In love behind bars

Proving that he has not lost his ability to unnerve or to disgust, Charles Manson rages throughout a new interview which reveals his history of bisexuality, his plans to marry a 25-year-old follower, how he heads a group of America's most notorious murderers and rapists behind bars and of course, that he is innocent.

The interview in Rolling Stone details how the repulsive serial killer rubs shoulders daily with men such as Phillip Garrido, who raped and held 11-year Jaycee Dugard prisoner for 18-years - Manson's infamous charismatic personality unable to resist bringing other inmates into his fold.

Held inside his 'protective housing' unit at California's Corcoran State Prison along with 15 other high profile inmates, Manson tells how he finds the time to dispense musical advice to serial killer Juan Corona, who was responsible for killing 25 people in 1971 and 'gets along just fine' with Mikhail Markhasev, who killed Bill Cosby's son Ennis in 1997.

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Crazed: Charles Manson, imprisoned for life for association with a series of murders in the 1960s, has befriended a 25 year old woman named Star and there is speculation they will marry soon

The revelation that Manson, 79, spends his days happily mingling with the dregs of American society is just one of many in a bizarre and unsettling interview two-years in the making that the serial killer has given to Rolling Stone.

The magazine describes the killer as 'a face-of-evil superstar symbol second only to Hitler.'

The most eye catching is that the mass murderer is to marry his 25-year-old follower named Star - a name given to her by the iconic 1960s cult leader.

She moved near to Corcoran State Prison when she was 19, just to be closer to him and has recently carved an X into her forehead to match his swastika as seen in these intimate photographs of Manson and her taken from inside the jail where the killer will most likely die.

 

'Yeah, well, people can think I'm crazy,' she told Rolling Stone magazine in the lengthy article about her beau. 'But they don't know. This is what's right for me. This is what I was born for.'

However, it is Star's resemblance to Manson Family member Susan Atkins that has caused most tongues to wag.

The similarities are striking, but Star denies them, seeking to distinguish herself from the lady known as Sexy Sadie - due to Manson's obsession with The Beatles - who was sent to prison for life for her role in the Tate-LaBianca killings and died in jail in 2009.

'That b***h was f*****g crazy,' she said to Rolling Stone. She was a crazy f*****g w***e. 'Oh Charlie, I did this for you.' She didn't know what she was doing.'

During Atkins/Sexy Sadie's trial in 1970, she got on the stand and said, 'Sharon Tate kept begging and pleading and pleading and begging and I got sick of listening to it, so I stabbed her. . . . How can [that] not be right when it's done with love?'

Charles Manson, a charismatic ex-convict, assembled a group of runaways and outcasts. In the summer of 1969, he directed his mostly young, female followers to murder eight people in what prosecutors said was part of a plan to incite a race war

Charles Manson, imprisoned for life for association with a series of shocking and gruesome murders in the 1960s, has befriended a 25 year old woman he has named Star (right) who visits him every weekend

Star, who runs multiple websites calling for Manson's release, said she knows she will be his wife.

'I'll tell you straight up, Charlie and I are going to get married,' she said. 'When that will be, we don't know. But I take it very seriously. Charlie is my husband. Charlie told me to tell you this. We haven't told anybody about that.'

Star said there won't be any conjugal visits because 'California lifers no longer get them.' If they were an option, 'we'd be married by now."'

But Manson sounded a little more apprehensive when the interviewer asked him about his impending nuptials to Star.

'Oh that,' he said. 'That's a bunch of garbage. You know that, man. That's trash. We're just playing that for public consumption.'

Star, an artist, was born in St Louis, Missouri to a religious family who locked her in her room throughout her high school years after she refused to go to church and started taking drugs. 

While in high school, a friend told her about Manson's environmental writing and she decided to contact him, Rolling Stone reported.

When she was 19, she took $2,000 she saved working in a retirement home kitchen and jumped on a train headed to California.

