fish to fry, possibly. Yeah. And like, I don't really fancy going down the police station, to be honest. Exactly. And also, you could argue that Angel Melendez being a Colombian immigrant who was a drug dealer is not going to be at the top of the police's list to try and find and or help. This is also true. In the 90s in New York, like no way. We will never actually know for sure what happened,

but we do have a most likely scenario. After the great snow-in, heroin-taking storm, Angel confronted Alec on the 16th of March, 1996. Which was fair enough. Alec owed Angel thousands of dollars. Angel turned up at 10am on a Sunday morning. He hadn't slept in days. Neither had Alec or Freeze.

It was a normal weekend and for reference of just how normal staying up for days on end is, Tunnel, which is one of the clubs that Alec was associated with, stayed open until 2pm in the afternoon because nobody got there until 5am. I know, I know I've been talking about being agoraphobic all week but this is making me want to go dancing. No, it makes me scared and makes me sad is making me want to go dancing. No it makes me scared and makes me sad and makes me want to stay in the house forever. When Angel was arguing with Alec over these missing drugs Freeze chimed in and said something to the effect of this is why no one likes you if you didn't have drugs you wouldn't have any friends. This hit home very hard. People

often get the most upset about things that are true. Angel was acutely aware that he was not A-list, that he was not popular, and that he was just kept around because of his access to large amounts of narcotics. Angry, Angel grabbed Alec by the throat and pushed him into a china cabinet. The glass broke and left Alec with a gash on the back of his neck that remained visible and noticed by many people for weeks afterward. There's also film footage of this injury knocking around.

As Angel was throttling Alec, Freeze grabbed a hammer and hit Angel three times until he fell to the ground. Once he was out, Alec smothered Angel with a jumper and then poured drain cleaner into Angel's mouth and sealed it with duct tape. So there are a lot of versions of this story. jumper and then poured drain cleaner into Angel's mouth and sealed it with duct tape. So there are a lot of versions of this story but what we need to know is that Angel's body was moved into the bathroom and put in the bath. Alec claims that they were so up to their eyeballs in heroin that neither he nor Freeze realised that Angel was actually dead. That doesn't explain why they covered his body in ice,

baking soda and Drano and then ran away though. That seems suspicious. Yeah. It's difficult because there's so many versions of the story and like everyone who was actually there was out of their fucking mind on heroin. So like you're never going to get a complete, clean, linear storyline. We'll never know.

No, we'll never know. Like it's difficult to believe that they didn't think that they had killed him. But also, I've never had my eyeballs full of heroines, so I don't know how blurred reality would have been. This is true. So again, we'll never really know. And it's said in one of the confessions that they left Angel with a head full of hammer hits and a mouth full of drain cleaner and went out. They kept away from the place for at least a week. Alec reckons it was more like ten days.

Right up until the return to the apartment, Alec had a really good self-defence case. Had he gone to the police at this stage, some people reckon that he would have walked and that Freeze would have done some pretty minor time for assault. And that would have been that. Alec and Freeze didn't call the police, however, because, of course, of all of the drugs in their apartments. And both knew if they went to the station, or worse, to jail, they would be sick within six hours. Obviously, you're not going to just get a steady

stream of heroin immediately. So if they hold them for any longer than six hours, they know they're going to go into withdrawal. So they stayed out and they stayed high. When they eventually went back to the apartment, Alec claims that he wasn't even sure that Angel's body would still be there. But of course, it was. Freeze and Alec were smacked in the face with what they had done off their faces on smack. Not only was Angel very much still in the bath, he was decomposing. Freeze and Alec knew that they couldn't leave Angel where he was. Something had to be done. But it couldn't be done sober. Alec told Freeze that if he could get hold of ten bags of heroin, Alec would do the dismembering. Freeze took himself off to Macy's, of all places, and bought some brand new kitchen knives.

Then he picked up the heroin he had promised, and Alec went to work. He cut off the legs of Angel's rotting corpse, as Freeze sprayed a constant cloud of Calvin Klein eternity, the irony of which only occurred to both of them much later on. The legs and the rest of the body were bundled into a cardboard box and covered in baking soda again. According to some club kids, that box stayed in the living room for days before it disappeared. It's so difficult to know because there's so many like anecdotal evidence stories of like, oh, I was, I did a wee in that bathroom and I had no idea there was a dead body in the bath. And then there's other people like, oh, I played cards on top of that cardboard box.

