The tragic story of Sid and Nancy

Hello everybody and welcome back to Unthinkable, a true crime podcast. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you are all well. So, today's case, I'm going to talk about a punk tragedy. Most of us know the punk rock band The Sex Pistols. Now, they released their one and only album back in the 70s, but they left a huge legacy, their anti-establishment lyrics, their rebellious and provocative behaviour, and the raw, unpolished, loud music by Johnny Rotten sneering down the microphone at the crowd.

The Sex Pistols are widely considered one of the biggest catalysts of the entire punk movement. Sid Vicious was the second bass player of the band, and he was known for not being a particularly good bass player, but because of his style, with his black spiky hair, his leather jackets, and his attitude and volatile lifestyle, Sid became one of the most recognizable culture icons of the punk era. And with his death at such a young age, he will forever remain that icon. And I have to say I have a real soft spot for Sid Vicious.

And if you don't know Sid's story, I'm going to talk a bit about his childhood today, which is really sad, and you'll see he never really stood a chance. And of course, I will be talking about the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy SpongeBob. So this is the case of Sid Vicious and the death of his girlfriend, Nancy. So who was Sid? So Sid was born on the 10th of May 1957 in Lewisham, South London. His birth name was John Simon Ritchie, but I'm going to refer to him as Sid, even though he didn't take the name Sid Vicious until later.

But it's how I know him, so I think I'm just going to stick with Sid. So his parents, using the words loosely, were Anne MacDonald and John Ritchie. So Sid's dad left the family soon after he was born and he never saw his father again. He just left and completely abandoned the family. But Anne actually moved with baby Sid to Ibiza soon after John left, but she apparently was expecting him to meet her there so they could start a new life in Spain, but he simply never showed up. They ended up stranded.

Anne turned to selling to cannabis to try and make some money, but after around six months of trying to find their way, Anne ended up having to seek help from the British Embassy in Spain to help them return to the UK, and in 1958, when Sid was just one, they flew home. They initially lived back in London for a time before settling in Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Sid grew up here and enrolled in school, and in 1965 Anne met and married Christopher Beverly, changing her name to Anne Beverly. And this could have finally been some stability for the family, but tragically the marriage was short-lived as Christopher actually died of kidney failure six months after the wedding.

And for Anne, who was already dabbling with cannabis, after Chris died, her drug taking escalated massively leading to a severe heroin addiction, and she even began dealing. And rather than shield her son from her substance abuse, she actually introduced him to the drug she was taking. In 1971, Sid and his mother moved back to London, residing in Hackney, East London. Sid did enroll in school in London, but he dropped out shortly after. He didn't do well in school, this was not helped by his chaotic and volatile home life, but he just lacked interest in any subject.

He was always in trouble and often absent. So by the age of 15, he left. But then in 1973, he enrolled in art college on a photography course. This was at Hackney Technical College, and in 1973, colleges accepted students who left secondary school without any formal qualifications. So Sid, well, he didn't finish his college course. In fact, he wasn't there long at all. But this is a slide-in-doors moment in his life because at his brief stay in college, Sid meets John Lyden, aka Johnny Rotten. Now the pair hit it off straight away and they bonded over music and their anti-establishment attitude.

And it was Johnny that gave Sid the name Sid Vicious. This was because Johnny's pet hamster called Sid bit our Sid, which led to Johnny saying Sid's really vicious and the name Sid Vicious stuck. Now, on Sid's 16th birthday, his mother Anne, she gave him a birthday present. And what did she give him? Sid's mother gave her 16-year-old son a bag of heroin. Yep. And two needles so he can inject himself. Could you imagine? On that same day, she kicks him out. She told Sid it's either you or me and that she had to look after herself, so she told him to go.

Sid was literally left to fend for himself. So homeless and nowhere to go with no family, Sid survived by squatting, moving between abandoned buildings and couch surfing with friends. But at this time his friend John Leiden had also been kicked out after a fallout with family. The pair squatted together and to make money they would busk on the streets of London. Johnny would sing while Sid played the tambourine. And they did make some extra money by doing low-paid jobs like working at the local street markets, and Sid did have some manual labour jobs, so although they're struggling, they're managing to get by.