Manson 'lover': The media has lied about Charles

Star, (left) a name given to her by the 79-year-old cult leader, moved next to California's Corcoran State Prison when she was just 19 to be closer to him and has recently carved an X into her forehead to match his swastika

Manson, (pictured with Star) now 79, is serving a life sentence at Corcoran State Prison in California for the seven Manson Family killings and the murder of an acquaintance, Gary Hinman, who was stabbed to death in July 1969

Manson and his 'fiancé' Star (right), an artist, who was born in St Louis, Missouri to a religious family who locked her in her room throughout her high school years after she refused to go to church and started taking drugs

Jailmate: Phillip Garrido is seen in court as he pleads not guilty to kidnapping 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard (right) and holding her captive for 18 years in Placerville, California

She now visits him every Saturday and Sunday for up to five hours a day and claims that her parents like him, and have even offered them to move in with the family if he ever gets out of prison.

Photographs on Facebook and websites calling for his release show the couple posing beside each other and touching during the lengthy visiting hours - which she said was not enough.

'I just want to be alone,' she said. I don't want to be always in that visiting room with people staring at me. But that's the only time I get to see him, in that room, with people staring. It's hard. But things change, you know. And who knows what could happen?'

He is also pictured in the images with Craig Carlisle Hammond, 63, whom Manson called 'Gray Wolf'. In March, Hammond was accused of trying to smuggle a cell phone to Manson during visiting hours, raising questions over the apparent freedom Manson is enjoying with his visiting friends.

If his marriage to Star does go ahead, it will not be the first for Manson, who has two ex-wives and at least three children.

He married Rosalie Willis in 1954 but they divorced in 1957 - a year into his prison term for stealing cars. After leaving prison in 1958, he married a prostitute called Candy Stevens. But again, she divorced him when he was sent back to jail.

Victim: Among those killed by Manson and his followers was actress Sharon Tate, pictured right with her husband director Roman Polanski and left. She was eight months pregnant when she was killed in 1969

Convicted murderer Charles Manson shows up to his penalty trial with his long hair cut off in 1971 (left)  and (right) Charles Manson reads a statement at his parole hearing in San Quentin in 1986

In the interview with Rolling Stone, he also hinted that he is more fluid about his sexuality than previously thought.

'Sex to me is like going to the toilet,' he said. 'Whether it's a girl or not, it doesn't matter. I don't play that girl-guy s***. I'm not hung up in that game.'

He also recounted an incident from when he was 17 in which he said he asked a man to have sex, and when the man refused, he brandished a knife and promised to take the blame if they were caught. The man agreed.

' I picked a razor blade up off the shower floor and said, 'If we get caught, I'll tell them I made you do it.' So, he let me do it. But I don't know. Maybe he thought I was going to cut him,' recounts Manson of the gruesome incident.

Manson is described in the interview exactly as he would be imagined: blazing eyes, unkempt hair, rotten teeth and grizzly beard - with a Swastika tattooed on his forehead.

This image is seared on the public conscious, four decades after Manson and his ‘Family’ slaughtered Sharon Tate, the actress wife of Roman Polanski, eight and a half months pregnant, and three of her friends at her home above Beverly Hills.

Stephen Parent was a fifth unfortunate victim that night. He had driven to the property to see if caretaker William Garreston wanted to buy his AM/FM Clock radio and had stayed on for a beer at the guest house. 

He was shot multiple times when he wound down the window at the electric gate as he left.

The following night the Family butchered small business owners Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, in their home in Los Angeles.

Marks of a killer: Charles Manson with his 'fiancé' Star in a picture the serial killer has signed and marked with a Swastika

The violence was so mindless and so brutal and the motivation, when it emerged, so incomprehensible that the myth of Manson and his hippie cult-like Family has stalked common consciousness ever since.

Today serving a life sentence in California, Manson has always maintained that society gradually turned him into the person he became.