Like, do we know any of those things? No, we do not. But there's a lot of rumors and legends around this cardboard box. And I'm also like baking soda. Yeah, all right. Like a little tub of baking soda will keep your fridge from getting too like weird and smelly. But can you just like chuck enough baking soda to mask the smell of a rotting corpse that you're keeping in a cardboard box in your house? That doesn't seem likely. I would venture probably not. Unless everyone

who comes to your house is fucking off their tits on heroin, maybe. Astro Earl, friend of Alec and club kid extraordinaire, now hairdresser, I believe, claimed that as they all sat in the living room, as they often did, Alec kept asking him who he thought was missing while he was wearing Angel's signature boots. And there are a lot of stories like Astro Earl's of Alec being super flippant and like exacerbating the situation and talking about Angel and his death all the time and saying how he definitely murdered him and he's chopped up and thrown in the Hudson. However, his mum says that he was leaving her long rambling answer phone messages during this time,

hysterically crying and repeating the words, I committed a murder and tiny little pieces over and over again. When Alec and Freeze decided it was time to get rid of the body completely, they carried the cardboard box out onto the street and hailed a cab. I'm sorry, like, dead rotting bodies are wet. How is this cardboard box holding together? I am baffled. It must have been made of very stern stuff. This has given me a real window into heroin logic. They're just like, oh yeah, put it in a box, put it in a car, get rid of it. It'll be fine.

Yeah, let's just go. Get a cab. And they got this cab to drive to the river. And this taxi driver went against any and every New York stereotype and helped Freeze and Alec chuck the putrid box into the Hudson. That's helpful. There's a corpse in this box. They get it in a taxi and then they ask the taxi driver to help them. Yeah. And I think the taxi driver's like, what is in here? And they just make something up. They're like, oh, just some stuff we want to get rid of. And he's like, okay, nothing suspicious about that. In the river it goes. Or based on what Michael Alec tells everybody all the time, it's a dead body of a person I killed

covered in baking soda. Why? No reason. Don't worry. Lift with your back. No, lift with your legs. Don't lift with your back. Everyone lift with their backs. Murder number two, the taxi driver just snapped in half. And then after the river chucking fun has happened, the taxi driver just drives them back to their apartment. This, of course, was a huge mistake. It meant that the taxi driver knew exactly where they lived and that information would make it back to the police in no time. Alex skipped town with his friend Gitsy, who died in 1998 of a heroin overdose in Astro Earl's apartment.

Alec and Gitsy drove all the way to Denver and for those of you who may not know, like I didn't, that is a 1,777 mile journey and it took about five weeks. Geertsen and Alec made several stops along the way, of course, as you would on such a long journey, including to Alec's mum and to someone called Screaming Rachel. That's screaming without the G. Screaming Rachel. She's a character. I think it's a reference to Screaming Jay Hawkins. I don't really know. She is a strange beast, Screamin' Rachel. So according to Rachel, Alec was very open about having murdered, dismembered and disposed of Angel.

And that apparently inspired her to write a song called Freedom Slash Murder in Clubland, which is very much something it's so weird yeah it's so weird it's just her just like rolling around on a table it's so bizarre yeah this quote unquote music video is freely available on the internet although we wouldn't really recommend it, the hook is Rachel saying Michael wears Angel over and over again. But if you think that's weird, what's possibly even weirder is that people at this point were still very keen to associate with Michael Alec even though they knew he was a murderer. Word on the street was that a lot of people wanted Angel dead. He was not a popular guy. An air of premeditation hung in the air. But Alec wasn't going to be stopped. Revived by his heroin and ketamine-fuelled road trip, Michael Alec returned to New York and stayed at the infamous Chelsea Hotel, which in the way that the Cecil Hotel documentary should

have been, I think a history of the Chelsea Hotel would make an equally interesting episode. So maybe I'll put that on the Patreon list. Alec was all over the press by the time he got back to New York because of the murder rumours. Weirdly bolstered by this new surge in infamy, he decided to host another club night and this one was called Honey Trap. He advertised it by leaving pots of honey with his name on all over the city, which when you're wanted by police, seems like a dumb thing to do. There are so many things that he does that seem like incredibly dumb things to do.