They spent their evenings hanging out in local pubs in North London and sneaking into music venues. During the day, Sid and Johnny would hang around the King's Road, which was an epicentre for counterculture. Like-minded teens would gather and form bonds and friendships over anti-establishment views and their rejection of social expectation. They rebelled against societal norms. The King's Road was lined with small independent shops and boutiques rather than commercial chains. And one in particular, an eccentric boutique named Sex, was owned by none other than Vivian Westwood and her then partner, Malcolm McLaren.

The store became a daily hangout for misfits, teenage squatters, art students and musicians. The shop specialised in subculture fashion, selling anti-establishment slogan t-shirts, leather jackets with spikes, fetish and bondage wear, items of clothing designed to shock and inspire youth rebellion. Sid and Johnny fit right in here. Sid loved the shock value of radical fashion being different. It's around this time Sid started spiking his iconic jet black hair. Sid's hair literally set the standard for punk hairstyles.

Sid and Johnny were often seen at sex wearing custom ripped clothing held together with safety pins, heavy leather boots and studded belts. The pair caught the attention of Malcolm McLaren because of their striking style, but it was Johnny who stood out with his sharp wit and intellect and his I just don't give a F U C K attitude that Malcolm was drawn to. Now Malcolm had just taken over as manager of a band called The Strand. He changed the name to The Sex Fistors, and the idea was to create a band designed to shock, provoke, and outrage society.

The band would perform in controversial clothes from the boutique like bondage gear and t-shirts with the controversial slogans, essentially promoting his boutique. And John Lydon, he had the confrontational attitude that Malcolm and Vivian wanted their clothing to represent. John Lydon would become the front man of the Sex Pistols. The band had four members, so Glenn Matlock on bass, Paul Cook on drums, Steve Jones on guitar, and Johnny Leydon lead vocals. And it was guitarist Steve Jones who gave the nickname Johnny Rotten to John.

This was due to his poor personal hygiene and the terrible condition of his teeth. So from then on he was known as Johnny Rotten. And on a side note, John Leydon is actually a really nice guy. So Malcolm McLaren has his band now for the songs. He wanted the music of the Sex Pistols to be as shocking and provoking as they possibly could. He wanted lyrics that would cause outrage, chaos, youth rebellion, and anger. He encouraged the band members to embrace the antisocial abrasive stage presence rather than trying to be like traditional polite and friendly entertainers.

So the Sex Pistols had their first performance booked on the 6th of November 1975. Now they were playing as the opening act for a band called the Bazooka Joes, and this was at St. Martin's School of Art. Now I wish this performance had been filmed. I would have absolutely loved to have seen it. Its description sounds like it was utter carnage. So the Sex Pistols were using the headline act's equipment to perform. So they start the set, and from the get-go, it's all incredibly chaotic and loud. Johnny paced the floor, sneering at the crowd.

He was making sarcastic remarks between songs and glared menacingly at bewildered students. It was clear the band hadn't really rehearsed, and when the band started handling the equipment roughly, the headline acts guitarist actually pulled the plug out the amplifier to stop the performance and force them off stage. And then a fight broke out between the two bands over the sudden shutdown. It was said that the student audience was sat in their seats completely stunned and confused. Like what's just happened?

They were expecting to see, you know, a nice band. And then this happens. But this is what Malcolm wanted. He pushed for the sex pistols to be as outrageous as possible. He saw bad behavior as free publicity, and he was right. Word spread of the raw, unapologetic, aggressive, and chaotic punk band emerging. The sex pistols performed the very next day, and this gig was just as chaotic as the first. Carnage, but they were becoming popular with teens and young adults, art students, and dropouts. So in the 70s, their futures looked bleak.

There was widespread youth unemployment due to the industrial decline. Living costs were rising, and due to the miners' strike in 1974, the government restricted commercial electricity use to three days a week, leaving parts of the city in darkness. Kids were frustrated. They felt like they were being ignored and left to suffer by the government. Then along came the sex pistols. Their angry and anti-establishment lyrics gave them an outlet for their anger. Loyal fans flocked their performances. In the beginning they played in small crowded venues like art schools, pubs, and cinemas.

