Pod Insights Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén For Music History Fans: Uncharted, Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry About this episode It’s Takeover Month! Throughout December we will be highlighting the best of the true crime community, with a new episode every week from creators we love. We’ll be back next month with brand new episodes and a brand new host!
Alan Cross (Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry) usually hosts the ‘Ongoing History of New Music’ podcast, but on this show he takes a closer look at the crimes and unsolved mysteries of music’s most infamous players. If you like knowing the dark history of the artists that might’ve showed up on your Wrapped this year, check him out.
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Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 Okay, genuine question. If you could have dinner with any musician who's no longer with us, who would you pick? Personally, I'm going with David Bowie, but the part of me that can't resist a mystery might go with Sid Vicious. Welcome back to our special Takeover Month featuring our favorite true crime episodes of 2025. This week, we're getting into a murder mystery that's synonymous with punk music. It's the wild story of 20-year-old Nancy Spungen's death and the questions that still remain over whether her boyfriend killed her. Her boyfriend, of course, being Sid Vicious, who's best known as the bassist from The Sex Pistols. This episode comes from Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, hosted by Alan Cross.
0:46 Speaker 00 And we love this show for how deep it digs into twisted music trivia. Enjoy today's takeover. Next week, we'll meet you back here for an episode that broke down a case in the headlines while it was still unfolding.
1:04 Speaker 01 The Chelsea Hotel sits at 222 West 23rd Street in Manhattan. Since it was completed in 1884, the place has been a hangout for some very colorful characters. Most were New York City eccentrics and bohemians who just needed a place to live. But it also attracted some very famous people. At one point or another, it was home to sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote a big chunk of 2001: A Space Odyssey in his room. Later, Stanley Kubrick, the producer of the movie version of the book, would also stay there. Other long-term guests included photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. So did beat writer Jack Kerouac. Playwrights Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Sam Shepard. Actors Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, Elliot Gould, and Jane Fonda.
1:48 Speaker 01 Plus, for extra color, poets William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Not to mention Andy Warhol and some of his crew. Painter Jackson Pollock was a resident for a while. At a luncheon at the hotel, organized by art collector Peggy Guggenheim, he proceeded to get very wasted and threw up all over the carpet in the dining room. Somebody suggested that they cut that out and hang it on the wall because that piece of carpet one day would be worth millions of dollars. The Chelsea was also a favorite haunt of musicians. Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Waits, Jim Morrison, Jeff Beck, Joni Mitchell, Alice Cooper, the guys in Pink Floyd, and many, many others.
2:31 Speaker 01 Composer John Klinsinger brought in 12-foot trees from Madagascar, along with birds, a monkey, and an eight-foot snake to turn his room into a jungle. I wonder how he got along with dancer Katherine Dunham. She once brought two full-grown lions into the hotel to help with a rehearsal. She was evicted. And a lot of people have died at the Chelsea. Poet Dylan Thomas spent his dying days there. Some jumped to their death out of a window or the 11-story roof. In 1922, a woman named Nadia threw herself out of a window after she deliberately cut off her right hand. And there were stories of her one-handed ghost trying to get back into the hotel.
3:13 Speaker 01 A photographer named Billy Maynard was beaten to death in his room on the eighth floor in the mid-1970s. But the most notorious floor was the first one. It was designated "The Junkie Floor," the place where guests with drug problems were placed so that the staff could keep an eye on things. This is where ex-sex pistol Sid Vicious and his American girlfriend Nancy Spongen checked in. They were given Room 100. It was in that room that Nancy died. It looks like she was murdered, but by whom? Sid was charged with killing her, but did he actually do it? This is Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, and this time, it's the
3:57 Speaker 01 wild, wild story of the death of Nancy Spongen and the questions that still remain decades later around whether Sid Vicious actually did it.
