Michael Alig

Michael Alig born 29 April 1966

Michael Alig (born South Bend, Indiana) was a founding member of the notorious Club Kids, a group of young clubgoers led by Alig in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Alig came to New York and started out at as a busboy at Danceteria in 1983. A natural at throwing parties with little or no resources he soon began to rise in New York's party scene. Alig was mentored by socialite James St James and club owner Peter Gatien, while rising in popularity and prominence in the national underground club scene. Alig was also influential in the early promotion of Superstar DJ Keoki (whom he dated on and off). Other protegés included Gitzie, Jennytalia, Freeze, Richie Rich, Amanda Lepore and many other Club Kid personalities. The Club Kids' outrageousness resulted in their appearing on the news and the television talk show circuit.

Alig's most notorious parties were held at The Limelight, owned by Gatien and designed by Ari Bahat. The Limelight was closed by the police for supposed drug trafficking, but subsequently reopened several times during the 1990s.

He found a whole new level of notoriety in 1996 when, increasingly affected by substance abuse, Alig and his friend Robert 'Freeze' Riggs murdered their drug dealer Andre 'Angel' Melendez.

Melendez was murdered by Alig and Riggs after going to Alig's apartment to collect on a longstanding drug debt. After getting into a struggle with Alig he was hit on the head with a hammer, restrained with duct tape and either injected with or forced to drink Drano, a highly caustic drain cleaner. Later - after the body had begun to decompose in their apartment - they attempted to dismember it by cutting off Melendez's legs. They then put the body in a cardboard box and threw it into the Hudson River.

Alig 'jokingly' mentioned the murder while filming a documentary, presumably to shake off persistent rumours of the yet unproven incident. The media presumed it was a publicity stunt until Melendez's body washed ashore. In December 1996, Alig was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison for Melendez's murder. Alig was eligible for parole in November 2006, but was denied. He was again denied in September 2008, and was not eligible again until his conditional release date in March 2010. Due to him receiving another ticket for prescription drug use, Michael Alig could not be released in March, 2010. Alig was released on 5 May, 2014.

The events of Alig's years as a club promoter up to his arrest were portrayed in the 1998 documentary Party Monster, and recreated in a 2003 film of the same name starring Macaulay Culkin as Alig and Seth Green as St James. The events are also covered in St James's memoir, Disco Bloodbath.

Party Boy in a Cage

Joe Meek

Joe Meek born 5 April 1929 (d. 1967)

Joe Meek (born Robert George Meek in Newent, Gloucestershire) was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter acknowledged as one of the world's first and most imaginative independent producers. His most famous work was The Tornados' hit Telstar (1962), which became the first record by a British group to hit #1 in the US Hot 100. It also spent five weeks atop the UK singles chart, with Meek receiving an Ivor Novello Award for this production as the Best-Selling single of 1962.

Meek's innovative sonic concept album I Hear A New World (1960) is regarded as a watershed in modern music, although it was shelved for decades.

A stint in the Royal Air Force as a radar operator, spurred a life-long interest in electronics and outer space. From 1953 he worked for the Midlands Electricity Board. He used the resources of his company to develop his interest in electronics and music production, including acquiring a disc-cutter and producing his first record.

He left the electricity board to work as a sound engineer at Radio Luxembourg. He made his breakthrough with his work on Ivy Benson's Music for Lonely Lovers. His technical ingenuity was first shown on the Humphrey Lyttelton jazz single Bad Penny Blues (1956).

Despite not being able to play a musical instrument or write notation, Meek displayed a remarkable facility for producing successful commercial recordings. To compose, he was dependent on musicians, who would transcribe his (or: recordings of his) singing. He worked on 245 singles, of which 45 were major hits (top fifty or better).