I don't know where to start. Is this even the pinnacle of leaving honey pots around everywhere? I don't know. I don't know. The Honey Trap flops and Alec left town again. This time he went to a hotel in New Jersey with his then boyfriend

and essentially locked himself down. I think he knew that it was over. The police had no trouble finding him and Alec was arrested. Freeze was already in custody and the two killers spoke to each other through the cell walls, wondering where it all went wrong. That's the story that Alec tells anyway. So surely Alec and Freeze were about to be charged with murder, body disposal, dismemberment and maybe some hefty drug charges on top. But as often happens when

important people with a lot of money are involved, it wasn't going to be that simple. Remember Peter Eyepatch Gation, owner of Limelight Tunnel and a bunch of other clubs, and until very recently in our story, Alec's employer? Well, he was in big trouble. Big drug charge trouble. The drugs weren't just in his clubs by chance. It was all part of the operation. It's impossible to stop drugs getting into nightclubs completely, of course, but Gation had dealers on his payroll.

And Michael Alec was the prosecution's star witness. A star witness for the DEA is not so shiny when they have been charged with murder themselves. This investigation into Peter Gation led to the close of all of his clubs and the death of the New York nightlife scene. Hair-dye aficionado and old England documentary fan Rudy Giuliani was now the mayor of New York, and his quality-of-life campaign turned Manhattan from a city with no cappuccinos but plenty of S&M clubs into what it is today. There was a crackdown on IDing to get into clubs. Times Square was transformed from a sex work arena into a tourist trap.

Nightclubs were the most savaged of victims. Giuliani dug out an ancient bit of legislation called the Cabaret Law, which stated that no more than three people could be dancing inside an establishment if the business did not have a cabaret license. And cabaret licenses are expensive and very difficult to come by. Venues without cabaret licenses will find $1,000 per night, forcing many to close their doors for good. The violent crime in New York also dropped by 56%.

But many think that New York City lost something that never returned. People were no longer selected for the scene because they were creative. Anyone who could buy a bottle could get into any bar. And people sat because dancing was essentially illegal. Drugs are still there, of course, but they're procured and taken by hedge fund owners and models. So no one minds that very much. It's funny, isn't it? When rich people do drugs, it's fine. But when poor people do, it's a big problem. I obviously hadn't spent spent an enormous amount of time in New York and I didn't think about it while I was there most recently I didn't see anyone dancing in Manhattan I saw bars where you could sit down yeah I don't know if this is just like I have been lucky enough to go to New York quite a few times and been lucky

enough to stay in almost all of the neighborhoods and I definitely felt like in Queens and when we went out in Harlem and we went out down in different areas, off my face dancing. Don't know if this is still the rule, but yes, I've definitely danced a dance in New York a time or two. And there was an additional complication that came with the murder charges against Freeze and Michael Alec. It was revealed during the investigation that Alec against Freeze and Michael Alig. It was revealed during the investigation that Alig, Freeze and Angel were not the only people in the apartment the day Alig died.

Daniel Orster, son of extremely successful author and Nobel candidate Paul Orster, was also there. And his story was very different from that of both Freeze and Alec. He was convinced that they had always meant to kill Angel and that the murder had been discussed at length prior to Angel's arrival at the apartment. The problem was that Daniel Orster had also stolen from Angel and he couldn't decide on one clear story, so his testimony was not included.

Even the prosecution thought that it would confuse the jury. This, the Gation case and the fact that Alec's own blood was found at the scene which supported the self-defence theory meant that both Alec and Freeze were offered a plea deal 20 years in exchange for manslaughter in the first degree. And manslaughter in the first degree basically means you intended to really hurt someone but you didn't intend to kill them. Alec and Freeze took their plea deals and went to prison. Alec did testify against Peter Gation in the end, but later he recanted,

and on the 11th of February 1998, Peter Gation was acquitted of everything. Freeze was released from prison after 10 years of his sentence. Alec misbehaved a lot more, so ended up doing more time. Alec's misbehaving was centred, of course, around drugs. He would buy other people's methadone from them that they had stored in their mouths, because of course he couldn't afford heroin in prison. Saliva methadone was his only option. Methadone is a liquid also. It's not a pill. It's a liquid.