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5:13 Speaker 01 Something brutal, bloody, and deadly happened in room 100 of New York City's Chelsea Hotel on the night of October 11th, 1978. Nancy Spongen, a Philadelphia girl, died in the bathroom under the sink. She'd been stabbed in the abdomen with a Jaguar Wilderness K11 knife with a 13-centimeter blade. That knife had been purchased by her boyfriend Sid Vicious earlier in the week. He was definitely the owner. But does that mean Sid killed Nancy? Stay with me because the answer isn't very clear, and we may have the name of the actual murderer. We'd better start at the beginning because there's a lot of tragedy and weirdness in this story.
5:57 Speaker 01 Sid Vicious's real name is John Simon Ritchie. He was born on May 10th, 1957. His mother, Ann, was a high school dropout who met Sid's father while she was enlisted in the Army. His father, John, was, believe it or not, a guardsman at Buckingham Palace. He was also a semi-pro trombone player. When Sid was born, Mom whisked him to the Spanish island of Ibiza. Dad never followed it, didn't supply any support. Ma became a pot dealer to pay the bills. Eventually, she sought the help of the British Embassy to get her and Sid back to England, where she married a man named Christopher Beverley. But six months later, he was dead of kidney failure. Sid and his mother moved a couple of times.
6:40 Speaker 01 By 1973, Ma was also a hardcore heroin addict. She barely knew what Sid was up to. She didn't even know what school he was attending. Sid, now going by the name John Beverley, made some friends at school. There was John Gray, John Wardle, and critically, John Lyden. They were known as the Four Johns. All of them quit school and began taking to squatting in various abandoned buildings. And here's where the hamster comes in. John Lyden, the future Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, of course, had a pet hamster named Sid. One day, John Beverley was poking at Sid, and he got bit. Who knew that a hamster could be vicious? And from that day on, John Beverley had the nickname Sid.
7:25 Speaker 01 The vicious came later, after the Lou Reed song. Sid and John Lyden picked up some spare change busking, usually by playing covers by Alice Cooper. It was Lyden on vocals and violin, and Sid on acoustic guitar and tambourine. The joke was that they played these Alice Cooper covers until they were paid to stop. All four hung around a clothing shop called Sex on the King's Road in Chelsea, which is where owner Malcolm McLaren recruited John Lyden to be the singer of a group that would be a living, breathing advertisement for his store. He called them the Sex Pistols. And that's when John Lyden became Johnny Rotten. Sex also employed a young American named Chrissie Hynde. She was working in the UK illegally.
8:07 Speaker 01 She paid Sid £2 to marry her, so she could get a work permit. And it almost happened, too, but the day they went to get married, the office was closed. As the Sex Pistols did their thing, Sid tried to learn to play bass by listening to the first Ramones album. He also started going to a lot of gigs. In June 1976, he went to a Pistols gig where he got into a fight with musical journalist Nick Kent, a writer at the NME. Sid went up to him and said, "Boy, I don't like your trousers." And bashed him up pretty good with the rusted bicycle chain that he carried with him. Sid escaped that without being charged with anything. Malcolm McLaren, though, was mortified. He told Kent, "Oh, God, that guy's a psychopath. He'll never be at one of our concerts again, I promise that." Right.
8:54 Speaker 01 Sid was considered for lead vocalist of The Damned, but he forgot to show up for the audition. Eventually, he found his way into a band called Flowers of Romance, but that didn't amount to anything. On September 20, 1976, Sid somehow ended up playing drums for a very early version of "Susie and the Banshees" at a two-day punk event called the 100 Club Punk Special, where the group improvised interminably on "The Lord's Prayer."
9:34 Speaker 01 On day two of the festival, Sid showed up super high on speed. The Damned were playing that night, and Sid was still very annoyed that Dave Venian had gotten the job he wanted. So he threw a glass at the stage, aimed at Dave Venian, as the group covered "The Stooges' 1970. He missed, hitting a woman in the face and blinding her in one eye. That led to Sid's first taste of prison. In February 1977, the Pistols needed a new bass player when Glenn Matlock was thrown out of the group for allegedly committing the crime of liking the Beatles. Malcolm McLaren, now managing the band full-time, thought it would be very cool if the new bass player was a fan who had been promoted to band member. How very punk. Enter Sid.
