Michael Alig is a complex character. He’s the charismatic founder of the Club Kids, a group of young, flamboyant New York City underground dance club personalities in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They wore outrageous costumes and were on the scene to be seen, setting an artistic standard for the fashion-conscious youth culture.  But they were also part of the drug culture, with many of the Club Kids becoming addicted. The party-hardy heavy drug use caused a spiral in Alig’s life. 

In 1996, he and roommate Robert "Freeze" Riggs killed a third roommate, drug dealer Andre "Angel" Melendez during an argument over drugs. Alig and Riggs brutally murdered Melendez with a hammer. They poured drain cleaner down his throat and kept the lifeless body of their roommate in their apartment for days before finally getting butcher knives to dismember him, disposing of the body in separate locations in the river. But they were eventually caught, partly due to Alig’s bragging about it openly. 

He spent 17 years behind bars. Now a free man and back in New York, we catch up with Alig as he tries to rebuild his life. 

In this first part of a two-show series, Michael discusses the notoriety he’s achieved, both as the founder of the Club Kids and also his incarceration for murder, plus he delves into his life behind bars and his attempts to creatively turn his life around.

Host: Karla Stephens Tolstoy 

Co-Producer: Jessica de Bruyn

Production Editor & Sound: Peter Anthony Holder

Narrator: Peter Anthony Holder

Music: Evil I Know by Ascot Royals www.slaightmusic.com/music-we-dig#!ascot-royals

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