"They didn't know anything about her problems ": the story of Nancy Spungen, who had no chance (13 photos)

Even those who are not fond of the work of the scandalous Sex Pistols you must have heard the story of Sid, the band's bassist, and his girlfriend Nancy, who was found murdered in a room at the Chelsea Hotel on October 12, 1978.





The conventional wisdom is that Nancy was broken cunning, tagged along with the group, dragged Sid into extremely unhealthy relationships, sprinkled with a huge amount of prohibited substances of all types and varieties. Not to say that Sid was an angel, but somehow Nancy always blame more. But few people know the real biography of Spungen, knowing which it becomes clear that she was doomed from the very birth.

Nancy was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 27 1958. Her parents were named Deborah and Frank: her mother owned a small organic grocery store, and his father worked as a traveling salesman. IN In general, an ordinary middle-class family.

The birth was difficult: the girl was born in the seventh month, and in the time of childbirth was the entanglement of the umbilical cord and severe hypoxia occurred, in as a result of which Nancy practically died from lack of oxygen. To her received a complete blood transfusion.



In childhood

The girl always screamed, and it was not just an ordinary crying baby, it was real tantrums. At the age of three months the doctor prescribed liquid barbiturate for the girl. Mom poured his daughter, she stopped crying for two or three hours and then everything repeated again. Deborah said in an interview:

I knew it was normal for babies to cry, but Nancy just kept crying. She didn't do anything else.

At the age of two, the girl began to stutter.



Despite all these problems, at the age of five, Nancy was smart and smart beyond her years and she was even allowed to skip third grade. But she had few friends, because the character of the girl over the years has not flattened out, she was quarrelsome, hysterical and uncompromising. Nancy suffered from hallucinations and seizures, she suddenly started to tear her hair and constantly lashed out at everyone, despite the fact that She made the first contact very easily.

Deborah and Frank later had more children - David and Susan. Nancy constantly tried to harm her brother and sister. She threatened to kill scissors her nanny, tried to attack her psychiatrist, who accused her of simply attracting attention with her behavior.



At 11, Nancy was expelled from school when she just I stopped going there and did not appear at the school for two weeks. IN at that moment, Nancy decided that she no longer needed her studies, plus they played their the role of drugs prescribed by a psychiatrist - they caused hallucinations. Parents were exhausted by the behavior of their eldest daughter and recorded her in boarding school, but she also escaped from there in 1972. Then she attempted her first suicide attempt by cutting herself with scissors wrist. For this disruption, it was enough just that no one was at home answered when Nancy called. At the age of 15, the psychiatrist first set She was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

She still graduated from school and even entered the university, but less than six months later she was arrested for buying marijuana. Nancy expelled from the university and from Boulder, where he was university.



Examination after examination and the doctors could not come to unanimous opinion. There was no specific diagnosis, but one doctor put forward the assumption that the very serious generic injury...

Nancy even managed to get the rights, but crashed twice car, and when her mother did not allow her to drive, the girl broke the window with his bare hands, seriously crippling himself. She was sent back to psychiatric clinic. At this point, Deborah decided to tidy up the daughter's room and found sooty spoons and syringes... Soon a patient from sent home at home, refusing to treat, and since then more the girl did not receive psychiatric help.



The further history of Nancy is known.

The atmosphere of punk and denial that prevailed during that period is excellent fit into her inner chaos. In December 1975, she settled in apartment in New York, a couple of blocks from the Chelsea Hotel. mom first the time when I visited my daughter, I was even happy for her - the refrigerator is full, Nancy don't be sassyum, publishes his notes about punk music in magazines. But the lull was short-lived, the girl called her parents more and more often, then complaining about that no one loves her, then begging for money. At that time, Nancy began to enter the punk scene, getting acquainted with one group, then with another, entering into a relationship with one or the other.



A little later, Nancy told her mom and dad that she got a job work as a stripper in one of the clubs in Times Square. One of her friends claimed that the girl periodically had sexual services to men for money, and this income allowed her to finally get addicted to heroin.