10:19 Speaker 01 It was also around this time that Sid met Nancy Spungen.
10:25 Speaker 01 Nancy was American, born Nancy Lauren Spungen on February 27, 1958, in Philadelphia. She already had a pretty tragic life, even though she grew up in a nice, middle-class Jewish family. She almost didn't survive her own birth because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, almost choking her on her way out into the world. Was there oxygen deprivation? Maybe. Nancy was born jaundiced, as a result of cyanosis, meaning that she didn't have the proper oxygen in her red blood cells. The only thing that saved her was a series of immediate blood transfusions, as the little baby was strapped to a hospital bed. She was an emotionally disturbed child, throwing tantrums starting at three months.
11:07 Speaker 01 A doctor was worried enough to prescribe baby Nancy Barbiturates when she was just three, in hopes that would stop her from always screaming. But it didn't work. By age four, she was getting psychiatric treatment. But the older she got, the more she tipped into violent behavior. A babysitter was threatened with a pair of scissors, and she physically attacked her psychiatrist. She was expelled from school at 11. She ran away from her next school and attempted suicide by cutting her wrists with scissors. She was enrolled in a home for troubled kids but escaped. She loved to trip on LSD, and she conducted at least one do-it-yourself abortion on herself.
11:48 Speaker 01 Nancy was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 15. Although she was quite brilliant, she enrolled in university in Colorado when she was just 16. Nancy was thrown out of college because of her bad and weird behavior, which included an arrest for trying to buy some pot and accusations of being a thief. As a result of her issues with the University of Colorado, Nancy was banished from the state in exchange for escaping any legal issues. She moved to New York, where she worked for a while as a stripper, and when she needed extra money, she turned tricks. She was just 17. Sucked into the punk scene, she hung out with the bands of the era at places like
12:28 Speaker 01 CBGB and Max's Kansas City, sometimes carrying drugs for the bands. But then she decided that her future was in London, and moved there in February 1977. She determined that that's where the action was. She needed to be there. And Nancy embraced everything she could about the groupie lifestyle, and her target was the Sex Pistols. She showed up in London swollen and puffy from drug use, with brittle frizzy hair that ranged in color from bright yellow to dark roots. She wore a lot of makeup because of bad skin, and always defaulted to bright red lipstick. At first, she tried to cozy up to Johnny Rotten, but when he rejected her, she just moved on. And by the spring
13:10 Speaker 01 of 1977, it's said that they first met on March 11th, or maybe March 15th, Sid and Nancy were an item. They would be inseparable for the next 19 months.
13:22 Speaker 01 By this time, the Sex Pistols were infamous and constantly in the tabloids. Nancy, who inserted herself everywhere, was dubbed nauseating Nancy by the press because of her loud, American attitude. She and Sid also settled into a serious addiction to heroin. And here is when things started to go off the rails. Very far off the rails. Soon Nancy would be dead, and Sid in jail and accused of her murder.
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14:24 Speaker 01 When Sid Vicious signed on with the Sex Pistols, he was paid 25 pounds a week. If he needed more, he'd just find ways to steal it. A friend had a connection to some brown Persian smack through a group known as the Singapore Boys. Sid and Nancy were inseparable, demonstrated by a couple of gray metal padlocks that they intertwined. They bonded over books, records, whatever was in the music papers, and of course, drugs. But they'd also fight like two pit bulls on steroids, often with each other, sometimes with people outside their circle. Nancy ended up in court at least once, charged with possession of a weapon. This sort of thing wasn't conducive for the rest of the Sex Pistols. Nancy always seemed to be attached to Sid, causing tensions with everybody else.
15:08 Speaker 01 And of course, again, there were all the drugs. Sid wasn't a very good musician. He barely knew how to play his bass. But some nights were better than others. Here they are in Stockholm in July 1977.
