The Murder of Nancy Spungen
On the night of October 11, 1978, Nancy Spungen and her boyfriend, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, held a party in their hotel room in New York City. The next morning, Nancy would be found dead by hotel staff-stabbed over twenty times.
Born in Philadelphia, Spungeon was described as a temperamental and violent child by her parents. Weary of her erratic behavior, her parents enrolled her in two therapeutic boarding schools. She graduated from Lakeside High School in 1974.
Five months into her freshman year of college at the University of Colorado Boulder, she was arrested for buying marijuana from an undercover police officer. When she was found to have stolen goods in her dorm room, the university expelled her. She then decided to move to New York City and become part of the punk scene.
Spungen initially supported herself as a sex worker. To gain access to many of the bands within the punk scene, she routinely bought drugs for them. Most of her fellow groupies didn’t care for her crass exterior, but Spungeon didn’t care. Before meeting Sid Vicious, she followed bands such as Aerosmith and Jerry Nolan of the Heartbreakers, who she followed to London.
While in London in 1976, Spungen met and began following the Sex Pistols. She quickly took a liking to their bassist, Sid Vicious, born John Simon Ritchie. Vicious found Spungen’s abrasive nature captivating. The two became inseparable until her death.
According to Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols manager, Spungen taught Vicious about the sex, drugs, and lifestyle of a New York City rocker. Vicious needed little help on this front however. The band made it public knowledge that Vicious drug addictions prior to their relationship often hindered performances. In January of 1978, the Sex Pistols broke up and cited Vicious drug use as one of the core reasons.
In August 1978, the pair moved into the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Their addictions only worsened from this point forward. Their room was a known hotspot for addicts with people going at all hours.
On the night of October 11, 1978 the pair hosted a party in their hotel room and watched Vicious take up to 30 tablets of Tunial. He was incapacitated for the rest of the evening. Around 2:30 that morning, Spungen asked Vicious’ bodyguard and drug dealer Rocket Redglare to find some Dilaudids for him. At 7:30 a.m., “female moans” could be heard coming from the couple’s room.
At 10 a.m., Vicious called the front desk of the hotel, asking for help. Hotel staff arrived and found Spungen stabbed to death under the sink in their room. Spungeon had bled to death after being stabbed a reported twenty times. Spungen was 20 years old at the time of her death. Investigators matched Spungen’s stab wounds to a knife she’d bought for Vicious.
Vicious was quickly arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Initially, Vicious admitted to the murder, saying he and Nancy got into a fight and he stabbed her and did not mean to kill her. He later said Spungen fell onto the knife. Finally, he told investigators that he didn’t know what happened.
Ten days after his release on bail, Vicious tried to commit suicide. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he tried to jump out of a window, only being pulled back by nurses. Vicious reportedly shouted that he wanted to be with his Nancy.
On February 2, 1979, Vicious and some friends bought $200 worth of heroin and began doing drugs. Vicious was reportedly nodding off in the early evening and was given four quaaludes to help him sleep. Vicious died that night of a drug overdose. With their prime, and only suspect dead, the New York City Police Department closed the investigation.
Rumors have swirled since Spungen’s death. Many in the public and the punk scene do not believe Vicious killed her. In his book Pretty Vacant: A History of Punk, journalist Phil Strongman points the finger at Redglare as being the perpretrator-something Redglare denied until his death in 2001. Others claim she was killed in a robbery gone wrong.
There is no concrete evidence that anyone other than Vicious killed Spungen. The public will never know exactly what happened to Nancy Spungen.