Johnny, true to form, would taunt and mock the crowds. Fights often broke out and the audience would throw beer cans at the band. And right there in the centre of the crowd was Sid Vicious, throwing himself around menacingly. Sid actually invented pogoing, which is a punk-style dance where you literally just jump up and down violently in one place. Now on November 26th, 1976, the Sex Pistols released their first single, Anarchy in the UK. And as you can imagine, there was a mixed reaction. It was met with excitement and curiosity by teens and music reporters, but most people dismissed the band as untrained and unpolished.

Major radio stations actually refused to play the single. A few days later, on the 1st of December 1976, the band appeared live on television on a show called Today, hosted by Bill Grundy, and it was like a news current affairs programme. It aired at 6 pm, right in the middle of family dinner time. The Sex Pistols appear rude, uninterested, and bored, and then the band's guitarist Steve Jones, where he swears live on TV, followed by Johnny Rotten also swearing. Well, the next morning the reaction from the British public exploded.

There was outrage. The press ran headlines like The Filth and the Fury and Punk, it's just yobbery, and the Daily Mirror devoted an entire front page to the band's behaviour. There was even reports of a man called Lee Cullen who was so offended by the language, he actually kicked in the screen of his television. Really? And Bill Grundy, where he was suspended for two weeks over the interview, accusing him of sloppy journalism, and he was definitely taunting them, he was trying to wind them up. So the Sex Pistols had had venues booked all over the country to perform their anarchy talk, but after their TV appearance, most of the venues cancelled, telling the band they were no longer welcome to perform.

Now this just wasn't about swearing, this was a clash between an older conservative generation and a new anti-establishment culture who refused to follow rules. Whilst most states were cancelled, a few venues let them play. The Electric Circus in Manchester agreed to let the band perform as Manchester was already involved in the punk scene and so they embraced the chaos. On the 14th of December 1976, the band played at the Castle Cinema in Caffilly, Wales, but protesters against them stood outside singing religious hymns and Christmas carols.

So we get to February 1977. Now Glenn Matlock, who is the Sex Pest Pistol's original bass player, he ends up leaving the band. Now this is due to tensions between him and the rest of the band. The other members start regarding him as too sensible. And when it emerged that he was a fan of the Beatles, Johnny Rotten would taunt him, causing more and more tension and hostility between the band members. It's unclear if Glenn left or was fired, but Malcolm McLaren famously sent a telegram to the press stating that Matlock was fired because he was always washing his feet and he liked the Beatles.

So who would replace Glenn? Well, this is where we see Sid Fisher become the band's new bass player. And this is Sid's dream. He fits the band's chaotic visual style. He was a punk rocker through and through. Sid had attended all of the Sex Pistols performances, causing his own chaos. Sid was always causing mayhem and getting into fights, which would normally end with him being beaten up because he wasn't really a fighter. So he's the perfect image for the band. Only trouble is Sid can't play bass.

He can't play any instrument. But apparently this didn't matter. Audiences were drawn to Sid. On stage he brought an unpredictable and dangerous energy. He would play up to the cameras. People described him as being captivating. Malcolm, their manager, said that when Sid was on stage, the audience actually shifted towards the side of the stage where Sid was playing. And you can see in some of the footage on YouTube of the Sex Pistols and Sid performing, and there is something about him. He's bouncing around, often topless, pulling faces at the crowd.

Now, shortly after Sid joins the band, a young woman named Nancy Spongeon arrived in London. Nancy was originally from Pennsylvania but had been living in New York. She had travelled to the UK seeking to immerse herself in the London punk rock scene. Nancy was every bit as punk as the Sex Pistols, wearing leather jackets, fishnet tights, ripped t-shirts, heavy eyeliner, and she quickly grew a reputation on the London punk scene. She was loud, blunt, aggressive, and outspoken. But unlike many teenagers in London, Nancy grew up in a middle class, stable, supportive family.

However, Nancy struggled from a young age. She suffered severe behavioural and mental health challenges, and she'd actually become addicted to heroin at the age of just 14. Shortly after arriving in London, Nancy was introduced to the Sex Pistols. Initially she set her sights on Johnny Rotten, but he refused her advances, so she turned to Sid. And by March 1977, Sid and Nancy began dating. And they are the ultimate punk rocker couple. Everything about them, their style, their disruptive and chaotic behaviour, it was like they were made for each other.