15:37 Speaker 01 By the end of 1977, Malcolm McLaren thought the Sex Pistols were ready to tour America. But there were problems. First, the paperwork. Getting working visas for these yobs proved to be very difficult. Johnny Rotten had a minor drug charge on his record. Guitarist Steve Jones was a known thief. Drummer Paul Cook also had some theft in his past. And then there was Sid. Drug charges, assault of a police officer, attempted grand theft auto, criminal damage, and possession of a dangerous weapon. As a result of all the visa delays, the Sex Pistols weren't able to appear on Saturday Night Live as scheduled. Their slot instead was filled by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Once the visas were all sorted out, there was, in fact, a tour.
16:22 Speaker 01 But instead of hitting all the major markets, McLaren thought it would be very subversive, very punk, if the Pistols made a big swing into the punk, unfriendly, southern US. This did not go well. Sid was often so strung out that the roadies didn't even bother plugging in his bass. He was always looking to score, and sometimes disappeared for hours. McLaren had him on a weekly stipend of $14, thinking that maybe a lack of cash would keep him straight. Well, it sort of did, sometimes. At one point, Sid was drinking two bottles of peppermint schnapps a day. The crowds were beyond hostile, throwing things at the band. Sid got hit in the head with beer bottles, routinely.
17:05 Speaker 01 He often carved himself up with a broken beer bottle onstage. He wrote "Gimme a fix" across his chest in black marker, and then with a blade. There was an incident where a groupie, not Nancy, because she was left back in England, made a play to give Sid oral sex during a show. Another groupie named Helen Keller, no, really, drove all the way from Los Angeles to climb up onstage to headbutt Sid right in the nose, and there was blood everywhere. There was also a one-night-stand with a woman, who was still in the process of transitioning from being a man, and that apparently got very confusing. And at one point Sid's bodyguard had enough of him, and actually beat the crap out of him. And here's an interesting bit of trivia.
17:49 Speaker 01 In Dallas, the Sex Pistols played the Longhorn Ballroom. In its previous incarnation, it was called the Carousel Club, and was run by mob-connected Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald live on television in 1963. The longer the tour went on, the more Sid engaged in self-destruction and self-mutilation. Here's Malcolm McLaren on the infamous "truck stop" encounter on the way to Tulsa. This happened at around 3:00 in the morning.
18:17 Speaker 05 I'll never forget the day in America. I think it was somewhere near San Antone, on the last ill-fated tour they had, that Sid, at that time, of course, got involved in the world of drugs, naturally inclined to develop a taste for groupies, and one that ultimately mentally met a peril. But he, at that time, was very out to lunch, and would only eat knickerbocker glories, and usually three in one go. And they would be mounted on the table.
18:58 Speaker 05 And that day, in a little motel-type restaurant that we'd pulled into, he apparently was sitting near a table where a mother and daughter and father and son were eating their steak and chips. And they didn't like the smell that was coming across the table. And we, of course, never sat with him anyway. We were quite used to the idea. But he was wearing his typical chain round his neck, and this dirty black t-shirt that he hadn't taken off for six months. And it had this big swastika on it, and his leather jacket.
19:43 Speaker 05 And his feet were black, but hidden by the boots that he wore. And noises began to appear from the table of this family, and saying rather rude things about our dear Sid. And Sid, not one to stand by, decided to get up from the table. And did a thing, you might all reel in horror now. He went round to the back of the gentleman that was eating his steak and chips and pulled his sleeve back and threw his arm over and above the man's head and over the the man's
20:26 Speaker 05 plate, up fairly high, and withdrew a penknife from his pocket and slashed his arm and all the blood blew out like ketchup over the man's steak. Well, you can imagine that place. This was full of very rednecky guys, long-distance truck drivers. I thought we were gonna die.
20:50 Speaker 01 By the time the tour limped into the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on January the fourteenth, the Sex Pistols were running on fumes. And then, for the final song, they came to an end. You can hear the anger and frustration in Johnny Rotten's voice.