He pioneered studio tools such as artificial multi-tracking on one- and two-track machines, close miking, direct input of bass guitars, the compressor, and effects like echo and reverb, as well as sampling. Unlike other producers, his search was for the 'right' sound rather than for a catchy musical tune, and throughout his brief career he single-mindedly followed his quest to create a unique 'sonic signature' for every record he produced.

At a time when studio engineers were still wearing white coats and assiduously trying to maintain clarity and fidelity, Meek was producing everything on the three floors of his 'home' studio and was never afraid to distort or manipulate the sound if it created the effect he was seeking. For John Leyton's hit song Johnny Remember Me he placed the violins on the stairs, the drummer almost in the bathroom, and the brass section on a different floor entirely.

Meek was one of the first producers to grasp and fully exploit the possibilities of the modern recording studio. His innovative techniques - physically separating instruments, treating instruments and voices with echo and reverb, processing the sound through his fabled home-made electronic devices, the combining of separately-recorded performances and segments into a painstakingly constructed composite recording - comprised a major breakthrough in sound production. Up to that time, the standard technique for pop, jazz and classical recordings alike was to record all the performers in one studio, playing together in real time, a legacy of the days before magnetic tape, when performances were literally cut live, directly onto disc.

Meek was obsessed with the occult and the idea of 'the other side'. He would set up tape machines in graveyards in a vain attempt to record voices from beyond the grave. In particular, he had an obsession with Buddy Holly and other dead rock and roll musicians.

His efforts were often hindered by his paranoia (Meek was convinced that Decca Records would put hidden microphones behind his wallpaper in order to steal his ideas), drug use and attacks of rage or depression. His then-illegal homosexuality put him under further pressure; he had been charged with 'importuning for immoral purposes' in 1963 and was consequently subjected to blackmail.

In January of 1967, police in Tattingstone, Suffolk, discovered a suitcase containing the mutilated body of Bernard Oliver, an alleged rent boy who had previously associated with Meek. According to some accounts, Joe became concerned that he would be involved in the investigation when the London police stated that they would be interviewing all known homosexuals in the city.

On February 3, 1967, the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly's death, Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then himself with a single-barrelled shotgun that he had confiscated from his protegé, former Tornados bassist and solo star Heinz Burt at his Holloway Road home/studio (Meek had flown into a rage and taken it from him when he informed Meek that he used it while on tour to shoot animals). Meek had kept it under his bed, along with the shells. As the gun had been registered to Burt, he was questioned intensively by police, before being eliminated from their enquiries.

A blue plaque has since been placed at the location of the studio to commemorate Meek's life and work.

Although he turned down opportunities to work with David Bowie, The Beatles and Rod Stewart, Meek did work with a host of other artists including Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Petula Clark, Shirley Bassey, Tommy Steele and many more.

Kenneth Halliwell

Kenneth Halliwell born 23 June 1926 (d. 9 August 1967)

Kenneth Halliwell was a British actor and writer. He was the mentor, partner, and the eventual murderer of playwright Joe Orton.

Halliwell was raised in a somewhat split household. In general, he was ignored by his father and mollycoddled by his mother. His mother's death, which occurred when he was a young boy, was a great negative turning point in his life. Seemingly alone (as the relationship with his father was poor), his life was uneventful until, at the age of 23, he found his father dead, having committed suicide by putting his head in a gas oven. He reportedly determined his father was dead, performed a few household chores, then called for an ambulance.

It was at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1951 that he met Orton, the man who was to make Halliwell's name almost as recognisable as his own. Both men were struggling actors without great talent who became struggling writers. However, their common interests led to the beginning of their relationship. Halliwell, in the early years, seems to have been something of a tutor to Orton, who had had a rather cursory education, and seriously helped to mold the writing style that would later be called "Ortonesque". The two men collaborated on several novels, including The Boy Hairdresser, which were not published until after their deaths. In 1962, along with Orton, he was imprisoned for six months for the theft and defacement of books in Islington Library.