The pair quickly became deeply attached to each other, and Nancy became a constant presence at the Sex Pistols rehearsals and shows.

But Nancy's behaviour was so disruptive that even Johnny Rotten of all people grew tired of her and her influence on Sid. Now, although Sid was already experimenting with drugs like speed and amphetamine, he wasn't a regular heroin user. Despite his own mother giving him heroin at 16, he never really took it. But after meeting heroine addict Nancy, Sid quickly developed a full-blown heroin addiction. And this is tragic. Sid's on-stage presence shifted drastically. The performances were always chaotic, but now drug fueled.

Sid began extreme self-harm. He would use broken glass to carve words onto his chest, leaving him covered in blood. It's extreme even for a band like the Sex Pistols. As Nancy and Sid's relationship intensified further, Sid's commitment to the band started to waver, and when the couple moved in together, their intense bond moved to obsession. Their relationship was fueled by a shared heroin addiction, a complete codependency that the couple just never wanted to be apart from each other. Sid would prefer to lock himself away with Nancy, taking drugs.

The band's manager, Malcolm McLaren, he did try repeatedly to intervene and separate the couple. Johnny Rotten tried to physically ban Nancy from turning up at rehearsals and shows. Johnny despised Nancy. He knew she was driving Sid's heroin addiction. Johnny tried to talk sense into Sid, he even tried to force him into a detox programme. Nancy now viewed Johnny and Malcolm as enemies and she actively worked to isolate Sid further from them. Now the Sex Pistols were due to leave London in January 1978 to go on a tour of the US.

Malcolm, realizing he couldn't split Sid and Nancy up, he officially banned Nancy from accompanying them on the tour. Malcolm's plan was to get Sid through the tour away from Nancy and sober. He would force him into a detox in a bid to finally get him free of heroin. However, Sid was an addict. He spent the tour in a heroin withdrawal, he took random pills from strangers and drank heavily. He was deeply angry at the band from stopping him from being with Nancy. Sid's behaviour became increasingly unhinged.

On stage he appeared either dazed and sluggish, stumbling all over the equipment, or violent and full of rage. In one incident, during a performance at Randy's rodeo in San Antonio, Sid bludgeoned an audience member over the head with his bass guitar. And more shockingly, during the performance at Loghorn Ballroom in Dallas, Sid used a razor to carve the words give me a fit into his chest. The Sex Pistol's final show was on the 14th of January 1978 in San Francisco at the Winterland Ballroom, and it was an absolute disaster.

There were technical failures, guitar strings kept breaking, and Sid was described as a ghost. He was completely out of it. The band unplugged his bass and they just left him to stumble around the stage, falling over equipment. Johnny Rotten looked defeated. Gone was his energy and hostility towards the crowd. He was unenthusiastic as he talked his way through a cover of the Stooges song No Fun. He was just kneeling on the stage, and at the very end of the song, Johnny Rotten stood up and said, Do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Good night. Then he dropped the microphone and walked off stage. And that was it. That was the end of the Sex Pistols. Four days later, the band officially announced they'd split. They flew back to London and Sid went straight back to Nancy. Johnny Rotten never saw his friend again. Now, after the band split, manager Malcolm McLaren came up with the idea of making a documentary type film about the Sex Pistols called The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. Johnny Rotten refused to have anything to do with it, he called it a pile of rubbish.

But the band members Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Sid appeared in newly filmed scripted scenes. They were filmed mostly in Paris to escape the media attention. And it was in Paris where Sid performed his famous and very punked-up version of Frank Sinatra's My Way. The film would be accompanied by a soundtrack featuring early Sex Pistols demos and studio tracks sung by Steve Jones and Sid Vicious. Sid would die before the film was finished, but he had finished filming his required scenes. So after this, Sid and Nancy relocated to New York City.

Nancy, she did manage to book Sid four performances at Max's Kansas City in Manhattan. And he managed to draw in huge crowds, but within a month, Sid's heroine addiction had totally consumed him, and this ended his attempt at a solo career. So in August 1978, Sid and Nancy moved into the Chelsea Hotel, into room 100. The hotel had a reputation for letting guests live entirely on their own terms, often letting rent slides and accepting gift or artwork instead of actual payments, which is perfect for struggling musicians.