21:04 Speaker 05 You'll get one number and one number only, 'cause I'm a lazy bastard. Real fun. This is no fun, no fun. It is no fun at all, no fun.
21:46 Speaker 05 Ah, ha, ha. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night.
21:54 Speaker 01 And with that, the Sex Pistols were done. Sid was unemployed. So on January nineteenth, nineteen seventy-eight, Sid got on a plane, hoping to fly home to London. But on the flight, he fell into a coma. Too much diazepam, methadone, and alcohol. When the flight landed, he was rushed to a hospital, where he was told that if he didn't stop drinking, he would be dead in six months. Instead of continuing home, Nancy collected him and the two flew to Paris to film parts of a movie called The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. Most of the time was spent in their hotel room shooting up. When Sid had to leave to shoot his parts, Nancy was upset at being left alone, so she cut her wrists. Nothing serious, though. She just wanted to make a point.
22:36 Speaker 01 By August 1978, they were in London, hoping to get back to New York. To raise money, there was a quick solo gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, under the name Vicious White Kids. This group featured Sid, Glenn Matlock, the guy he replaced in The Pistols, Rat Scabies, the drummer of The Damned, and guitarist Steve New. Nancy insisted on singing backup vocals, but the sound guy made sure her mic was turned off.
23:18 Speaker 01 With a couple of thousand dollars from that gig on August 15, 1978, Sid and Nancy flew to New York, arriving on August 23, checking into the Chelsea Hotel, registering as Mr. and Mrs. John Ritchie. Like I said earlier, they were known drug abusers, so they automatically got a room on the first floor, the "junkie" floor, as it was called. They ended up in room 100, after a fire of some sort broke out in their first room. The goal was to launch Sid as a solo artist with Nancy acting as his manager. A band was put together featuring a few members of the New York Dolls. On one or two occasions, the group also featured Mick Jones of The Clash. Nancy did manage to get Sid some gigs featuring large crowds, but the shows were shambolic. The audiences were not kind.
24:03 Speaker 01 But the money was good, all the more to spend on heroin and other drugs. The money went out a lot faster than it came in. Nancy reportedly had to call her parents in Philadelphia for cash. Meanwhile, neither was particularly healthy. Sid's liver was giving out, and Nancy had issues with her kidneys. She asked her mom to help get the two of them into some kind of detox program. But then came the night of October 11, 1978. Nancy would never detox, because by the time the sun came up the following morning, she was dead. It was murder, we think. Who killed her? This is where the mystery begins. And maybe after all these years, we finally know who did it.
24:53 Speaker 01 Management at the Chelsea Hotel in New York was used to seeing all kinds of people come and go at all hours of the day and night. So nothing raised any kind of suspicion of who visited room 100 on the night of October 11th, 1978. Here's what we know. Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen were there, as usual, and having some kind of party. Guests came and went. At 9:45, the couple went down the hall to room 119, where they visited with Kathy O'Rourke, a friend of Nancy's, and Neon Leon Webster, an aspiring singer, and her boyfriend. Sid flipped through some old photos, stroking his face with one of his new knives. He looked at everyone and said, "I've lost my looks. I really used to look good. I have no future."
25:37 Speaker 01 Around midnight, they left room 119 and went back to room 100. Kathy had to go to her go-go dancing job. Leon said he went to Max's Kansas City, but no one seemed to have seen him there that night. Or maybe he went somewhere else. He was just confused. We'll get back to him in a moment. At around 2:30, a drug dealer and bit actor, who went by the name Rockets Redglare, was at his apartment in Queens when he got a frantic call from Nancy. Let's talk about him for a second. Rockets was an actor who ended up in more than 30 films. He played a cab driver in Madonna's movie Desperately Seeking Susan, and in the Scorsese film After Hours, among many others. He was also a club bouncer, a stand-up comedian, occasional roadie, sometime police informant, and drug dealer.