Manson uses his interview with Rolling Stone's Erik Hedegaard to repeat his denial of the infamous 'Helter Skelter' theory, put together by prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi that led to his conviction for the murders of Tate and seven others - even though Manson was not there.

Famously, in the summer of 1969 he became obsessed with the lyrics of songs from The Beatles' White Album, in particular the track Helter Skelter.

In Manson's tormented mind, the words 'Helter Skelter' became a battle cry, a signal that the time had come to instigate a race war to wipe out everyone outside The Family.

Uncanny Similarities: As Star became close to Manson - many of the serial killer's supporters and disturbed acolytes pointed out that Star has an uncanny similarity to original 'Family' member Susan Atkins (left). Known within the Manson family as Sexy Sadie - after The Beatles song - Atkins participated in eight murders carried out under the orders of the sick messianic figure. Atkins was present on the evening of August 9th, 1969, at Roman Polanski's Beverly Hills home, where Sharon Tate was murdered along with Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, and Abigail Folger. Atkins was responsible for writing 'PIG' on the door of the property as they left in Sharon Tate's blood.

Manson family members and murder suspects (left to right) Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Leslie van Houto in 1970 as they arrive at court to be tried for their part in eight murders in 1969

In the course of the interview, Manson's denial of Bugliosi's 'Helter Skelter' theory rings out the loudest.

Bugliosi told the court during Manson's trial in 1970 that the murder's that Manson inspired were an attempt to start a race war, 'after which the blacks, who had won the war, would beg him to come be their leader, because they could not lead themselves.'

However, a raging Manson exclaims, 'that doesn't even make insane sense' as he fixes up his battle with Bugliosi, or 'Bug' as he calls him to be a fight between two long-time adversaries.

In the aftermath of the Manson verdict, Bugliosi wrote a 600-page novel of the trial - entitled Helter Skelter - which has sold 7 million copies since 1974 and made the lawyer a millionaire many times over.

The same age as Manson, Bugliosi is now currently battling cancer at his Californian home and occasionally giving interviews to media about his role in the Manson trial.

'There are thousands of evil, polished con men out there, and we've had more brutal murders than the Manson murders, so why are we still talking about Charles Manson?' Bugliosi said to Rolling Stone.

He had a quality about him that one thousandth of one percent of people have. An aura. 'Vibes,' the kids called it in the Sixties.'

Indeed, because Manson was not present for any of the murders The Family committed, he has always tried to claim that he never knew or inspired the killings and twists the blame onto his followers.

Hedegaard writes, 'He reserves a goodly amount of venom for [the prosecuting attorney] Bugliosi. 'He knows I'm too stupid to get involved in something of the magnitude of Helter Skelter. 

'So how could he convince himself of that for all these years? He made the money, he won the case. 

Marriage: Star (left) has announced in a Rolling Stone magazine that she is to marry Charles Manson (right) one of the most infamous and storied serial killer in American history

Forty-four years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, Rolling Stone's Erik Hedegaard spent time in California's Corcoran State Prison to with Charles Manson and his 'fiancee' Star

Corcoran, California:  Star (left) has become friends with Charles Manson (right) who is serving a life sentence in prison. She has known the befriended murderer for six years and there has been speculation that Star will wed Manson

Fall: Manson (pictured left after he fell out of his bunk in July) has given an interview to Rolling Stone magazine in which he insisted on his innocence and revealed details about his life behind bars in Corcoran State Prison

The Corcoran State Prison compound is seen in central California, where convicted mass murderer Charles Manson has been serving a life prison term since the 1970s

'He's a winner! He got over! He's a genius! He took 45 years of a man's life for his greedy little grubby self. And he's going to go to his deathbed with that forever on his conscience? Is there no honor in him at all?'

But as has often proved the case with the repellent Manson, he then speaks such ill of the victims that his lack of remorse is shocking.

Dismissing the murder of Sharon Tate, Manson says, 'It's a Hollywood movie star. How many people did she murder onscreen? Was she so pretty? 