Orton's emerging success as a writer, following their release from prison, put a distance between the two men which Halliwell found difficult to handle. His jealousy was fuelled by his own feelings of inadequacy and lack of attractiveness - he wore a toupee to conceal his baldness - compared to the confident, sexually-promiscuous Orton. Towards the end of his life, Halliwell was on regular courses of anti-depressants.

On August 9, 1967, Halliwell killed Orton by nine blows to his head with a hammer, and then overdosed on Nembutal sleeping pills shortly afterwards. Despite the violence of the murder, it was Halliwell who actually died first. The bodies of the two men were discovered late the following morning when a chauffeur came to the door of their Noel Road flat in Islington to collect Orton for a discussion with The Beatles over a screenplay he had written for them.

Halliwell's suicide note referred to the contents of Orton's diary as an explanation for his actions: "If you read his diary, all will be explained. KH PS: Especially the latter part." This is presumed to be a reference to Orton's description of his promiscuity; his diary contains numerous incidents of cottaging in public lavatories and other sexual relationships.

In Prick Up Your Ears, the 1987 film based on Orton's life, Halliwell was portrayed by Alfred Molina. A 2009 stage version of the story starred comedian Matt Lucas as Halliwell.

Richard Loeb

Richard Loeb born 11 June 1905 (d. 1936)

Richard A. Loeb [pictured left] and Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr., more commonly known as Leopold and Loeb, were two wealthy University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924, and received sentences of life in prison.

Their crime was notable in being largely motivated by an apparent need to prove the duo's belief that their high intellects made them capable of committing a perfect crime, and also for its role in the history of American thought on capital punishment.

Leopold, who was 19 at the time of the murder, and Loeb, 18, believed themselves to be Nietzschean supermen who could commit a 'perfect crime' (in this case a kidnapping and murder) without fear of being apprehended.

The friends were exceptionally intelligent: Leopold had already completed college and was attending law school at the University of Chicago. He spoke five languages and was an expert ornithologist, while Loeb was the youngest graduate in the history of the University of Michigan. Leopold planned to transfer to Harvard Law School in September, after taking a trip to Europe. Loeb planned to enter the University of Chicago Law School after taking some post graduate courses.

Both Leopold and Loeb lived in the wealthy Jewish neighborhood of Kenwood, Chicago. Loeb's father, Albert, began his career as a lawyer and became the Vice President of Sears and Roebuck. Besides owning an impressive mansion in Kenwood, two blocks away from the Leopold home, the Loeb family also had a summer estate in Charlevoix, Michigan.

The pair had worked themselves up to committing the crime for months, starting out with petty theft.

On Wednesday, May 21, 1924, they put their plot in motion. The pair lured Franks, a neighbour and distant relative of Loeb's, into a rented car. Loeb first struck Franks with a chisel. Leopold and Loeb then suffocated Franks. After concealing the body in a culvert under a railroad track outside of Chicago - the body was burned with acid to make identification more difficult — they did their best to make it seem that a kidnapping for ransom had taken place; the Franks family had enough money that a request for $10,000 in ransom was plausible.

Before the family could pay the ransom, though, the body was found. Investigators saw at once that this could not be a mere kidnapping, since there would have been no reason for a kidnapper to kill Franks.

A pair of eyeglasses found with the body was eventually traced back to Nathan Leopold. The ransom note had been typed on a typewriter that Leopold had used with his law school study group. During police questioning, Leopold's and Loeb's alibis broke down and each confessed. Although their confessions were in agreement about most major facts in the case, each blamed the other for the actual killing.

They had spent months planning the crime, working out a way to get the ransom money without risking being caught. They had thought that the body would not be discovered until long after the ransom delivery. Regardless, the ransom was not their primary motive. In fact, they admitted that they were driven by the thrill. For that matter, they basked in the public attention they received while in jail; they regaled newspaper reporters with the crime's lurid details again and again.

