Sid and Nancy: Punk Rock’s Bonnie and Clyde

Design by Sophie Parrish

By Heather Thorn

October 12, 2025 marked 47 years since Nancy Spungen, American girlfriend of Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious, was found fatally stabbed on the bathroom floor of room 100 at the Chelsea Hotel. In 1978 on the morning of October 12, Vicious woke to find Spungen dead from a single stab wound—its depth matching that of Vicious’s Wilderness K-11 Jaguar Folding Knife, which Spungen had given Vicious only the day before. 

The pair further cemented themselves in rock and roll history when Vicious followed Spungen to the afterlife only a few months later due to a heroin overdose in a Greenwich Village apartment in February 1979, all while “under indictment for [the] murder” of Spungen. While short-lived, Sid and Nancy’s tumultuous and drug-fueled relationship continues to captivate both die-hard music fans and the general public alike. 

Sid Vicious (born Simon Ritchie) and Nancy Spungen met in late 1976 when Spungen, a groupie previously living in New York City, flew to England to get involved in London’s punk scene. But before that, Nancy had a troubled past that preceded even the chaos she and Vicious got up to. As a child, she was in and out of different Pennsylvanian schools due to her behavioral issues and general abrasiveness to both her peers and siblings. Later, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Eventually, she graduated from boarding school and even started college in Colorado but soon left the school and moved to New York City at the age of seventeen, hoping to become a groupie. She followed Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan of the Heartbreaks and flew with them to London, where she took on a different interest: Sex Pistols.  

While at first she laid her eyes on Sex Pistols frontman and lead singer Johnny Rotten (born John Lydon), he rejected her and she turned her attention to the Sex Pistols’ newest addition: Sid Vicious, the group’s new bassist who had replaced Glen Matlock—despite Vicious knowing next to nothing about how to actually play bass.  

Vicious and Spungen fell into a relationship that was both tumultuous and drug-fueled—full of ups and downs and built on “a mutual love for drugs and self-destruction.” Those around the couple viewed Spungen as crass, “loud, obnoxious and unlikeable,” but she was nonetheless accepted into London’s punk-rock scene thanks to her ability to score heroin. 

Spungen and Vicious moved in together by March of 1977, their relationship garnering a particularly infamous reputation. Spungen soon became a source of tension within the band, leading Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren to ban Spungen from Sex Pistols’ United States tour due to concern of the pair’s heavy drug use. She “taught Sid all about sex and drugs and the lifestyle of a New York rocker,” said McLaren.

But it wasn’t Vicious’s first experience with drugs, either. His mother, Anne Beverley, was a heavy drug user—namely heroin and opiates—and exposed him to drugs at a young age. By the time Vicious was two years old, his parents had separated. He and his mother moved around a lot; for a brief time, they lived in Ibiza, Spain when he was a toddler. Beverley would stuff his toddler-sized clothing with drugs to smuggle them back into England. Later, when Rotten and Vicious were hanging out at Vicious’s home, which he shared with his mother, she gave Vicious a birthday present of heroin and several syringes. Needless to say, Vicious and Spungen were both knee-deep in drug addiction by the time they crossed paths. 

After a short and disastrous American tour, during which the group had their biggest show in San Francisco, the Sex Pistols split in January 1978 the night before their European tour was set to start. Symptoms of the breakup included Vicious being increasingly “uncontrollable” due to his drug addiction and his relationship with Spungen. 

In August 1978, Spungen and Vicious moved into the Chelsea Hotel, which became their hideaway spot as they fruitlessly fixated on Vicious’s solo career. Two months later, Spungen was found dead. 

On the night of October 11th, Spungen, Vicious, and several of Vicious’s friends were hanging out in the couple’s room—room 100—as Spungen and Vicious took “copious amounts of drugs.” In the early hours of October 12th, Spungen asked Rockets Redglare, Vicious’s bodyguard and drug dealer, for opioid painkillers. 

At around 7:30 A.M. on October 12th, hotel residents reported “female moans” coming from Vicious and Spungen’s room. At 10 A.M., Vicious called the front desk asking for help. When staff members arrived, they found Nancy Spungen, only twenty years old, half-naked and fatally stabbed on the bathroom floor. Reports vary regarding Vicious’s role in her death; some sources state Vicious was seen wandering the hotel halls claiming responsibility for her death. However, he also provided conflicting stories: he remembered nothing, he hadn’t intended to kill her, it was a suicide pact, she fell on the knife, or he was asleep when she died. 

Many friends and family close to Vicious attested to his innocence in Spungen’s death. McLaren insisted Vicious wasn’t responsible: “She was his first and only love of his life,” he said. “I am positive about Sid’s innocence.”

Deborah Spungen, Nancy’s mother, later revealed in her memoir, And I Don’t Want to Live This Life: A Mother’s Story of Her Daughter’s Murder, a letter Vicious sent her after Nancy’s death:

All I can say is that they never loved anyone as passionately as I love Nancy… At least when I die, we will be together again. I feel like a lost child, so alone. The nights are the worst. I used to hold Nancy close to me all night so that she wouldn’t have nightmares and I just can’t sleep without my beautiful baby in my arms. So warm and gentle and vulnerable. No one should expect me to live without her. She was a part of me. My heart.

Vicious also sent Deborah Spungen a poem he wrote about Nancy: 

NANCY

You were my little baby girl

And I shared all your fears.

Such joy to hold you in my arms

And kiss away your tears.

But now you’re gone there’s only pain

And nothing I can do.

And I don’t want to live this life

If I can’t live for you.

To my beautiful baby girl.

Our love will never die.

Regardless, Vicious was charged with second-degree murder and later released on bail.  Rotten later revealed that Virgin Records had paid Vicious’s bail bond while Mick Jagger paid for Vicious’s legal fees following the murder charge. In December 1978, Vicious wound up back in jail after assaulting Patti Smith’s brother, Todd Smith, and smashing a glass in his face. Vicious was then sent to Rikers Island Prison Complex in New York.  

Vicious was later released on bail—again—on February 1, 1979. His mother scored him heroin as soon as he was out of jail: a dose that left Vicious dead the next day, at the age of 22. Prior to his death, Vicious had requested to be buried next to Spungen at her grave in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but her parents refused. Vicious was cremated and his mother scattered his ashes over Spungen’s grave. 

Sid and Nancy’s legacies live on as Punk Rock’s own Bonnie and Clyde—lovers who lived on the edge and tested the limits until they fell. The movie Sid and Nancy immortalized the couple upon the film’s release in 1986 that tells the story of the couple’s ill-fated romance, with Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious and Chloe Webb as Nancy Spungen. (And Courtney Love even makes an appearance as an extra!)

Although 47 years have passed since Spungen’s death, the tragic story of her and Vicious’s imploded relationship continues to fascinate amid questions of his guilt and what exactly happened that night.