THE CHARLES MANSON FAMILY MURDERS: A CHILLING TIMELINE OF HOW THE SERIAL KILLER RECRUITED HIS FOLLOWERS AND HIS SUBSEQUENT TRIAL 

Manson's life was one of crime even before he became the 20th Century's most notorious serial killer.

He was born Charles Miles Maddox to a 16-year-old girl during the Great Depression on November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

He was abandoned by his mother and father before ending up living on the streets where he began to steal cars, write fraudulent checks and became involved in prostitution.

Arrest: Charles Manson at age of 34 in 1969 - after he was arrested for his part in the Sharon Tate murders carried out under his orders after Susan Atkins confessed while in prison for auto-theft charges

Indeed, by the time his followers committed their gruesome murders that shocked the world in 1969 Manson had already spent half his life in prison.

March 21: 1967: Manson, by now a 32-year-old career criminal gets paroled from Terminal Island Penitentiary in California, after doing 7 years for forging checks.

November 1967: Manson heads to LA with the beginnings of his Family of women and tries to begin a career in the music industry. He fails - despite getting an audition.

March 1968: Manson meets Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and record producer Terry Melcher.

Summer 1968: Manson fails to impress Dennis Wilson with his music and now moves his harem, or Family into Spahn Ranch.

September 1968: The Beach Boys in fact record a Manson song, called 'Cease to Exist' which Dennis re-titles 'Never Learn Not to Love.' - It peaks at No. 61 in the charts.

March 1969: Manson becomes angry that Melcher did not give him a record contract and goes to his house on Cielo Drive to attend a party - however he discovers that Melcher has moved out and Director Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate have moved in.

August 9, 1969: Manson instructs his followers to commit the Tate murders at Cielo Drive

August 10, 1969: Manson's Family kill Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in a seemingly random attack. Leno was a grocery store owner, and Rosemary was also a successful businesswoman. The LAPD do not think the two murders are related at this point.

August 16, 1969: In an unrelated raid, the LAPD descend on Spahn Ranch looking for car thieves.

October 10, 1969: Manson is arrested for car theft under the name 'Manson, Charles M, aka Jesus Christ, God.'

November 1969: Susan Atkins begins to boast about the murders to inmates following her arrest for car thieft and agrees to cooperate with prosecutors.

July 1969: The trial of Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten begins.

January 25, 1971: All four defendants are found guilty and given the death sentence - which is later reduced to life in prison.

November 1974: Vincent Bugliosi publishes his seven-million selling novel Helter Skelter - cementing Manson's place in history

'She compromised her body for everything she did. And if she was such a beautiful thing, what was she doing in the bed of another man when that thing jumped off? What kind of shit is that?'

One of the more bizarre revelations from the interview is that Manson is allowed to make as many phone calls as he wants, as long as they are a maximum of 15 minutes long and all collect.

New Family: Charles Manson and his follower Star (right) pose for a serious looking picture inside Corcoran State Prison where Manson is has served over 40-years for his part in eight murders carried out in his name by his followers

Charles Manson, perhaps the most infamous convicted killer of all time, is 79 years old and still locked up in California's Corcoran State Prison and is reportedly going to marry Star (left and right with the murderer)

Friends: Gray Wolf (left) is friends of Charles Manson (right) who is serving a life sentence in prison since 1972. He befriended the convict and visits him every weekend in prison in California 

Denial: When Star was confronted with a question about her resemblance to Atkins, she intensely exclaimed, 'That b---h was f-----g crazy. She was a crazy f-----g whore.'

Hedegaard describes some of the more randoms beginnings to phone conversations with America's most notorious serial killer.

'Here's how he has begun some of his recent conversations: 'Hello, hello. Are you ready? OK. There's seven steps from the death chamber of holding to the death chamber of release.' 

'I forget — was you mad at me or was I mad at you?' 

'Would you come and swing upon a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar?' 

'Why don't you go ahead and say what's best for you, and then I'll go along with it and meet you later over on the beach.' 

