Club Kid don Michael Alig is reportedly being released from prison on May 5. He has been serving his sentence, for killing fellow Club Kid personality and drug dealer Andre “Angel” Melendez with Robert Riggs, since 1996.
When Melendez confronted Alig and Riggs about a drug debt things quickly escalated, becoming violent and ending with Melendez’s head smashed in by a hammer, his mouth duct-taped shut and Alig injecting him with a fatal syringe of Drano.
Alig has been eligible for parole since 2006 but has been consistently denied, in part because of the portrayal of his life and crime by Macaulay Culkin in the cult film Party Monster.
He isn’t up for parole again until July 2014, but it is possible he could be released earlier for “good time.”
According to Steve Lewis, a friend of Alig’s, “A check of official prison site by [another friend] Victor Corona confirmed the news.”
“He will be staying with a close friend and has been recruited for creative jobs by many,” Lewis says. “His transition to the real world will be eased by a support group who, for the most part, have stuck by him for more than a decade and a half. Michael has never used a computer or cellphone, but he has remained keenly aware of the world we live in.”
Although unfamiliar with modern modes of communication, Alig has kept connected to the outside world via Twitter by having the editor of his forthcoming memoir tweet for him: “19 days of punishment left and then it’s upwards & onwards on the road to redemption,” was posted from his account on April 16.
So how will Alig deal with life outside the prison system after nearly two decades of incarceration? Check out my interview with James St James for some of his thoughts.
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