Punk Rock Romeo and Juliet: Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen
"Trouble in Room 100"
At about 11 a.m. on October 12, 1978, the desk clerk at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City received a call from outside the hotel. A man, who did not identify himself, told the clerk, "There's trouble in Room 100." The clerk sent a bellboy to check it out, but before he returned, the front desk received another call, this one from Room 100. "Someone is sick," a different male voice said. "Need help."
In the meantime, the bellboy entered Room 100 and found the scantily clad, blood-smeared body of a 20-year-old woman in the bathroom. The platinum blonde lay face-up on the floor, her head under the sink. She wore only a black bra and panties, both items soaked with blood from a one-inch knife wound in her lower abdomen. The bed was also extensively stained with blood.
The desk clerk called for an ambulance which arrived with a police escort. After the paramedics confirmed the woman was dead, police checked the room and found drugs and drug paraphernalia as well as a blood-stained Jaguar K-11 folding knife with a five-inch blade and a black jaguar carved into the handle. The victim had been living in Room 100 with her drug-addicted boyfriend whom police located in the hallway soon after their arrival.
The couple had been living in Manhattan's famous bohemian haven, the Chelsea Hotel, which at various times had hosted such illustrious guests as Eugene O'Neill, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Jane Fonda, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan, among many others. The couple had registered as Mr. and Mrs. John Ritchie, though they were not married. John Simon Ritchie was the man's real name, but he was better known as Sid Vicious, punk superstar and former bass player for the infamous British band, the Sex Pistols. His deceased companion's name was Nancy Spungen, a.k.a. 'Nauseating Nancy.'
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. (In New York first-degree homicide is reserved for the killings of police and court officers in the line of duty.)
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.