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…