The murder and subsequent trial received worldwide publicity, and part of the fascination was based on public perception of the crime as a 'Jewish' crime. In 1924, Chicago was consummately an ethnic city, where the majority of residents were immigrants or the children of immigrants, and in which politics, neighbourhoods, and institutions often carried ethnic labels. Neither defendant was a practising Jew. Loeb's mother was Catholic and his father was Jewish. Bobby Franks' parents, while ethnically Jewish, were converts to Christian Science.

Leopold and Loeb both admitted to the press that they had a sexual relationship, and this increased the lurid (for that time) aspects of the crime considerably.

The trial [Loeb pictured left] proved to be a media spectacle; it was one of the first cases in the USA to be dubbed the 'Trial of the Century'. Loeb's family hired 67-year-old Clarence Darrow — who had fought against capital punishment for years — to defend the boys against the capital charges of murder and kidnapping. While the media expected them to plead not guilty (by reason of insanity), Darrow surprised everyone by having them both plead guilty. In this way, Darrow avoided a jury trial which, due to the strong public sentiment against his clients, would most certainly have resulted in a conviction and perhaps even the death penalty. Instead, he was able to make his case for his clients' lives before a single person, Cook County Circuit Court Judge John R. Caverly.

Darrow gave a twelve-hour speech, which has been called the finest of his career. The speech included: "this terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor … Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? … it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university."

It may be, in fact, that Darrow accepted the case because it offered a huge public platform for such a speech; he knew that his strong argument against capital punishment would be reprinted in newspapers around the world. And if he could successfully reason that such heinous murderers should not be executed, perhaps he would make other capital punishment cases more difficult to prosecute. In the end, Darrow succeeded; the judge sentenced Leopold and Loeb each to life in prison (for the murder), plus 99 years each (for the kidnapping).

In prison (the Illinois State Penitentiary), Leopold and Loeb used their educations to good purpose, teaching classes in the prison school. In January of 1936, at age 30, Loeb was attacked by fellow prisoner James Day with a straight razor in the prison's shower room, and died from his wounds. Day claimed afterwards that Loeb had attempted to sexually assault him; an inquiry accepted Day's testimony, and the prison authorities ruled that Day's attack on Loeb was self-defence.

The story of the Leopold and Loeb case has become ingrained in popular culture and is often used or referred to in film and television. The crime was also inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope [1948], and Tom Kalin's more openly gay-themed Swoon (1992) as well as Murder by Numbers (2002), the 1985 play Never The Sinner by John Logan, and the off-Broadway musical Thrill Me by Stephen Dolginoff.

Nathan Leopold

Nathan Leopold born 19 November 1904 (d. 1971)

Richard A Loeb and Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr., more commonly known as Leopold and Loeb, were two wealthy University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924, and received sentences of life in prison.

Their crime was notable in being largely motivated by an apparent need to prove the duo's belief that their high intellects made them capable of committing a perfect crime, and also for its role in the history of American thought on capital punishment.

Leopold, who was 19 at the time of the murder, and Loeb, 18, believed themselves to be Nietzschean supermen who could commit a 'perfect crime' (in this case a kidnapping and murder) without fear of being apprehended.

The friends were exceptionally intelligent: Leopold had already completed college and was attending law school at the University of Chicago. He spoke five languages and was an expert ornithologist, while Loeb was the youngest graduate in the history of the University of Michigan. Leopold planned to transfer to Harvard Law School in September, after taking a trip to Europe. Loeb planned to enter the University of Chicago Law School after taking some post graduate courses.

Both Leopold and Loeb lived in the wealthy Jewish neighbourhood of Kenwood, Chicago. Loeb's father, Albert, began his career as a lawyer and became the Vice President of Sears and Roebuck. Besides owning an impressive mansion in Kenwood, two blocks away from the Leopold home, the Loeb family also had a summer estate in Charlevoix, Michigan.

The pair had worked themselves up to committing the crime for months, starting out with petty theft.

