ode .. for those who didnt know who i was talkign about

Vicious was wandering the hallways, crying and agitated, when police arrived. His face was battered, but the bruising indicated that the beating had happened some time before police arrived. When his next-door neighbor came out of her room to see what was going on, Vicious reportedly said to her, "I killed her...I can't live without her." He was also heard muttering through his tears, "She must have fallen on the knife." A known heroin addict, Vicious was obviously high. Officers attempted to arrest him, but he resisted. Police subdued him and put him in handcuffs. Later that afternoon he was charged with second-degree homicide in the death of Nancy Spungen.



The news of Spungen's death and the murder charge against Vicious reverberated through the ranks of young people who defiantly called themselves "punks." Vicious' many fans saw him as nothing less than the embodiment of the punk philosophy—aggressively nihilistic and intentionally rude and offensive in all situations. His physical appearance underscored his beliefs — dyed spiked hair, rail-thin body, knock-kneed posture, worn black-leather motorcycle jacket, and his trademark dog chain and padlock around his neck. Punk was the antithesis of civilized middle-class values. Doing drugs, wearing tattered clothes and safety pins in facial piercings, living in squalor, and never paying more than a dollar for anything were not just lifestyle choices, they were part of the punk ethos. Spungen and Vicious had come to New York and the Chelsea Hotel in particular to enhance their status as punk royalty. But in the end they became the stuff of tragedy, the punk Romeo and Juliet.



Within a week, Vicious, despondent over the loss of Nancy, tried to take his own life by overdosing on methadone and slashing his arm. His mother discovered him and called for help, saving his life. Once again he tried to kick his habit, but he used up his methadone allotment too soon and had to suffer for days in painful drug withdrawal until the clinic would give him more. On October 28, he made another attempt to kill himself, slashing his wrists with a razor blade and a broken light bulb, screaming, according to author Malcolm Butt, "I want to join Nancy, I didn't keep my part of the bargain."

This time McLaren called for paramedics, but before they arrived, Vicious tried unsuccessfully to throw himself out a window. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he spent several days in detox before being discharged to his mother's care.

By December, Vicious had found a new girlfriend, actress Michelle Robinson, but by all accounts she was no substitute for Nancy in his heart. Together they made the punk club scene in Manhattan, Vicious frequently obnoxious and belligerent. On December 9, 1978, he got into a fight with Todd Smith, brother of punk-rock poet Patti Smith, at a club called Hurrah's, cutting Todd Smith's face with a broken bottle. Having violated the terms of his parole, Vicious was arrested and sent back to Riker's Island where he spent seven more weeks in the prison detox unit.

Vicious was released on February 1, 1979, and he immediately went back to heroin, this time supplied by his mother, according the New York Post. At a party celebrating his release at Michelle Robinson's Greenwich Village apartment, Vicious shot up and soon demanded more. His mother doled out another dose from her purse, and within 20 minutes he collapsed on the bed. Friends offered to take him to the hospital, but he refused to go. He drifted off and was left alone in the bedroom. Sometime during the night he woke up, found his mother's purse, and took the rest of the heroin. The next morning he was found dead.

A court of law never determined Sid Vicious's guilt or innocence in the death of Nancy Spungen. Friends and relatives knew that he beat her and that they sometimes beat each other. It's possible that he stabbed her in a fit of rage, his judgment clouded by his addiction.

But the couple also often spoke of taking their own lives, and just weeks before Nancy's death during their visit to the Spungens in Pennsylvania, they had mentioned that they probably wouldn't live long. During one of his suicide attempts after his arrest, Vicious did cry out that he hadn't lived up to his part of the "bargain." Is it possible that he and Nancy made a suicide pact, but in his drug haze he was unable to take his own life?

It has also been suggested that Nancy Spungen's killing was the result of a robbery gone bad. Rockets Redglare claimed that Spungen had cash spilling out of her bag in the early morning hours of October 12, but the next day police investigators found no sizeable amounts of cash in the room. Upon leaving the Chelsea Hotel at about 5 a.m., Redglare saw the mysterious "Steve C" in the lobby. According to author Malcolm Butt, Steve C was a "local drug dealer" with a "history of mental illness." Perhaps Steve C or someone else entered Room 100 while Vicious was unconscious or out wandering, attempted to take Spungen's money, and killed her when she put up a fight.

It might also have been a revenge killing. Spungen was not well-liked, and Butts claims that she had had an argument with a Puerto Rican drug gang the day before she died. Perhaps someone she had disrespected wanted payback.

Sex Pistols' lead singer Johnny Rotten never believed that Vicious was guilty. "Sid isn't capable of killing her," Rotten told Melody Maker in an October 1978 interview. "It's not possible."

The true circumstances of Nancy Spungen's death may never be uncovered, but its notoriety as what one policeman called New York's "first punk rock murder" will never fade. Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen will be remembered forever as the punk Romeo and Juliet—tragic in love and tragic in death.


http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious%5Fmurders/celebrity/sid%5Fvicious/