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Sid didn’t murder Nancy, says McLaren
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 10 February 2009
Malcolm McLaren has said that he doesn’t believe that the late Sid Vicious murdered girlfriend Nancy Spungen back in 1978.
Spungen, as you may be aware, was found dead in the couple’s New York hotel room on 12 Oct that year, having apparently bled to death from a single stab wound to her stomach. Vicious was, of course, subsequently arrested and charged with killing her, but claimed to have no memory of having done so. Within a few months Vicious himself had died from a heroin overdose.
Retreading old ground, McLaren disputes that the Sex Pistol had anything to do with Spungen’s death, claiming that he just wasn’t capable of that kind of act. In a new blog for The Daily Beast, McLaren writes: “I was stunned when I first heard this and I still can’t believe it. Sid was capable of a wide range of self-destructive acts, but I didn’t think that he could kill someone, especially his girlfriend, unless it was a botched double suicide”.
He goes on to offer his own theory as to how Spungen met her end. He writes: “[Sid] passed out on the bed, having taken fistfuls of the barbiturate Tuinal. All around him, drug dealers, friends of Nancy came and went from Room 100. Money was stolen and Sid’s knife was taken from the wall where it was hung and seemingly used by someone defending themselves in a struggle with Nancy. Nancy was no pushover. Probably, she caught this person stealing money from the bedroom drawer”.
A number of writers, including Alan Parker in ‘Too Fast To Live’, have accused a drug dealer called Rocket Redglare of wielding the knife.
