Michael Alig: The ‘Club Kid’ Ringleader Turned Killer
Much of our current day knowledge about the 1980s can be summed up in our modern affinity for nostalgia.
When speaking about the decade, we most commonly associate it with the style, often having featured bright colours and big hair, or conversely, featuring pale makeup and demure colours with an emphasis on trench coats, as could have been spotted on beloved New Wave ensembles such as The Human League or The Cure.
With these bands in mind, we can further deduce our association with the 1980s to the music, with the decade having seen the rise of the New Wave musical movement, along with a growing emphasis on synth-pop, in addition to already beloved genres such as rock, punk rock, pop, pop punk and more.
Finally, another strong association with life during the 1980s is the emphasis on clubbing and nightlife. One of the roleplayers within the late-1980s and 1990s nightclub scene was Michael Alig, who was one of the ringleaders of what was known as the ‘Club Kids’. The Club Kids consisted of various New York personalities who were known to frequent clubs dressed in unique attire and carrying a badge of inclusivity, having been extremely popular among individuals who were often queer-identifying.
Michael Alig (far left) and some fellow Club Kids, Photgraph: Steve eichner/getty images
Due to their unique style, and interesting lifestyles, they earned relative popularity within their social circles. They then grew even more popular by being featured on talk shows that would often make attempts to enforce public ridicule on them whilst questioning their seemingly outrageous lifestyles. However, despite these attempts at humiliation, the group still became a safe haven for individuals who typically stood out from the crowd and were looking toward finding a space that was inclusive of their individuality.
There was, however, a troubling side to the Club Kid scene which saw excessive drug use, and eventually saw one of its founders, Michael Alig, become donned as the ‘Club Kid Killer’. During his prime, Alig was said to have abused drugs, which would eventually become the alleged cause behind his death in 2020. Nonetheless, he was known to use heavily in his youth, buying all his drugs from one individual: fellow Club Kid member, Andre “Angel” Melendez.
James St. James and Michael Alig.
In March of 1996, Alig’s drug abuse seemed to have caught up with him financially, resulting in an alleged confrontation over drug money debt between him, his roommate, Robert D. “Freeze” Riggs, and Angel, their dealer. The confrontation ended tragically, with the two roommates having brutally murdered Angel and later, dismembered him.
Alig’s “drugs first” mentality was evident in that following the brutal murder, he and his roommate are said to have stored Angel’s body in their bathtub, and continued partying whilst heavily intoxicated on a combination of different drugs, for over a week before deciding to dismember and get rid of the body.
Andre "Angel" Hernandez
Both Alig and Freeze were convicted of the murder over a yearlater, during October of 1997, for which they both received 10-20 years in prison. Michael was then released in 2014 after serving 17 years in jail, and had still maintained a semblance of his public stardom, having jarringly retained a relative fanbase and a number of "friends" despite his criminal past. As previously mentioned, Alig would die 6 years later in 2020 due to an alleged heroin overdose. His alleged reckless behaviour as a youth was part of the reason why the Club Kids were consistently ridiculed by the public, and now his criminal background will forever be conflated with the movement, which never reached its full potential for inclusivity, with the group having dissipated around the mid-1990s.
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