Oh, wow. What? Yeah, so he's literally sucking methadone out of other people's mouths. That's how desperate he is. Alec did five years in solitary confinement, and when he was allowed to join the general population, he gave a lot of interviews to journalists. His fame had diminished, but it had never completely disappeared.

And the interesting thing about Michael Alec, if you watch him, is that he's a very different person in every interview. Sometimes he's showing off about how much sex he has in prison. Sometimes he's remorseful. Sometimes he's hysterically sobbing. Sometimes he's worried about finding a partner when he's released. The most interesting series of interviews were published on a blog called Fabulous But True Tales from Inside the Big House, starting in August 2004, and they were written by a former club kid, World of Wonder presenter, frenemy of Alec, and famous for put the transcript of their conversation on the blog. This blog was as salacious as it was short-lived. Alec started to refuse James St. James's calls,

claiming that he was taking liberties with his story. He didn't want people to think he was having a grand old time or that I'm trying to exploit my situation like a sociopath. James St. James is very interesting. I am a big fan of James St. James's YouTube content and have been for some time, but now I feel weird about it and I'm going to explain why. Sociopath is a word that comes up an awful lot when Michael Alec is around. One of the most chilling accounts from those who knew him was that Alec never listened to music, only a loop of the messages on his answering machine. to music, only a loop of the messages on his answering machine. I think that's a sign of some serious problems, I think, if you're just listening to answer machine messages. Oh yeah. I mean, it's not a sign that everything's fucking

like A-OK, probably. Or maybe just a precursor to podcasts. Alec himself denies this sociopathy diagnosis, instead favouring one of histrionic personality disorder histrionic personality disorder like sociopathy is a personality disorder that belongs to cluster B of personality disorders they're also known as the dramatic emotional and erratic personality disorders borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder also belong to this group according to the DSM people with histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder also belong to this group.

According to the DSM, people with histrionic personality disorder have intense, unstable emotions and distorted images of themselves. They depend entirely on the approval of others and have little to no sense of self-worth. They need to be noticed all the time. People with HPD often have great social skills that they tend to use to plonk themselves in the centre of attention. They may dress provocatively, shift emotions rapidly and be overly concerned with physical appearance. They can be easily influenced by other people, quick to be bored and make rash decisions. That does sound like a pretty spot-on description of Michael Alec. And for me, it explains why he's so different in every interview he's ever done. He's trying to give the interviewer what he thinks that they want. It's similar to sociopathy, like when you're talking about psychopathy and sociopathy and like not being able to feel the

emotions yourself. So you just mirror what is given to you. I can see why people would sort of put those in the same box, but I don't think he's a sociopath. I do genuinely think that he has histrionic personality disorder and he's just desperately trying to please the person that's in front of him. And a sociopath wouldn't care what you want, I think is the key difference. That's true. And that is why, you know, although a lot of personality disorders have overlapping symptoms, there are distinct differences as to the reason why they've been split up into separate disorders and separate diagnoses. So Alec was constantly performing. So were also a lot of the other club kids. James St. James included. St. James even wrote a book about the murder of Angel called Disco

Bloodbath, which eventually became the film Party Monster. James St. James has done very well out of his association with Michael Alec. Although he never actually visited him in prison, he was one of the first to welcome Alec back to New York City when he was released in May 2014. He was met by a team of friends and fans, including Astro Earl. And there is footage of his release and Alec looks scared and small. He had been in prison for a long time. He'd never used the internet when he got out in 2014. He didn't even know how to text.

A newly sober and about to head straight back into the belly of what was now a very sanitized beast. His friend and publicist helped him tweet for the very first time on his way back into the city. It read, I look just adorable in my mess hall whites and hairnets. Where are the paparazzi when you really need them? Hashtag say cheese.