26:22 Speaker 01 When Nancy called, she wanted drugs, specifically Dilaudid, a type of synthetic morphine, and some new syringes. At 3:00 a.m., there's a report of both Sid and Nancy hanging around in the lobby of the Chelsea. That account, however, is disputed. At 3:05, Lisa Garcia, who lived next door in room 103, got home from work. She says she heard three loud knocks. A loud male voice yelled, "Let me in! I'm not playing!" This freaked her out a little, so she didn't answer the door and went to bed. Whoever was knocking went away. At 3:15, Rocket's Red Glare arrived, but without what Nancy had requested. He says he found her wearing a long t-shirt over black underpants.
27:06 Speaker 01 Sid was on the bed in black pants and a shaggy sweater. They talked for a bit, with Sid and Nancy wondering if Rocket would consider a position as Sid's bodyguard, because Sid always seemed to be getting into fights. Then they talked about where Discorson delauded, with Nancy offering to pay forty dollars a pill. She needed at least six to get high. Sid could get by on four. She offered fourteen hundred dollars to Red Glare. At some point, Sid had downed thirty Tuanol tablets. Tuanol, which they don't make anymore, had been used as a sedative for sleep since the 1940s. In the 1970s, it was used for fun by people who needed to come down from whatever else they were on. It was easy to get Tuys, Blue Tips, Jeebs, whatever you wanted to call them, but it
27:50 Speaker 01 was also addictive, and it was possible to overdose to the point of poisoning. We're not sure what the dosage was, but at minimum, it was fifty milligrams per pill, so thirty pills is a lot. Sid became groggy. He kept jumping out to check the door every time he heard a noise, and then he went back to the bed and passed out. That happened several times. Red Glare says he stayed in the room for a couple of hours. This would bring our timeline to around 5:00 AM. He says when he left, he stopped in the lobby to make a phone call. That's when he saw a guy named Steve Sincotti, who was Sid and Nancy's regular drug dealer for downers. Now let's get back to talking about Neon Leon. He says he returned to room 119 at around 3:30 in the morning, with a go-go dancer
28:35 Speaker 01 named Kelly who lived in room 301. At around 4:00, he got a call from Nancy, saying that they were both very high on Tuanols, and that she'd really like a couple of joints. At 4:15, both Leon and Kelly heard four really loud knocks on the door. They just ignored them. And what was that noise coming from the hallway around 4:45? It sounded like someone dropping metal on the floor. A knife, maybe? At 5:00 AM, around the time Rocket said he left Sid and Nancy in room 100, the resident in room 228 called down to the front desk to complain about someone banging on his door. Kenny, the nighttime bellhop, was sent to investigate. He found Sid wandering about.
29:18 Speaker 01 Sid then tried to hit Kenny, so Kenny laid Sid out on the floor with a blast of right-hand thunder. By 5:15, it was all over, and Sid staggered back to his room, covered in his own blood. At 5:30, another resident of the hotel says that Sid staggered into her room, still bloody and all zonked out. Two hours later, this puts us at 7:30 on the morning of October the 12th. Vera Mendelson, a sculptor and the resident in room 102, says she was awakened by the sound of a woman moaning, something that she found frightening. But when the moan stopped, Vera just went back to sleep. At 9:30, Herman Banks was on duty at the front desk.
29:58 Speaker 01 He says he got a phone call originating from outside the hotel, saying that there was trouble in room 100. Charles, another bellhop, was sent to investigate. But before Charles could report on anything, Sid called the front desk. "Someone is sick," he said. "Send help." Ramos called for an ambulance and the cops. Sid was found wandering the hallway sometime after 10:30. When staff took him back to room 100, they found Nancy in a pool of blood under the bathroom sink. She'd been stabbed by that Jaguar hunting knife that Sid had purchased earlier that month. "For protection," he said. The room was drenched in blood.