On Wednesday, 21 May 1924, they put their plot in motion. The pair lured Franks, a neighbour and distant relative of Loeb's, into a rented car. Loeb first struck Franks with a chisel. Leopold and Loeb then suffocated Franks. After concealing the body in a culvert under a railroad track outside of Chicago - the body was burned with acid to make identification more difficult — they did their best to make it seem that a kidnapping for ransom had taken place; the Franks family had enough money that a request for $10,000 in ransom was plausible.

Before the family could pay the ransom, though, the body was found. Investigators saw at once that this could not be a mere kidnapping, since there would have been no reason for a kidnapper to kill Franks.

A pair of eyeglasses found with the body was eventually traced back to Nathan Leopold. The ransom note had been typed on a typewriter that Leopold had used with his law school study group. During police questioning, Leopold's and Loeb's alibis broke down and each confessed. Although their confessions were in agreement about most major facts in the case, each blamed the other for the actual killing.

They had spent months planning the crime, working out a way to get the ransom money without risking being caught. They had thought that the body would not be discovered until long after the ransom delivery. Regardless, the ransom was not their primary motive; each one's family gave him all the money that he needed. In fact, they admitted that they were driven by the thrill. For that matter, they basked in the public attention they received while in jail; they regaled newspaper reporters with the crime's lurid details again and again.

The murder and subsequent trial received worldwide publicity, and part of the fascination was based on public perception of the crime as a 'Jewish' crime. In 1924, Chicago was consummately an ethnic city, where the majority of residents were immigrants or the children of immigrants, and in which politics, neighbourhoods, and institutions often carried ethnic labels. Neither defendant was a practicing Jew. Loeb's mother was Catholic and his father was Jewish. Bobby Franks' parents, while ethnically Jewish, were converts to Christian Science.

Leopold [above left] and Loeb both admitted to the press that they had a sexual relationship, and this increased the lurid (for that time) aspects of the crime considerably.

The trial proved to be a media spectacle; it was one of the first cases in the USA to be dubbed the 'Trial of the Century'. Loeb's family hired 67-year-old Clarence Darrow — who had fought against capital punishment for years — to defend the boys against the capital charges of murder and kidnapping. While the media expected them to plead not guilty (by reason of insanity), Darrow surprised everyone by having them both plead guilty. In this way, Darrow avoided a jury trial which, due to the strong public sentiment against his clients, would most certainly have resulted in a conviction and perhaps even the death penalty. Instead, he was able to make his case for his clients' lives before a single person, Cook County Circuit Court Judge John R. Caverly.

Darrow gave a twelve-hour speech, which has been called the finest of his career. It may be, in fact, that Darrow accepted the case because it offered a huge public platform for such a speech; he knew that his strong argument against capital punishment would be reprinted in newspapers around the world. And if he could successfully reason that such heinous murderers should not be executed, perhaps he would make other capital punishment cases more difficult to prosecute. In the end, Darrow succeeded; the judge sentenced Leopold and Loeb each to life in prison (for the murder), plus 99 years each (for the kidnapping).

In 1944, Leopold participated in the Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study where he volunteered to be infected with malaria. Early in 1958, after 33 years in prison, Leopold was released on parole. That year he wrote an autobiography titled Life plus Ninety Nine Years. Leopold moved to Puerto Rico to avoid media attention, and married a widowed florist. He died of a heart attack on August 30, 1971 at the age of 66.

Richard Loeb was less 'fortunate' - he was attacked and killed by a fellow prisoner in 1936 at the age of 30.

The story of the Leopold and Loeb case has become ingrained in popular culture and is often used or referred to in film and television. The crime was also inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope (1948), and Tom Kalin's more openly gay-themed Swoon (1992) as well as Murder by Numbers (2002), the 1985 play Never The Sinner by John Logan, and the off-Broadway musical Thrill Me by Stephen Dolginoff.