'I've got something important I'd like to explain ... ’ 

Creepy: Grey Wolf, Star and Charles Manson pose for a picture as they mark 44-years since the Sharon Tate murders in Beverly Hills - a crime which Manson still protests his innocence over

Shady: Star told Rolling Stone she can prove Manson is more devoted to her than any other girl: 'I'll tell you straight up, Charlie and I are going to get married,'

Weak and old: Manson became one of the 20th century's most infamous criminals in the summer of 1969, when he directed his mostly young, female followers to murder eight people

In one chilling episode, Manson explains to Hedegaard how killing someone to get more air is righteous.

'Whoever gets killed, that's the will of God. Without killing, we got no chance.' 

'He paused, then went on, 'You might want to keep that out of your paper and say to yourself, How can that work for me?' 

'At the time, I didn't think much of it. It took a while for what he was suggesting to sink in.'

Described as softly spoken, Manson appears to receive special treatment inside Corcoran - something which has been long rumored.

When visitors come to see him they are allowed to eat popcorn - an unusual allowance for any prisoner on a life-sentence, let alone one who is responsible for one of the most reviled crimes of the 20th century.

Indeed, Manson seems to have access to a menagerie of treats - during the course of his Rolling Stone interview he picked at a feast organized by Star that included candy bars, pumpkin pie, corn chips, strawberry cheesecake and peanut butter cups.

Every morning, Manson wakes, leaves his concrete cell, goes to breakfast, collects a lunch bag, sleeps back in his cell, eats lunch, sleeps again, goes for a walk and then plays chess with another of his 15 other serial killer inmates.

Star told Rolling Stone there won't be any conjugal visits because 'California lifers no longer get them.' If they were an option, 'we'd be married by now.'

He then has dinner and returns to his cell at 8.45 p.m. for lights out, but frets about the prison air-conditioning unit which he says is killing him - although he does not specify how.

In one bizarre exchange with contributing editor Erik Hedegaard, Manson claims to have written a song about his prison cell named 'In My Cell'.

Deluded Manson says that the Beach Boys, of whom Manson knew Dennis Wilson, stole the song and changed it to 'In My Room'.

Hedegaard calls this 'ridiculous, since the song came out in 1963, four years before his release on the parole-violation conviction.'

He was originally given a death sentence but spared execution after the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional.

In 1977, his sentence was commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Manson will next be eligible for parole in 15 years, when he will be 92-years-old.

When he was denied release in 2007 the parole board ruled that he 'continues to pose an unreasonable danger to others and may still bring harm to anyone he would come in contact with'. 

Manson chooses not to watch television, but when he does he likes Gunsmoke and Sesame Street in Spanish.

Long known as a failed, frustrated, singer-songwriter with an obsession with The Beatles, Manson will spend some of his day practicing his guitar and helping other inmates, notably, Corona, with their playing.

Weird: Manson (pictured with Star and another of his followers who is not identified) is also far from a model prisoner. In the 41-years he has been behind bars he has committed 108 infractions

A lot of his day is also spent answering 'fanmail' - of which he receives thousands of pieces every year.

Sometimes he replies to requests for his autograph with a signed note saying 'Hipppy cult leader made me do it.'

Manson is also far from a model prisoner. In the 41-years he has been behind bars he has committed 108 infractions.

Prone to unusual and manic outbursts in-between his supercilious justifications, Manson repeatedly screams out, 'I'm an outlaw, I'm a gangster, I'm a rebel, I'm a desperado, and I don't fire no warning shots,' despite being condemned to die in prison.

His is quite philosophical about the public's perception of the 1969 murders - even showing a level of perception that belies his erratic nature.

'Helter Skelter wasn't a lie,' he says. 

'It was just Bugliosi's perspective. Everybody's saying it the way they want to remember it. Sooner or later, we all got to submit to each other's point of view. Sure, it was going on. But it was just part of the part.'

Source-Dailymail