Sid and Nancy lived a destructive, heroin-fueled life at the Chelsea Hotel. The couple sank deeper and deeper into addiction. While they had intense periods of codependent isolation, Room 100 was mostly chaotic. It was like a revolving door with all kinds of people coming and going. They would have drug-fueled parties with one of the musicians, artists, and drug dealers. Life is now pretty much taking huge amounts of drugs, passing out, waking up, taking more drugs, passing out, continuing the cycle.

It's just such a sorrowful existence, isn't it? So now on the evening of the 11th of October 1978, Sid and Nancy host a drug party. Sid and Nancy have been injecting heroin throughout the day and into the evening. Sid has also been taking tuanol, which is a powerful sedative. Throughout the evening, Sid took 30 tuanol sedatives. That is a lethal dose, but for Sid, because of his high tolerance to drugs, it didn't kill him, but it did put him into a completely unresponsive state. The party continued while Sid remained comatosed.

All kinds of people came in and out of the couple's room. Witnesses report that the room was never empty during that night. It was chaotic with heavy drug use. Drug dealers were turning up to provide more drugs. Nancy had called her own drug dealer, Rockets Redgrave, at around 2.30 to provide her with more pills. Now we don't know what really happened that night in that hotel room, but at around 9.30 the next morning, Sid emerges from his coma. He was led on the bed alone, covered in blood. Confused, he looks around for Nancy.

He spots blood leading to the bathroom. Inside he discovers Nancy. She slumped in the corner of the room in her black underwear with a five inch folding knife sticking out of her chest. Nancy Spongeon was dead. She had bled to death. At ten AM, the front desk of the Chelsea Hotel received a panic phone call from Sid. He says something has happened to his girlfriend and he's begging them for help. Sid was described as completely distraught. He was seen wandering around disorientated and in floods of tears.

The police and the emergency services arrive, and Nancy is pronounced dead at the scene. Sid, although highly distressed, is arrested and taken into custody that morning for questioning. During his interrogation, Sid was still heavily under the influence of all the drugs he had taken the night before. He gave three chaotic contradictive versions of what he thought had happened, and in one he did admit to it. He said that he killed her because he's a dirty dog. Then he claimed he was holding the knife and Nancy ran into it.

And then later, when the drugs wore off, Sid went into total denial. He told detectives that he had been completely unconscious all through the night due to the massive amounts of sedatives he'd consumed. He insisted he had no memory of the night and that he wouldn't have been capable of moving, let alone stabbing anyone. But police took Sid's initial erratic confession and charged him with second-degree murder. Now Sid's bail was$50,000 and it was actually Virgin Records that posted his bail, and then Mick Jagger, he secretly covered Sid's legal fees and he hired a lawyer and he chose to keep his involvement anonymous.

Malcolm McLaren, he's nowhere to be seen. After Sid was released, he was then later rearrested after getting into a bar fight, but this time he was sent to Rikers Island to go through a detox program. Now Rikers Island is a jail, but as many people who enter the jail system suffer with substance abuse issues, they do have a medical unit to help inmates go through withdrawal. And Sid got clean. Sid was clean from any drugs or alcohol for the first time in years. After 55 days of drugs being completely out of his system, Sid Vicious was released.

And it was Sid's mother Anne that picks him up from outside the prison. Here she is, good old Anne. She takes Sid back to her apartment and they decide to throw Sid a party to celebrate his freedom. At around 7 pm, a small group of friends arrive, and Sid's mother cooks everyone's spaghetti bolognese. And then she goes to get some heroin. Her son's clean. What is she doing? So it's around midnight, Sid injects a large amount of heroin into his arm. Now he immediately immediately collapses and he starts turning blue.

Because he's been clean for nearly two months, he's lost his tolerance to the drug. Now somehow Sid's mother manages to revive him and she starts walking him around the room until he becomes coherent again. And after a while, Sid seems like he's gonna be okay. But the party's over, the friends leave, and Sid goes to bed with his new girlfriend, Michelle Robinson. Now at some point in the night, Sid is injected with more heroin. And the next morning, he's dead. Sid was found dead in bed, having suffered a massive heroin overdose.

