Nancy Laura Spungen

Rock Band Groupie. She is best remembered as the girlfriend of Sid Vicious, the bass guitarist for the British punk rock band the Sex Pistols. Born Nancy Laura Spungen in the Huntington Valley area of Lower Moreland Township, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Frank and Deborah Spungen, a middle-class Jewish couple. Her father was a businessman, and her mother owned a health food store in nearby Jenkintown, PA, known as "The Earth Shop." As a child, she was reportedly hyperactive and hostile to her younger sister Susan and younger brother David. Suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, her fits of anger leading to violence got her expelled from the local public school at age 11, and her parents sent her to psychotherapy. While a teenager, she reportedly attempted suicide several times, and suffered from extreme depression. After graduating from Devereux Manor High School, she briefly attended the University of Colorado. Shortly after leaving the University of Colorado, she moved to New York City, and became a groupie of rock bands including Aerosmith, The New York Dolls, and The Ramones. To earn money, she reportedly worked as a stripper and occasionally as a prostitute in New York City. She moved to London, England, to win the heart of American rocker Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls during their band tour there, but when introduced to the Sex Pistols' lead singer, Johnny Rotten, she switched over to them, and soon moved in with their bass guitarist, Sid Vicious. During the next 21 months, both Vicious and Spungen became addicted to heroin and other drugs. While Vicious' abuse of minor drugs was common knowledge, most associates believe that Spungen introduced him to heroin. The two would frequently have violent fights in public, break up, and get back together again, providing the tabloids with numerous stories of their public disagreements. When the Sex Pistols broke up as a group in 1978, Spungen and Vicious moved to the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, where Vicious continued his musical career. Their violent arguments continued, fueled by drugs, becoming common knowledge among the rock community and widely reported in the tabloids. On the morning of October 12, 1978, Spungen was found dead in their hotel bathroom, stabbed once with a knife. Vicious was initially arrested for her murder, although he claimed he had no memory of events of that night, having been in a drug stupor most of the evening. Vicious was released from jail after his bail of $50,000 was paid by his mother. While awaiting trial for her death, Vicious overdosed on heroin, although an autopsy showed that he also drowned in his own body fluids, common for persons who overdose on heroin. Since his death, there have been several theories expounded as to who else may have killed Spungen, as the couple were visited by several people at their apartment the night she was killed.