Oh my God, what a fucking mindfuck of a weird thing to do to tweet for the first time when you've been in prison all that time and you come out in 2014. Yeah, obviously awkward men, we know, kryptonite for me. But it makes me feel so sad. Like he's got all of these people around him. They get like a minivan to meet him when he's released from prison. They're all so excited to see him. And he's been in solitary confinement for five years of a 17 year term. He doesn't know what the fuck to do with himself. And they're like thrusting an iPhone into his hands and they're like tweet

something now. It'll be really funny. He is giving them what he thinks that they want from him, but also they're being very explicit about what they want from him. They're like, oh my God, Michael, be outrageous again. And Alec went back to the life he knew, but without the nightclubs, because the terms of his parole meant that he had to be indoors by 9pm. But he kept being creative. And you can go and look at excerpts from his book on his very confusing website. And he had grand designs for film production, opening a restaurant. He did endless interviews with the New York Times, Vanity Fair, People, Rolling Stone, and the Daily Beast. In the documentary, The Good One, Glory Days, you can see Michael Alig and James St. James traipsing through New York City, making plans and visiting old friends.

And this is one of the things I feel weird about James St. James. I think he's New York City, making plans and visiting old friends. And this is one of the things I feel weird about James St. James. I think he's a very talented, interesting, creative person, but he never once went to go and visit Alec in prison. He wrote a book about the crime, and then as soon as Alec gets out of prison, he's like, oh my God, we are best friends. But also, what the fuck do I know? I'm sure James St. James is great. Actually, in the documentary, when James St. James is recognized by a passerby, Alex says, if it wasn't for me, he wouldn't be anybody. And that's something else he says, not quite often, but it's something that comes up in interviews with him, of which there are loads and loads and loads and loads. So you can go and read them.

He sort of says stuff like the club kids that like came out of it successful were the ones who either never did drugs in the first place or who cold turkey stopped. And I he counts James St James in that group of people along with RuPaul and Richie Rich and Amanda Lepore. It's not the only uncomfortable statement Alec makes. He tells a lot of poor taste jokes about throwing bodies into the Hudson and about Angel's murder specifically but again I think it's quite clear that he's matching James St James's energy and then misguidedly overstepping the mark like a child trying to tell a joke like he's just trying to please the room and sometimes taking it too far I think which obviously doesn't excuse anything he's done it just like it's an interesting thing

to watch I think no I think that's the thing we have to remember that he did kill Angel and chop him up and dump him in the Hudson and then go to prison for it and be convicted but it's the analysis of why he keeps saying these things in the way that he says them. And Alec's idea for a book, restaurant or film never came to pass. He just about managed to start a YouTube channel called The Pew with his friend Ernie Glam. I think Ernie Glam's the one that took him in as well when he got out of prison. No one talks about Angel, which is another uncomfortable thing about this whole situation. There is so little information out there about who Angel was,

which is bizarre considering that there's a book, two famous documentaries and a feature film about this case. And there's just not that much out there on the victim at all. And I did try and look at James St. James's book, Disco Bloodbath, but it is currently £178 on Amazon and I'm just not going to pay that. I think it must be out of print or something. Fame is a powerful thing and so is addiction. Michael Alec died of a heroin overdose. His body was discovered on Christmas Day 2020. He was 54 years old. Ernie Glam eulogised him on their shared YouTube channel, which if you think you can hack it, I would recommend watching because it's really heartbreaking. I'm quite a big fan of

Ernie Glam. Like, I think he's very, like, straight to the point. He's like, you know, Michael Alec had a difficult life and he did horrible things and he was in a lot of pain at the end, so I'm glad that he's dead, basically, because he's not in pain anymore. A lot of people are as not as sympathetic towards Michael Alec as my Norway-loving, restorative, justice-peddling ass. Michael Musto, for example, is particularly adamant that Alec not only murdered Angel Melendez, but also the New York City nightlife. And he says that because Angel's murder was used by Rudy Giuliani and his followers as a told-you-so parable of what can happen when young people are allowed to have too much fun. There are so many corners of this story that are so fuzzy that premeditation of the crime is difficult to pin down if it even exists. Alec claims that he told all of his friends that he had killed Angel because he felt so guilty he couldn't lie to them, which I don't

believe for a second. Again, I think it's this like recurring behavior of just wanting to please everyone around him. Yeah, it's hard to know because, you know, people like Jimmy Savile did the same thing, but I don't think he was doing it to please people. He was doing it to see how far he could push the boundaries of his behavior. And it kind of reinforced the power that he had in that nobody would touch him. It confirmed and validated for him that he was untouchable. And I think people like Jimmy Savile got off on the power of that.

