Vicious has always been the prime suspect in Spungen's murder; the hunting knife that provided Spungen with the single stab wound to the stomach that ended her life was traced to Vicious, who claimed that he had no memory of the murder, as he was drugged up beyond belief and only noticed Nancy's condition when he woke to find her on the bathroom floor, surrounded in blood.

Vicious was never brought to trial for the murder- he died of a heroin overdose while out on bail. Vicious' mother, who committed suicide in 1996, always believed that her son was innocent, and asked film maker Alan Parker to help her prove it, which he hopes to do with his new film, "Who Killed Nancy?"

"I just wanted to clear his name," Parker says. "Of course I wasn't there, I can't swear on the bible he didn't do it, but people involved have always told me to keep digging, keep digging and when you do dig it just does not add up."

Parker's film points out a list of shady characters who might have been responsible for Spungen's death, including a drug dealer named Rockets Redglare, a drug addict named Michael, and Spungen herself. "To me, she just did it herself because that's what people like that do, like teenagers who cut themselves," Howie Pyro tells Parker.

Though the film will most likely present more questions than answers, it will succeed in furthering the Sid and Nancy mythology; an extremely screwed-up love story that people seem to romanticize more and more as time goes on. And much like the documentary Kurt and Courtney, Parker's film will ensure that people on both sides of the mystery will have more to discuss, and Sid and Nancy's names will continue to be forever connected, in love or in misery.

Documentary Claims Sex Pistols Singer Sid Vicious Did Not Kill Girlfriend Nancy Spungen [Telegraph]

Spungen came from a suburban Philadelphia household, and she was so disruptive as a child that her mother Deborah wrote a biography about Nancy after her death, called And I Don’t Want to Live This Life: A Mother’s Story of Her Daughter’s Murder. From Deborah's point of view, Nancy was an unreasonable, mentally ill child who "trashed" her life. If you look at things from Nancy's point of view, according to friend and photographer Eileen Polk, "Like most kids who are 17, basically her statement was, ‘I hate my family'…All the things that she loved and thought were important in the world, they told her were stupid. I think she had a really stifling middle-class upbringing.”

Polk has more to say about Nancy:

She was blatantly honest about [using drugs to meet musicians]: She bought drugs for the bands. She was honest about being a prostitute as well, which I thought was refreshing. The punk scene, like any other scene, had its little hierarchies. There were groupies that had been around for a long time because of their looks. In order to be a groupie you had to be tall and skinny and have fashionable clothes. There were a bunch of girls like that on the scene. And then here comes Nancy. She’s not trying to be cute or charming. She wasn’t telling people she was a model or a dancer. She had mousy brown hair and she was a bit overweight. She basically said, ‘Yeah, I’m a prostitute, and I don’t care.’ 

Legs McNeil offers that Nancy wasn't the only outrageous person on the scene, and adds that Nancy "wasn’t any more fucked up than Dee Dee [Ramone] or me. Joey [Ramone] was paranoid schizophrenic. Joey pulled a knife on his mother. We were all a little disturbed.” But as Schoemer notes, Nancy remained an outcast, perhaps because she was so sexually and generally aggressive. Because she didn't fit the groupie mold, Polk said that she was generally shunned. To this day, even though Sid Vicious confessed to Nancy's murder, people don't believe he killed her. "Everyone has a different theory: drug deal gone awry, robbery, or just a mistake that came from having too many knives around," Schoemer says. "Bassist Howie Pyro, who was with Sid the night he died, believes Nancy might have been so desperate for attention that she stabbed herself, thinking Sid would come to her rescue, but that he was too stoned."

If she had been a less aggressive or better liked woman, would people have believed that Sid killed her? Sid died of an overdose four months after Nancy's 1978 death, so he'll never tell. There's a movie currently in production about Nancy's death called Who Killed Nancy?, and it seems the question remains hanging in the air.

The Day Punk Died [NYM]

• Paramedics arrived at Amy Winehouse's London home last night after she suffered "multiple convulsions and fits." She was carried out on a stretcher wearing an oxygen mask; her father, Mitch, rushed to the house right before the emergency crew arrived and said, "She's fine, she just mixed up her medication." [Mirror]
• Doctors wanted Amy to stay overnight for observation. [Reuters]
• …And she's out! Amy was released this morning. Her spokesperson says she had a "reaction to medication." By medication do you mean crack? [The Sun]
• At The Japanese premiere of The Dark Knight today, Christian Bale refused to comment on his assault allegations. [AP]
• Christian Bale did say: "Heath's created an anarchic Joker unlike any ever seen before. He modeled the part on Sid Vicious which made this punk-like character." [Mirror]

• The former dorm matron at Oprah's school for poor South African girls has pleaded innocent to charges that she assaulted and abused six teenagers. The trial will be held in private and the teens will testify via closed-circuit TV so they don't have to face their alleged attacker. [MSNBC]
• Kelsey Grammer was hospitalized Monday feeling faint. He did have a heart attack last month; it's possible medication was the cause of his symptoms. [USA Today]
• Grammer stayed in the hospital overnight. [Reuters]
• After his car crash and hand surgery, Shia LaBeouf is "fine," Shia La Beouf's mom says. [Yahoo News]
• The peeps at TMZ harassed Shia's mom in an "exclusive" video. [TMZ]
• Liz Hurley's working on a reality show about life on her farm. And it's not some Green Acres concept. "People always imagine me with perfect hair. But that’s not who I am," Liz sez. "The first time he saw me in the country, my husband found me in wellies, covered in mud." Sure, sure. [The Sun]
• Kim Stewart first made out with Jude Law. Now she's dating Rhys Ifans. Sienna Miller's sloppy seconds! [The Sun]
• Kate Middleton and Prince William: Spending a fortnight on the Caribbean island of Mustique. I: Jealous. [Telegraph]
• Britney's on vacay in Mexico with someone this paper calls a "mystery man" but we saw elsewhere that it's her friend George Maloof. Also, there's a small group on the trip — it's not just Brit and George. [Mirror]
• Matt Damon's unborn kid is a girl. "I'm so outnumbered, it's crazy," Matt says. He has one daughter, Isabella, 2, and a stepdaughter Alexia, 9, with wife Luciana. [ET]
• Are Spencer and Heidi leaving the Hills? "I need a break from the drama," says Spencer. "That's why I'm moving out of Hollywood." Heidi confirms they're looking for a new home, saying, "We want to get one house where we want to stay and build a family." My God. These people are going to breed. Oh, Spencer also thinks Heidi should be John McCain's VP. Not even funny, dude. [Extra]
• On Jessica Simpson's new album cover, she looks like a sad little girl. [People]
• John Mayer has a buzz cut now. A reader sent us an e-mail which read, "Before you make fun of him for the newly shorn hair, I just wanted to let you know that he, and several of his band mates, shaved their heads in tribute to his friend and back up guitarist David Ryan Harris' dad, who passed away a few days ago. As far as I know the in memoriam part of the head shaving is supposed to be private, but I wanted to make sure no one made an ass of themselves making fun of a gesture for a loved one." [The Life Files]
• Ryan Seacrest was attacked by a shark! He was in Mexico when a sand shark bit his toe. Dude is badass, though: "He didn't know what it was for a minute - he thought it was a stick," a source says. "He had no time to be scared. He saw it swim away, he got out, took aspirin and called it a day." [Page Six]
• Lindsay and Sam got locked in their hotel room Sunday night so they went out the balcony and down the wall, laughing hysterically. Is any other couple out there having as much fun? [Rush & Molloy]
• Gossip Girl gossip: Ed Westwick and Chace Crawford went to a Ting Tings show and were "never more than a foot apart," a spy swears. "If one moved two feet to the left, so did the other. They were only interested in each other." [Rush & Molloy]
• A lawsuit involving unreported My Big Fat Greek Wedding profits has been dropped. Fixed with Windex? [Breitbart]
• Gretchen Mol is in final negotiations to star in ABC's new series Life On Mars. Already cast: Grey's Anatomy's Jason O'Mara; Harvey Keitel and Michael Imperioli. The show is a remake of a British series. [E!]
• Melissa Gilbert, of Little House On The Prairie fame, is playing Ma Ingalls in a staged musical version of Little House. [Yahoo News]
• Maria Bello is engaged. She and her beau, Bryn Mooser, described as a musician, artist and part-time waiter, "fell in love over a sheer passion of politics, Africa and cryptozoology." Insert Chupacabra joke here. [Yahoo News]
• Mark McGrath's stint as the host of TV's Extra? Dunzo. He's being replaced by Mario Lopez. Slater just won't go away. [Perez Hilton]
• Courts ruled that the child of a Georgia woman who claims to have had an affair with Chris Rock was not, in fact, fathered by Chris Rock. Yet! This lady is pitching a book called Hollywood Child, in which she writes about how "getting pregnant with Chris’ son saved her life." Denial, line one. [MSNBC]
• Lifestyles Condoms have offered Miley Cyrus $1 million to be the company's spokeswoman. "Pop culture proves that teens are more ready than ever to discuss the subject of sex," says the company's VP of marketing, Carol Carrozza. "We believe that Miley is both influential and relatable to this afflicted set—and is the obvious choice to get the message of safe sex out to teens across America." They're also offering Miley a lifetime supply of condoms. Of course she'll never take the deal. But. Wouldn't it be great if safe sex was a teen trend? [E!]
• "Without a doubt, this one is the most formidable opponent I’ve ever run into. You talk about dirty tricks: Brass knuckles, steel knuckles, cheap shots, tripping people up. I’ve never seen anybody in the wrestling business that has more dirty tricks than she does!" — Hulk Hogan on separating from wife Linda. [Perez Hilton]
• "I don't see why people are so negative. The games are about friendship. I'm Chinese and I'm proud of my country." — Actress Zhang Ziyi, puzzled by the protests against China's human rights record before the Beijing Olympics. [AP]
• "I don't feel like they show me on The Hills sticking up for myself. They edit that out. I'm generally happy with how I look when it comes out. In real life, though, I'm bubbly and fun and talkative and when you see me on the show I'm always sitting there and sad. But I'm fine with it because it's not my show. I'm there because of Lauren." —Audrina Patridge. [LA Times]