30:38 Speaker 01 It was 10:45 on the morning of Thursday, October 12, 1978. Sid was in shock. Initially in a panic, he confessed, "I stabbed her, but I never meant to kill her." Vera Mendelson saw Sid in the hallway. He was moaning, "Baby, baby, baby, and I killed her. I can't live without her. And she fell on the knife. She must have fallen on the knife." Sergeant Thomas Kilroy, the arresting officer, said "Vicious admitted killing Miss Spongin during a dispute." But then Sid recanted, saying that he didn't remember anything from the last 12 hours. By early afternoon, he was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Nancy Spongin. A forensic team descended on the room.
31:22 Speaker 01 Some accounts say that forensics did a really bad job, missing things like three syringes, a bottle of Tuanol, and some kind of brown flaky powder. Very little money was found. Where was Nancy's $1,400? Meanwhile, Nancy's body was taken to the city medical examiner's office for examination. Dr. Gita Natarajan conducted the autopsy. By 8:30 Friday morning, there was a verdict. Nancy Spongin had died of external and internal hemorrhaging caused by a one-inch incision to the lower abdomen, which was enough to cut the arteries that branch off the aorta and feed blood to the intestines. He also found multiple track marks from intravenous drug injections and a series of bruises that left black and blue marks on Nancy's face.
32:06 Speaker 01 This lines up with an eyewitness account from a guest the previous night who said that Sid and Nancy got into a fight, and he bashed her in the face with a guitar. Given the nature of the stab wounds and Nancy's physical condition as a junkie, the medical examiner concluded that Nancy was stabbed sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. and died between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. It was murder, not suicide. Malcolm McLaren and Sid's mom were immediately on the case, looking for a high-profile lawyer to defend Sid. They settled on F. Lee Bailey, the famous criminal attorney known for taking on high-profile celebrity cases. Sid was soon sprung on $50,000 bail and a promise not to leave New York City. All the legal costs were paid by Virgin Records.
32:51 Speaker 01 McLaren thought that Sid was innocent. He had a theory. He thought that the couple was robbed by an unknown guest who then stabbed Nancy. He said that $20,000 in a bedside drawer was missing, royalty money that had just been paid out by Virgin Records for Sid's work with the Sex Pistols. Sid was no help. He maintained that he'd been so out of it that he had no memory of that night. He was also very distraught. Shortly after midnight on October 23rd, he was at the Hotel Seville, where he shared a room with his mom. He was attempting to detox with methadone. But then that night, he went into the bathroom and cut up his arms and wrists with a razor and a crushed lightbulb. When Joe Stevens, one of Sid's friends, arrived,
33:35 Speaker 01 he was lying on the bed, saying that he'd made a pact with Nancy, and that all he needed was a few more Quaaludes to finish himself off. When the ambulance arrived, Sid made an attempt to jump out the window, but was blocked. He was taken to the Bellevue psychiatric unit, where his wounds were treated, before he was transferred to another hospital. He was discharged on November 26th. By December 1978, Sid was dating again. He went out with Judy Nylon, one half of a group called Snatch. He went out with Connie Grip, the ex-girlfriend of Ramones bass player D.D. Ramone. And he settled in with Michelle Robinson, an aspiring actor. Sid just couldn't stay out of trouble either. On December 5th, he went to a club under the supervision of Rocket's Red Glare
34:19 Speaker 01 and got into a beer bottle fight with the girlfriend of Todd Smith, the brother of singer Patti Smith. He was arrested and charged with assault and sent to Rikers Island. He stayed there until January 18th, before being released on $10,000 bail and the condition that he report to the homicide unit three days a week. Oh, and no more nightclubs for Sid. By February 1st, 1979, Sid was more or less clean. He was out of Rikers and had just completed his detox program. But the first thing he did when he got back to Manhattan was to ask a friend for $200 worth of heroin. He dropped it off at Michelle Robinson's apartment at 63 Bank Street. There was a celebratory party that night.