However, already in 1976, Nancy underwent a course of treatment for methadone, completely cleared. Not for long. Within a month she started to inject again, then again a course of methadone and at the age of 19, being completely clean, went to London with friends. It happened in March 1977.

She called her mother a few days later and with delight told how she met the Sex Pistols. She was inspired, full of creative plans, but that's all. More plans the case didn't work out.



Acquaintance with Sid unexpectedly grew into strong and kind of affectionate relationship. They lived here and there, used everything what is possible, and neither the tour of Vicious nor the character of Nancy could these ruin relationships. They were always for each other, they both did not have no happy childhood, and in general there was little good in life.

It is worth noting that Sid was only on stage and in an interview. a kind of gouging punk who did not put at least some social norms. In life, he was a rather calm guy, a little shy, whose personality contrasted strongly with the assertive and scandalous Spudgeon. By the way, the whole group hated her, along with Sex Pistols producer Malcolm McLaren. She was blamed for being not only wanted to kill herself slowly, but also in the fact that she I wanted to take Vicious with me.



It's been a year and a half since Deborah and Nancy last met. IN In 1978, the mother visited her daughter who had returned to New York and was shocked:

She looked like a victim of the Holocaust: blue skin, bleached hair, deep sunken eyes, dark circles under them, scars and sores on the face. She was wearing dirty black clothes. She has lost a lot of weight.

On October 8, the girl called her mother. She asked for three thousand dollars, and Sid, who was standing nearby, joined in the pleas. Deborah just hung up. Nancy dialed it again and suddenly, instead of the usual tantrums, demands and scandals, the girl told her mother that she loves her and daddy, she said that she will come home soon because is already at the bottom. She tearfully asked her mother to find her and Sid detox clinic in Pennsylvania. Deborah kept her promise, only in clinic asked to call back on October 12 to clarify the availability places.



October 11 Sid, Nancy and their friends went shopping and Nancy bought Sid a gift - a huge folding knife for self-defense. The young man said that in the clinic where he was undergoing treatment on methadone, he was attacked more than once by drug addicts.

In the evening, the couple came to their friends, who rented a room in that at the Chelsea Hotel where Sid and Nancy lived. The musician was in terrible state: he constantly repeated that he had no future, that he ugly that he doesn't know how to play at all. Nancy demanded drugs. The company wandered from room to room and ended up in room number 100, where the couple lived and which was just a passage yard.

Sid threw some inhuman amount of pills into himself and simply passed out.

And then the morning came... On October 12, Nancy was found lying in the bathroom covered in blood, stabbed with the same knife.



Yes, Syd, stuffed with substances, admitted during interrogations that he killed his girlfriend, but many are sure that he could not do it, because he was not only unable to stand that evening and night, but even simply was unable to open his eyes. What can we say about putting many stab wounds to a rather strong girl, even if under drugs.

Sid outlived Nancy by several months and died of an overdose.



Nancy's grave

Nancy Spungen was buried on October 15 at the State Cemetery. Pennsylvania.Her friends were asked not to bring flowers to the grave, but instead to make donations to a drug rehabilitation center, where Deborah and Frank set up a foundation in their daughter's name. Before burial Nancy's hair was dyed a natural color and dressed her body in prom green dress.

Deborah Spungen recalled how the press attacked Nancy:

All of us, both friends and relatives, were horrified by that vulgarity with which Nancy was humiliated in the press. For them all she was Nauseous Nancy, some rich junkie slut starving by pleasure. They didn't know anything about her problems. And them it's not interested.



You can't romanticize addiction. In general, drugs this is bad. This is an axiom. But this story is meant to show that drug addiction - this is not just a dependence on substances from promiscuity. Nancy with the same success could become a gamer or an alcoholic. This was a man with born prone to addictions and not the last role in this played by the doctors who recommended that the baby be given substances to drink, obviously for not intended for him. And her life from the start was just snowball, which is rapidly rolling into the grave.