Michael Alig: The Life and Death of the Party

Somewhere between one and two weeks later, even a boarded-up bathroom couldn't disguise the smell coming from the body. Junkie logic presented a solution. They would cut up the body, put the remains into a box for the television they had bought using Angel's drug money and dump it in the Hudson.

First, they had to do something to make Angel's body fit that box. Alig gave Freeze money and told him to go to Macy's and get the best set of knives money could buy. "The bigger the better." Then, he did a few bags of heroin to prepare himself for what he was about to do.

He went to work, hacking off Angel's legs and put them in a separate plastic bag. His genitals were also cut off — and never found. The torso of the body was put in the box. Like the stupid criminals seen in a bad episode of Law and Order, they committed a grotesque comedy of errors. Freeze and Alig didn't even take the back service elevator. Instead, they asked for a trolley from the doorman and took their box right down the main elevator and walked out the front door.

Upping the number of people that could see them and testify against them, they then hailed a taxi, enlisting the driver's help in putting the box in the trunk. They proceeded to the West Side Highway where they dumped the box and the plastic bag. The plastic bag sank immediately, but the cork-lined box floated down the Hudson. They couldn't think about the consequences. They just hoped for the best.