35:02 Speaker 01 Jerry Only of The Misfits was there, so was Jerry Nolan of The Heartbreakers, future Danzig bassist Howie Pyro, and a couple of female friends. Sid's mom made everybody spaghetti. Afterwards, they all sat around doing drugs. The party, such as it was, wrapped up at around 3:00 in the morning. By that time, Sid had already nodded off multiple times, thanks to the Tuanols he'd been taking. He says he needed them for sleep. Sometime after that, everybody went to bed. So did Sid. And he took some heroin with him. Now, we're not entirely sure where that heroin came from, although it's very possible that Mom slipped him a little. After all, she was a junkie and sympathized with their son's plight. Sid would never wake up. He overdosed for the last time,
35:46 Speaker 01 allegedly because of a suicide pact he had made with Nancy. Sid left a note that read, "Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans, and motorcycle boots. Goodbye." He was just 21.
36:02 Speaker 01 The Sid and Nancy story stayed in the papers for months. Michelle Robinson was forced to move and change her name. Sid was cremated, and his mother took his ashes and spread some on Nancy's grave in Philadelphia. She took the rest home to London, but there's a story, possibly apocryphal, that she tripped when she arrived at Heathrow, spilling some of Sid's ashes and watching them get sucked up into the air conditioning ducts. So here is the question we asked at the beginning. Did Sid vicious, fatally stab Nancy Spongen with a Jaguar K11 knife sometime in the early morning hours of October 12,
36:38 Speaker 01 1978? Maybe, and maybe not. The most popular alternative theory is that Nancy was killed by Rocket's red glare. This theory states that he murdered Nancy, well, Sid was zonked out on the bed, in the process of robbing the couple. Remember, there was not only that $1,400 we talked about, but that alleged $20,000 in the bedside cabinet. In a book called Pretty Vacant, author Phil Strongman advances this theory, saying that Rocket's killed Nancy, took all the money, and was seen the following days flashing a lot of bloodstained bills and brand-new clothes, less than 48 hours after he professed to
37:20 Speaker 01 being broke and begging people to buy him drinks in and around Greenwich Village. Where did the money come from? Where did the new clothes come from? This story is reinforced by the findings of underground filmmaker Nick Zed. Red glare denied all accusations. However, it is said that he blabbed about what he did to a circle of friends. Was he telling the truth? Or was he just hungry for attention?
37:45 Speaker 01 There's also a story that he tried to sell, a snuff film of Nancy's murder. I quote Red Glare. "I know that Sid did not kill Nancy. Nancy's murder was videotaped while Sid sits there on the couch, completely out of it, practically in a coma. Does this tape really exist? Who shot it? And who killed Nancy? Well, according to Rockets, we don't know. And we never will know. Because Rockets Red Glare died of kidney failure, liver failure, cirrhosis, and Hep C on May 28, 2001. Conditions exacerbated by the fact that he was morbidly obese. So today, officially, it was Sid Vicious who murdered Nancy Spungen.
38:28 Speaker 01 But is that the truth? Sadly, we're never going to know what actually happened. Punk's most notorious murder will forever have questions attached to it."
38:45 Speaker 01 If you have any questions or comments about anything you hear in this podcast, shoot me an email, [email protected] . We can also meet up on all the social media sites, along with my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com, which is updated with music news and recommendations every day. There's also the daily free newsletter that you should get. And please check out my other podcast, The Ongoing History of New Music, which deals with rock music at large. There are hundreds and hundreds of episodes that you can enjoy, all for free. See you next time for more stories of crime and mayhem in the music industry. Episodes arrive every two weeks. Technical productions by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross.
39:25 Speaker 04 Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites. But unless I repeat the word kayak, Kayak thinks you won't remember that. So Kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kay. Ooh. Ak. Kay, kay, kay, kay, kayak. Kayak, kayak, kayak. Search, compare, and save on your trip. Kayak. Got that right.
Previous The Perfect Mix of Horror and Crime: Heart Starts Pounding Next A Show With Real Impact: Voices for Justice Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated