Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 3

Friday, October 13.1978 Philadelphia Daily News 3 mam wwwwj'u-yjjgtyyroiifl By DEBORAH ORIN Special to the Daily News NEW YORK Sid Vicious, bass guitarist of Britain's spitting and stomping Sex Pistols punk rock group, yesterday was arrested and charged with stabbing to death his blonde girl friend, Nancy Laura Spungen, of Huntingdon Valley, in suburban Philadelphia. Spungen, 20, allegedly was murdered in the couple's room in Manhattan's famed Chelsea Hotel. Uior.n.U.nJn..l.J .1 1 II 1.3 mo iai-c yait: auu oi aiuicu, iuc ucjieu-iuuRiug icious, zi, munerea curses and i smash your cameras as ue was leu lrom me noiei wnere the young woman's body was found crumpled under the bathroom sink, clad in a blood-soaked black lace bra and panties. Spungen, daughter of Mr. and Mrs.

Franklin A. Spungen, of Red Barn Lane in Huntingdon Valley, Montgomery County, had been stabbed deep in the abdomen, police said. There were signs of a struggle, and a trail of blood led from the disorderly bedroom to the bath of Room 100, where Spungen and Vicious had registered in August as Mr. and Mrs. John Ritchie his real name.

THE COUPLE, who lived with a small black and white kitten, frequently appeared "spaced out," hotel employes and residents said. The woman also had bruises or a black eye, they said. "He beats her with a guitar every so often, but I didn't think he was going to kill her," said a young man in a brown checkered shirt and cowboy boots who refused to give his name, but was identified by hotel employes as a friend of the couple. The youth said he had been with the pair until 4 a.m. yesterday and Spungen had begged him to come home with them because Vicious was acting strange and had pressed his hunting knife against her throat.

Vicious hated blacks and had been threatening to kill the first black he saw, according to the unidentified friend. The man said the guitarist seemed fond of Spungen, "but if you're sick upstairs, it doesn't matter." THE SEX PISTOLS who rose to the top of the London charts while jabbing their cheeks with safety pins, spitting on their fans and calling the Queen of England "a moron" broke up after an abortive U.S. tour under the auspices of Warner Brothers last January Spungen was by Vicious' side last January when he was taken unconscious from a Los Angeles to New York flight at Kennedy Airport, suffering what was described as "an overdose of pills and alcohol" and brought to Jamaica Hospital in Queens for treatment. Both Vicious and Spungen said they expected to die young "I'll kill myself as soon as the first wrinkle appears," she once said. Their neighbors in the opulent Maida Vale section of West London where the couple lived before coming to New York this summer recalled that he once locked her out Vicious (left) is led from Manhattan hotel after arrest "I AM NOT or never have been a groupie," she told a reporter last winter, shortly after she and Vicious were arraigned in a London court on charges of drug possession.

"If a groupie came up to Sid, he'd kick her in the face." Born John Ritchie, the name in which, he and Spungen were registered, as Mr. and since August at Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, Sid Vicious apparently adopted his stage name after some introspective deliberation. "He's no Jekyll and Hyde," a publicist for the Sex Pistols told a reporter shortly before the punkers broke up earlier this year. "He's vicious offstage and on." Tragically, 20-year-old Nancy Spungen apparently had to learn that the hardest possible way. "I was always into music, but everything was getting so boring," she told a reporter.

"The Pistols were different, exciting." Restless and apparently aimless, she had dropped out of the University of Colorado and worked as "a sort of go-go dancer" in New York when the lure of the punk subculture 'prompted her to journey to London over 18 months ago to see the Sex Pistols shock, abuse and strangely gratify their audiences. The young woman would react angrily to any suggestion that she was a groupie, one of those single-minded, starstruck arrested adolescents who trail the rock bands everywhere, and frequently to bed. She said her first personal contact with Sid Vicious had been an entirely coincidental meeting in London and she ran up and down the street wearing only a G-string and shouting, "I love you." Like the other Sex Pistols, Vicious was inclined to spit and curse at reporters. Heoften spit beeron fans and sometimes wore handcuffs as a lark. BUT YESTERDAY the handcuffs were real, as Vicious was taken to be booked at Manhattan's 3d Homicide Zone.

The guitarist's spiky hair was black against a pasty white face, and he wore a fluffy red blue and yellow sweater, a pointy metal ring, skintight jeans and heavy black shoes. Manhattan Chief of Detectives Martin Duffy said Vicious claimed he was under the influence of the depressant Tuinal when he awoke at 10:50 a.m., realized Spungen was not in bed next to him and found her body lying in the bathroom. But hotel employes said the switchboard earlier had receiv ed an outside call asking that someone check Room 100 because "someone is seriously injured, and I'm not kidding, man." The hotel workers said Vicious was out of the room when a bellman found the body, but returned before police arrived. Police declined comment on that story and on reports they had found a blood-covered hunting knife in the Nancy Spungen: "I'm not a groupie" unk Rock Soundly Criticize By JACK McKINNEY The steely glitter and kinky aura of punk rock held a fatal attraction for Nancy Spungen. Literally.

The bizarre nihilism of the punk life-style was a "personal trip" for the 20-year-old Huntingdon Valley native, who recently told a reporter, "I never think about the future." Her trip and her future ended early yesterday in a New York hotel room, where Nancy was found stabbed to death under the bathroom sink. Police charged her living companion, Sid Vicious, a bass player for the now-disbanded British punk rock group, the Sex Pistols, with Spungen's murder. A reporter was turned away from the luxurious home of Spungen's parents last night by a woman who stated simply, "They have no comment at this time," before firmly shutting the door. A CARLOAD OF teenage girls curbed briefly across the street from the house. "It was Nancy, wasn't it?" the driver whispered.

"The police were here this morning looking for her father. Oh my God, poor Nancy." Nancy Spungen, described by teachers as "brilliant" and "intellectually gifted," graduated at 16 from the Devereux School, a private boarding academy in Devon for emotionally troubled youngsters. She was remembered there as a good athlete, with a talent for creative writing and a keen interest in music. Even as a pre-teen, Spungen showed a taste for the most radical forms of musical expression. "She was into acid rock when she was 10," girlhood friend and neighbor Robin Brock told a reporter last year WHEN THE bitterly contemptuous punk rock exploded out of the bowels of England's grimy white slums to challenge the black reggae sound, Spungen was an instant convert.

By ROBERT STRAUSS Punk Rock floated over from Great Britain on a safety pin a few years ago, wrapped in a 1950s black leather jacket, playing a 1960s ultradiscordant electric guitar and looking for some 1970s grunge. One music critic called the new genre, epitomized by Sid Vicious' Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols, "a cacophony of squeals looking for a cacophony of squeals." The Sex Pistols got their names as well as their vital parts on the international news wires in December 1976, when they were booed off stages on a nine-city British tour after they had used four-letter words during a TV appearance. In return, the group stripped on stage at various times and pointed their private parts at public persons. A month later, they left on a Dutch tour, but not before vomiting and spitting on fellow passengers at the KLM airlines counter at Heathrow Airport. "THE GROUP IS the most revolting I have seen in my life." said the checkout girl "I never heard of them before, but I won't forget them in a hurry.

They are the most degenerate bunch of small-minded children I have ever seen." Temporarily denied visas for their first American tour because they had attacked a London bobby, the group blew (theirnoses) into Atlanta Jan. 5, this year. Their 10-day itinerary stressed "working-class towns" like San Antonio, Memphis and Baton Rouge. But Sid Vicious, whose real name is John Ritchie, gained his firm fame in Dallas, where a female fan bit him on the liD when he leaned off the stage to kiss her A stagehand claimed that someone had actually hit him in the mouth with a microphone. Whatever in or out of the act, it was part of the act.

IN SAN FRANCISCO, Vicious missed the Big Punk-house in the Sky when an alleged explosive-loaded beer bottle buzzed by his head on stage. But when Vicious and his fellow punkers arrived in New York from their last West Coast tour stop, he had to be taken from the plane unconscious on a pill-plus-alcohol overdose. Continued on Page 20 Continued on Page 20 Inside the Mews Amusements 34-46 Lottery 28 Real Estate 21-23 Religion 1 6 Sylvia Porter 1 6 Television 53. 56 58 Travel-Resorts 1 7 Classified 71 Comics 24. 26 Crossword 20 Eating 33 Editorials 18 Going Out 50-55 PubRshed daHy at 400 North Broad Philadelphia.

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