Party Monster was written by James St. James about a murder in New York.
During the late 1980’s, early 90’s, it was the New York club scene making headlines. Ecstasy had just been introduced and heroine, special K, and cocaine were considered the club drugs of the day. James St. James and Michael Alig began a short lived era with a population known as the Club Kids.
The Club Kids were into these giant raves that took place in different places. Most were the clubs of New York, but once Michael Alig stepped on the scene, he was having raves in McDonalds, semi-trucks, and other random areas of New York. The Club Kids lived life in the open, not hiding the fact that they did illegal drugs, which were openly admitted to on talk shows such as Joan Rivers and Geraldo (a Joan Rivers episode can be seen on youtube.com by just typing Alig’s name in the search box). They wore creatively outlandish constumes to party in. There were sexual preferences, but many of Alig’s small clan were gay save for the girls, who were mostly bisexual to fit in.
Michael Alig had a hand in making many people popular on the club scene. Peter Gatien’s club, the Limelight, was near bankruptcy when Alig made money for him. Gatien, in return, paid Alig’s bills and sent on lavish vacations to recruit more Club Kids and bring them to New York. This was Alig’s job: to be popular and to promote parties. He was paid very well and saved all of it as pocket cash to feed his neverending habit of drugs.
Not only did Alig promote people as hip new Club Kids, he also promoted a few DJ’s and Drug dealers known as Superstars in his world. Alig felt as if he was owed something if he made people popular. Drug dealers like Freeze and Angel Melendez were Alig’s most memorable, but I’ll get to that in a sec. So, we have Freeze and Angel who are Superstar drug dealers thanks to Alig and in return, Alig wants all the free drugs he can have. It goes without saying that the dealers want their money and Alig racked up quite a debt in drugs. Freeze didn’t seem to mind or he hid it well. Alig made him popular and he was making money to make up for Alig’s lack there of. It was Angel who got in the way. It was Angel who stood up to Alig, It was Angel that got so wrapped up in Alig’s world, that he was left behind.
This world that Michael Alig lived in was a non-stop party. He and his friends (along with our author, who witnessed these events first hand being a Club Kid himself) went on drug binges that lasted weeks even months. And the money earned and drugs bought were quickly dwindled away. As the book continues on, we can see James and Alig begin to fall. It was downward spiral for them and all of their friends. As James so eloquently states in his book “people dropped like flies around us; it was just the way things were.” The party never stopped when someone died, they were just replaced by more interesting, younger Club Kids.
Alig’s world quickly spun out of control and came to a sudden stop when a legless torso floated up on the shore of the Hudson. The body was identified as Angel Melendez, who was reported missing a few weeks later. Although the stories have been retold and the facts are scewed, we do know what forensics found. Chemicals were found in the body typical to that of drain cleaner and the victim was hit over the head with a hammer more than once.
Freeze and Alig both confessed to the murder of Angel Melendez. Freeze claims he hit Angel with the hammer 3 times because Angel was fighting with Alig. Although, it’s unsure if he was choking Alig, restraining him, or not even touching him at all. The autopsy reported that Angel was killed by exficiation, but Alig does not remember if he choked him or used a pillow for the suffocation. Since, Angel was already dead, it is uncertain why they even used the drain cleaner at this point, but they did. The route used is uncertain whether it was poured down the throat or injected right into the vein changes with whomever you ask.
The reason these tidbits are unclear are because one thing is: both Alig and Freeze did about 10 bags of heroine along with some cocaine throughout the murder. Coming back to reality, Freeze and Alig duct taped Angel’s mouth closed and put him in the bath tub. It wasn’t until a week later that the smell drove them to decide to get rid of the body. Freeze goes down to Macy’s and buys 2 chef knives and a cleaver; then down to the basement of Alig’s apartment complex for a large box. Alig removes both of Angel’s legs, wraps them separately in trash bags and puts them into a duffel bag. Then into the box goes the rest of Angel, wrapped in a blanket, with some baking soda thrown in for the smell. The box is duct taped closed and Freeze and Alig take the box and duffel bags down the elevator, into a taxi, and throw them in the Hudson. This happened in March of 1996.
The flaw in their plan is that the box was not heavy enough to sink and it floated around the river until it washed up on shore. Due to an error with the police station and morgue, Alig and Freeze weren’t arrested until December (9 months later). It is claimed that Angel remained unidentified in the morgue during that time.
These events, as I have recalled for you, are all true. There is nothing fictious about this book and is in fact a very good book to read. There is nothing that can be made up to even match the horrors of real life. Both Freeze and Michael Alig confessed to the crime (Freeze’s confession can be found at the end of James’s book, Party Monster, along with his commentary and the actual transcript in Freeze’s handwriting can be found on the internet.) were sentenced to 10 to 20 years imprisonment for manslaughter. Alig is up for parole this year, but his sentence won’t officially be over until 2016.
If you wish to learn more about Michael Alig and the Club Kids, there was a documentary made in 1999 called Party Monster: The Shockumentary. I currently have it saved to my Blockbuster queue and once I watch there will another review for it as well. Party Monster is a movie based on the book starring Seth Green as James St. James and Macaulay Culkin as Michael Alig, along with many other familar faces. It doesn’t paint an exact picture of the book or the events, but I invite everyone to watch it. It’s close enough to get the picture.
