'Club Kid Killer' Michael Alig Found Dead On Christmas Eve Of Suspected Drug Overdose

Michael Alig, the infamous New York "Club Kid Killer," was found dead from a suspected heroin overdose in his Manhattan home on Christmas Eve, officials said Friday.

Authorities said Alig, 54, was found lifeless by an ex-boyfriend in his Washington Heights apartment just before midnight. Alig's ex "was there and saw him unconscious and called 911," a police source told the New York Post.

Several zip-lock plastic bags apparently containing heroin as well as drug paraphernalia were discovered at his home, officials said.

Alig was known as one of the ringleaders of the "Club Kids," a group that staged the most sought-after night-club parties in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was imprisoned for 17 years after pleading guilty to manslaughter for murdering and dismembering his drug-dealer friend, Andre "Angel" Melendez, in 1996.

Alig and Melendez got into an argument, which ended up with the former's roommate Robert Riggs bashing Melendez with a hammer. Alig and Riggs then chopped up the corpse in the bathtub and dumped the body parts in the Hudson River, New York Daily News reported.

Prior to admitting that he killed Melendez, Alig went missing while the police investigated the gruesome murder. He eventually returned to New York and began throwing parties again despite rumors circulating that he was a murderer.

"I know you think I’m a murderer. Does that mean you won’t co-host my upcoming birthday party?" he told Village Voice columnist Michael Musto in October 1996.

The murder became the subject of the documentary "Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig" and the 2003 movie "Party Monster" starring Macaulay Culkin as Alig. Alig commented on Culkin's movie because it showed him injecting Drano into Melendez's dead body, which he denied.

"We did pour Drano in the bathtub along with baking soda, but we did not inject him with any Drano – nothing like that," he said in a 2014 interview. "You know, it makes a huge difference. There are people that I know that would not speak to me for the whole time I was in (prison) because they thought that was true."

Alig said Melendez wasn't a great friend, but he didn't intend to kill him. He claimed he was "in another reality" when the murder happened.

Alig served 17 years in prison. He pleaded guilty in 1996 and was released in 2014. He finished his parole in 2017 and soon made attempts to return to the city's nightlife culture.