With Alec, I don't know. I don't know. I feel like it's a very complicated case and he's a very complicated individual. It might have been a manipulative attempt to implicate everyone around him so they would be too scared to go to the police and like rat him out because they would be aiding and abetting essentially or maybe it was something else entirely i don't know don't do heroin i think is the takeaway from this particular episode yes please take that away if nothing else thank you guys for

listening and if you want to take something else away from your red-handed experience head on over and get some merch because it's there and it's going to be going away in probably just under a month's time so you've got a month to get your hands on this merch and also spooky bitch will also be disappearing at that point and it won't be back until halloween so don't tell us that we didn't tell you. Also, you might want to think about coming over and becoming a patron of Red Handed. Like Hannah said, we are branching out into the visual world and more and more videos over there, which is very exciting. We're also doing loads more interviews now. We've got In The News every single month. We've got Under The Duvet every week. Bonus episode every month. There's just content,

content, content. So go and check that out. and here are some lovely people who we need to say thank you to for becoming patrons so thank you very much emily barnett meg stacy natasha harford han p katherine romport samantha lawless candy p hayley dunn lizzie rhodes janelle ammonette elizabeth hartman Thank you. Daniel and Samantha, Rachel Coulthard, Rhonda Firth, Frith, Meenal, Angel or Angel, Kaglar, Mistress K, Very Good Well Done, Elsa Cardona, Katie Gary, Hannah Lewis, Brandy Carson, Ashley Canetto, Shannon Bellamy, Amanda Rosenberg, Thomas Juniper, Renee Locke, Mary-Kate, Candessa Crenshaw, Dakota Davis, Cassandra Dwarkowski, Twarczak, I don't know. Tag, I'll save you.

Mandy Mook, Katie Brotherton, Hedy, Brittany Savage, Karsk Redner, Krista Rhodes, Megan Cockrell, Elenia, Alicia Carroll, Kirstie, Dale Kruger IV, Leslie Harris, Rookie 2004, Brittany Campbell, Jacqueline Julin, James Allen Hill, Megan Floyd, Alexandra Riordan, Rachel Calvert, Abby Livesley, Orthabella Jewell, Caroline, Dawn Mitchell-Grover, Natalie, Sam Unstead, Rebecca Ward, Selena Liao, Amber Hughes, Carissa Allen, Janie Martin, Zoe Elizabeth, Beth Stanners, Claire Miller, Amy McClellan, Carbon Winter Pendragon, Stephanie Naira kaylee flynn jeremiah soranti woohoo laura d shani kwa brown marta anna amy lay lee maybe laura beth farrow amy culbert alice casagrande moretti julie donaghy erin rachel o''Hara Lucy Machikova Pagan

Castledine Jessica Reese Nora Michelle Penner Kira Wessinger

Lauren Kapitz I feel like I've aged about seven years Carrie A. Colston Ariel Arrow I'm trying to jump back in but I can't see where Oh

Tara Carvel Sabrina I'll tag back in Okay Stacey John Nesson. People are like, fuck's sake.

Flo Wheeler, Michelle Batson, Ashley Taylor, Javante Thompson, Catherine Villataro, Sarah Garland, Mochi Mochi, Kim Heatley, Spica Dool, Jonina Nyungo, I'm sorry, Ashton, Sophie, Martina Maciniak, Shreena J, Gwen Weir, Tara Docherty, Sassy Merrifield, Casey Merrifield. Maya Risley. Katie Grebasland. Cassandra Lyne. Liz Shemwell. Bethany Steer. Pimmin. Pimmin. Oh, that's Pramina. Natalie Vagard-Boutossiou, Emma Hunter, Holly Rosaman, Amanda Baxter, Jess Gormeshall, Tom Goodacre, Erin Muir, Nina Aster-Lewis and Shabana Mohammed. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. And we'll see you next time for something else entirely. Absolutely. Goodbye.

Bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA

and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy

Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.