Sid and Nancy: A Punk Rock Mystery
Exploring the 1978 stabbing death of Nancy Spungen
It’s a story of fame, lust, addiction, greed and violence. Sid Vicious, bass player for the punk band the Sex Pistols, charged with stabbing and killing his girlfriend at New York’s famed Chelsea Hotel.
Warning: crime scene photos will be included in this article.
Nancy Spungen, a 20-year old bleached-blonde originally from Philadelphia, had lived with British punk star Sid Vicious (formerly of the Sex Pistols) at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City for several months. Sid was in New York to launch a solo career, with Nancy acting as his manager. But the couple soon spiraled into heroin addiction and in October 1978, Nancy was found in the bathroom of their hotel room, deceased, with a single stab wound to the abdomen.
Sid reportedly told police, “I did it… because I’m a dirty dog.” He was arrested, bailed out, arrested again after assaulting a man with a broken beer bottle, sent to Rikers Island, released to stand trial and died late that same night of a fatal heroine overdose.
Sid and Nancy
Nancy Laura Spungen was born February 27, 1958 in Philadelphia, the eldest daughter of a middle-class Jewish couple. At birth, doctors realized that the infant was being choked by her own umbilical cord, nearly dying of oxygen deprivation. Doctors determined though that the baby had not suffered brain damage.
Nancy was an incredibly bright but disturbingly angry child. She screamed throughout her infancy, leading one pediatrician to prescribe barbiturates at three months of age. As she grew older, she began to demonstrate acts of violence against her younger sister and once threatened a babysitter with a pair of scissors. Her first suicide attempt occurred at the age of fourteen.
A year later, Nancy was diagnosed with schizophrenia but soon accepted to the University of Colorado at Boulder, at just 16 years of age. During her first year of college, she was arrested twice — for storing stolen property in her dorm room and purchasing marijuana from an undercover cop. She was booted out of school, and her father came to take her back to Philly.