Michael Alig, the notorious club kid who went to prison for murdering drug dealer Andre “Angel” Melendez in 1996, has big plans for his release.
“Do you think it would even be possible now to throw a party on the Williamsburg Bridge? I wonder if now you have to sneakily get a permit and not tell anybody, just make everybody think it’s illegal. Because I cannot get arrested,” Alig says in an interview with the Daily Beast, published Thursday.
“Have you ever been in the abandoned subway tunnels? I really want to go exploring those. I would love to do an art gallery down there,” he continues.
Alig’s been locked up for 17 years and his New York, filled with pop-up parties and outlandish club kids, may be long gone. But Alig — who was played by Macaulay Culkin in 2003’s “Party Monster”— has managed to maintain some sort of connection with the outside world via Twitter. (The account is run by Esther Haynes, the digital edition editor of Lucky magazine and editor of Alig’s book “Aligula.”)
“I heard people don’t even go to parties to go to parties anymore. They go to parties to tweet. It’s kind of disgusting,” he says.
Despite his write-off of social media use at parties, on April 13, he took to the status sharing service to reveal his release date.
“Only 22 days till the most monumental occasion in the history of Western civilization: That’s right, MY RELEASE DATE IS MAY 5th! #openbars.”
Though the one-time nightlife fixture’s plans also include hopefully volunteering at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, he also notes that he believes “in Karma.”
On March 17, 1996, Alig got into an argument with fellow club kid (and sometimes roommate) Melendez, resulting in another man, Robert “Freeze” Riggs, brutally beating Melendez to death with a hammer. Alig and Riggs proceeded to put Melendez’s body into a bathtub, pour Drano down his throat and duct-tape it shut.
In exchange for 10 bags of heroin from Riggs, Alig dismembered Melendez’s corpse using kitchen knives he’d bought at Macy’s. Riggs and Alig mercilessly put the remains into a duffle bag and box and dumped them into the Hudson River.
On April 12, 1996, Melendez’s legless torso washed ashore in Staten Island. A year later, Alig pled guilty to murder and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison.
“I am so afraid for my Karma right now because I’ve done such a terrible thing,” he says.