In the 1980s and ’90s, New York City was home to a pulsing underground nightlife scene, particularly in the Chelsea and Meatpacking District neighborhoods of Manhattan.
At the center of it was “a group of misfits known as the ‘Club Kids,’” according to Robert K. Boyce, a former New York City Police Department chief of detectives, who now hosts Oxygen‘s New York Homicide.
“With their wild costumes and even wilder antics, they redefined the New York club scene,” Boyce added in the true crime show’s “Killer Club Kids” episode.
Andre “Angel” Melendez, 25, was among the denizens of this group. In March of 1996, he mysteriously vanished. Four weeks later, his dismembered body was found, though it wouldn’t be identified for months. The grisly homicide highlighted the dark side of the downtown party world.
Who was Andre “Angel” Melendez?
When Melendez was eight, he and his family moved from Colombia to New Jersey seeking a better life. “He was very shy, but when he got older, he moved to New York City and really became enamored of the nightlife of New York,” journalist Michael Musto, who wrote for The Village Voice at the time of Melendez’s disappearance, told New York Homicide.
Melendez, who was known for his flamboyant costumes and infectious laugh, struggled to find work. To earn money, said Boyce, he sold drugs like ecstasy at The Limelight, a Manhattan club set in a former church.
“He actually wanted to get out of dealing drugs,” singer-songwriter and Club Kid “Screamin’ Rachel” Cain told New York Homicide.
Angel Melendez goes missing
On April 3, two weeks after Melendez disappeared, his brother Johnny Melendez reported him missing to police. No progress was made by police, who were focused on other cases.
“If the victim is a drug dealer, that goes to the bottom of the pile,” said New York criminal attorney Gerald McMahon.
So, Johnny and his brother’s friends stepped up, plastering the city with posters. “You saw them everywhere you went,” Musto said.
At the same time, a friend recalled seeing Melendez being dragged out of The Limelight by security shortly before he went missing. Club owner Peter Gatien “didn’t want him around anymore,” Cain said.
“It was common knowledge that huge amounts of drugs are being sold and used there,” McMahon said.
According to Richard Johnson, who at the time, edited the New York Post’s “Page Six” column, “The rumors were that Gatien realized that he had to, like, clean things up, or else he was going to be shut down.”
Although red flags were raised about Melendez’s disappearance, without a body or signs of foul play, the NYPD had little to investigate. Cain urged Johnny to “keep going to the press … and knocking on doors.”
Michael Alig emerges in the case
As days and weeks passed, Michael Alig, a prominent party and event promoter who collaborated with Gatien, emerged as a figure in the case.
“Michael was our father of nightlife,” said Club Kid Blue Michael. Alig’s events were known to have a very dark side. One of them revolved around a gory blood feast.
“I started hearing chatter,” said Blue Micheal. “People were saying, like, ‘He said he killed him.’ ‘I killed Angel’ were the words that came out of his mouth. He would tell people that, like a joke.”
Remains wash up on Staten Island beach
On April 12, kids playing on Oakwood Beach in Staten Island came across a duct-taped cardboard box that had washed ashore. They found part of a butchered body inside it.
“When I opened up the box, it was just the torso, no legs,” said Tom Comis, then a detective with the NYPD’s 122nd precinct. “It was very gory.”
The body was sent to the medical examiner, whose report revealed that the male victim had three hammer-shaped wounds in his head.
There was also “a large quantity of sodium hydroxide lye, basically, Drano, in the body,” said Billy McNeely, then an NYPD detective in the 10th precinct. “Maybe they were looking to speed up the decomposition process.”
The passage of time had worked against detectives. “The body was so badly decomposed, they weren’t able to make a successful identification,” McNeely told New York Homicide. “Missing person databases didn’t match up.”
Newspaper column’s blind item advances Angel Melendez case
As rumors persisted about Alig’s involvement in Melendez’s disappearance, Cain arranged a phone conversation between him and Johnny Melendez. During the call, she said, Alig “acted like, ‘I don’t have any idea of what happened to your brother.’”
In April of 1996, Musto got a call from one of Alig’s closest cohorts, informing him that the buzz was that Alig and Club Kid Robert Riggs, who was known as “Freeze,” killed Angel.
“After that, I got another phone call from another Club Kid very close to Michael, telling me the details of what people were saying really happened,” said Musto. “I had to go with it as a blind item.”
In The Village Voice on April 26, 1996, Musto’s veiled account of a “Mr. Mess” fighting with “Mr. Dealer” ran. The column also stated that a “Mr. Mess 2” saw this, and that the dealer was finished off with a hammer, dosed with Drano, chopped up, and tossed into the Hudson.
At the Page Six column at the New York Post, Johnson read Musto’s account and scoped out more details. “I wrote up a story, basically taking Michael Musto’s blind item and putting some names to it,” said Johnson.
The Page Six exposure shone a bright spotlight on what had been rumors. Detective Comis saw the story and the mention of the hammer reminded him of the body found on the Staten Island beach.
Through dental records, the dismembered man was eventually determined to be Melendez. “Now we had a body. When you have a body, you have a case,” said Comis. “We had to establish probable cause.”
Building a case against Michael Alig
Through inside club sources, detectives learned that Alig “consumed drugs beyond belief” and that his supplier was Melendez, whom he owed money to, said Comis. “Angel came to Michael Alig’s apartment, and he was demanding his money,” Comis explained.
At that point, the case took a shocking twist. Detectives found out that federal authorities were using Alig as a possible informant against club owner Gatien.
“The DEA [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration] was after Gatien because they were under the impression that drugs were being sold in his club with his knowledge … and that he was profiting,” said Comis.
Two weeks into Comis’ investigation, The Limelight was raided and Gatien was arrested at his home. Charges included conspiracy to distribute drugs.
While the Feds were focused on Gatien, Comis’ investigation had led to sufficient probable cause to charge Alig and Riggs in Melendez’s murder.
On December 5, Alig and Riggs were arrested. Riggs broke down and confessed everything, said McNeely.
What happened to Andre “Angel” Melendez?
Melendez did confront Alig about owed drug money, Riggs said, and demanded to be paid. A fight ensued and Riggs, who was in the next room, overheard. Melendez was hit with a hammer three times.
In a drug-fueled haze, Alig and Riggs poured Drano down Melendez’s throat and taped his mouth and nose shut. They eventually cut up the body, boxed it up and then tossed it in the Hudson River.
Alig and Riggs each pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. They were sentenced to 10 to 20 years. Riggs was paroled in 2010. Alig was released in 2014 and died of a drug overdose six years later.
The federal drug conspiracy case against Gatien crumbled. Several months later, Gatien was charged with tax evasion. He pled guilty and was deported to Canada.
To learn more about the case, watch the “Killer Club Kids” episode of New York Homicide, which airs new episodes on Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen.
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