Michael Alig
photo via Shefik

Michael Alig dead at 54

Michael Alig has passed away at the age of 54, New York Daily News reports. He was found dead by medics at his Washington Heights apartment, where his boyfriend told police he had been using heroin. Officials told the Daily News Alig had lost consciousness around 3 AM, and a heroin overdose is suspected as his cause of death.

Alig rose to infamy as “King of the Club Kids” while throwing parties at NYC clubs like The Limelight, Club USA, The Palladium, and Tunnel in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He then served nearly 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to the murder and dismemberment of Andre “Angel” Melendez in 1996. He was released in 2014.

Fellow club kid James St. James chronicled Alig’s story in a 1999 memoir, Disco Bloodbath: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland, which was adapted into a 2003 film, Party Monster, starring Macaulay Culkin as Alig. A 2018 documentary, Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig, examines the story, as well.