He was just 21 years old. Now, because at the time of his death, Sid was the sole suspect in Nancy's death, the police actually closed the case. They didn't proceed with any investigation, even though there were hundreds of people there that night, and Sid was literally in a coma. Days after his death, his mother discovered a handwritten note in the pocket of his leather jacket. It read that he wanted to fulfil the pact that he had made with Nancy, requesting to be buried alongside her in his signature clothing, but Sid couldn't be buried with Nancy as she was Jewish and she was buried in a Jewish cemetery, but Sid was not Jewish.

But there are reports that Sid's mother Anne had Sid cremated so she could scatter his ashes over Nancy's graves so they could be together again. So did Sid give himself the second fatal shot of heroin? Well apparently not. According to Alan Parker, who is an author and journalist, he claimed that on her deathbed, Sid's mother Anne, who died in 1996, she confessed that she had been the one to inject the lethal dose. She claimed that she had done this so Sid wouldn't go to prison, and instead he could be with the love of his life, Nancy.

So did Sid kill his girlfriend? We will never really know what happened the night that Nancy died unless someone confesses. In my own personal opinion, I don't think Sid killed her at all. Despite his persona, close friends of Sid said he wasn't truly violent. He's described as a sweet, vulnerable young man who was easy to manipulate. John Leiden maintained that Sid was a gentle soul. He said that when the drugs took hold, Sid would end up in fights, but he could never defend himself. He said that the aggressive punk persona was just a mask to cover up how vulnerable he was.

And Glenn Matlark, the Sex Pistols bass player, described Sid as soft and lovable, but desperate to fit in. The scary Sid vicious image was created by the media and the band's manager. And Sid loved Nancy more than anything. They were unstable and bad for each other, but he loved her. Plus, there's the absolute unmistakable fact that Sid was completely unconscious. He'd taken thirty of the strongest sedative pills you can have. They're actually banned from being prescribed because they are so strong.

And he'd taken thirty. And there are some plausible theories into who killed Nancy. One of many that I think is worth mentioning is drug dealer Rockets Red Glare. Nancy called him to the room at the Chelsea Hotel in the early hours of the morning. There was a large sum of money on show in the room, as Sid had just had a massive payout from his performance in Manhattan. So did Rockets try and steal the money? Nancy tried to stop him, and then he stabbed her. To back this up, when the police arrived, the money was gone, there was no money in the room, and Rockets was later seen with wads of cash, and apparently some notes were bloodstained.

There was even talk of Rockets actually confessing shortly before his death in 2001. This is a truly deeply tragic story. Sid was caught up in a cycle of pain and addiction. Nobody sets out to be an addict. Nobody wants to end up that way. But once you're in it, how do you get out? Particularly when you're surrounded by it. And I know it's just my opinion, but Malcolm McLaren, he exploited Sid. He replaced Glenn, the original bass player who could actually play bass really well, with Sid who couldn't play at all.

And then he pushed him to be as outrageous as he could on stage. Sid needed help, but Malcolm continued to encourage Sid's escalating behaviour. But when Sid was arrested, Malcolm completely disappeared. And you may say that Sid is responsible for his own behaviour, but remember he was just a kid. He was lost and vulnerable, he was homeless, he had a terrible mother, and he was pushed into a world of drug-fueled chaos. To this day, Sid Vicious is universally recognized as the ultimate visual symbol of the 1970s punk rock movement.

Sid and Nancy will go down in history. Pop culture has romanticized their destructive relationship into an anti-establishment star-crossed lover story cut short. The reality is they were two deeply troubled young people who found each other. They shared a fiercely loyal us against the world bond, but they were terrible for each other. Their mutual self-destructive behaviour ultimately caused their downfall. And it appears their relationship was always going to end in tragedy. Thank you for listening, guys.

Do let me know what your thoughts are on this episode. I'd be interested to hear thoughts on who you think is responsible for Nancy's death. I'll be back next week for a new episode, and I like to end by saying in a world where you can be anything, be kind. Take care.

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