EXCLUSIVE: 'Daddy, I'm getting married to Charles Manson!': Father relives moment his daughter, 26, revealed she was marrying the infamous killer, 79, and how - incredibly - he has come to accept it

Afton Burton, 26, is now known as 'Star' after striking up relationship with Manson in jail from her home in Illinois

She began secretly writing to him in his California jail cell and moved to be near him when she was 18



Her father, Phil, reveals how the family found out about the shocking relationship

Star now plans to marry Manson but Mr Burton and his wife will not attend



He told MailOnline: 'We have not, we are not going to and we never will, no matter what she does in her life, disown our daughter'

Phil Burton remembers his daughter being very matter of fact over the phone that day. ‘Daddy I’m getting married to Charlie,’ she said.

He wasn’t surprised. He had long ‘seen the writing on the wall.’ And he knew there would be no need to place an announcement in the local paper.

Because his daughter’s fiancé is one of the most infamous convicted killers of all time and the story was about to break.



Kindred spirits: Eight months ago Afton Burton, 26, now known as 'Star' announced her intention to be Charles Manson’s wife

Secret pen pal: Star's father told MailOnline she began writing to Manson without them knowing when she was in her teens after her friend started writing a biography of the notorious killer for a school project



Devoted: Phil Burton broke his silence to surprisingly reveal that he has even spoken to Manson in prison about his daughter's relationship with her

It is eight months since Charles Manson’s 26-year-old girlfriend announced her intention to marry the 79-year-old convict.



Dark-haired, slender and strikingly pretty, little was known, though much speculated, about the woman who gave her name publicly as ‘Star’ and, age 18, had travelled cross country from her home on the Mississippi river to be close to his Californian jail cell.



Now, for the first time, her father has broken his silence to give his account of his daughter, whose real name is Afton, the strict religious childhood of which she has spoken, her relationship with Manson and her family’s remarkable choice to carry on as ‘normal’ in the face of a situation that is anything but.



'We have not, we are not going to and we never will, no matter what she does in her life, disown our daughter'

- Phil Burton



In a candid interview he has told of his own conversations with the convict and his suspicion that Manson is driven by Napoleon Syndrome.



He has revealed how he will definitely not go to the wedding and recalled the shocking moment that he and his wife discovered the jailhouse romance their teenage daughter had kept hidden.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline from the family home in the small town of Bunker Hill, Illinois, Phil, 45, says: ‘We have not, we are not going to and we never will, no matter what she does in her life, disown our daughter. I love my kids more than life itself. I love my daughter, my wife loves my daughter and I know she still loves us.’



Spreading his hands on the kitchen table of the family home which he shares with homemaker wife Melissa, 47, and sons Dalton, 18 and Weston, 11, - older brother Colton, 24, is now based in Missouri – Phil explains: ‘Let’s be honest here. I can’t lie to you. Yes there’s a big hole in my heart because she’s not here. But it’s not because of where she’s at or what she’s doing.

Napoleon syndrome: Manson is 'not a tall man and perhaps he’s made up for that by becoming this big personality' says Star's father

‘She’s 26 years old. She’s been gone seven years. Seven years is a long time to deal with anything.’

He adds, ‘If I could have shut it down when it started, of course I would have. But we couldn’t. She was already 18 by the time we found out.’

Phil, who trims trees for a power company, was just 18 himself when he married Melissa, two years his senior, and moved to the home in which all four of his children were born and raised.



From the lines of scripture on carvings in the neatly tended garden of their lakeside property, to the mottos hung on the walls of the home itself, it is clear that Faith and Family are at the heart of everything he has built.



Afton was raised in a ‘Christian home with Christian values'. The family is devoutly Baptist and churchgoing. ‘Was she just going through the motions?’ her father reflects. ‘I don’t know. A lot of young people do that. But I know that at a young age she professed to be a Christian.’



Since becoming a disciple of Manson, an article published in Rolling Stone magazine reported that Afton claimed her strictly religious parents would lock in her room for days on end.



Her father shakes his head, ‘I’ve never in my life ever locked any of my kids in their rooms. I consider myself to be strict by today’s standards.





' I think this particular situation [with Manson] came at a time in her life when she was really digging deeper for bigger answers'

‘But I honestly don’t know where all that stuff came from. Is it her perception? I don’t know.'

Today Afton herself is keen to correct the allegation she says she never made and give her own account of her adolescent home-life. She contacted MailOnline and said simply, 'I did not say that.

'I was forcefully excommunicated from my friends for a long period of time in my teen years. I couldn't have any contact at all with any of them. It had a big effect on my life.

'I did spend a lot of time in my room (couldn't hang out with my friends like everyone else did), but I was not "locked" in my room.'

Her words dovetail with her father's own recollections of Afton in her teenage years. He admits, ‘She spent a lot of time in her room but we didn’t send her there. It was her haven. We never said, “Go to your room and stay there until you sort your life out.”'

But it turns out that ‘sorting her life out’ is just what Afton was trying to do. Perhaps life in an Illinois town with a population of barely 1,800 was never going to be enough for her, but nobody could possibly imagine how drastically different the life she chose would be from the one her parents provided.



Today Phil believes that Afton’s relationship with Manson had its beginnings in ‘classic teenage rebellion.’

He says, ‘She’s always been, even as a young girl, very focused on whatever was in front of her, whether it was saving the whales or whatever. I think this particular situation [with Manson] came at a time in her life when she was really digging deeper for bigger answers.’



She was barely 17 when Manson came into her life – though her parents would not discover the truth until she was almost 19. And she was an open book, an easy mark perhaps, for a veteran manipulator like Manson.

Teenage rebellion: Mr Burton believes that his daughter became enchanted by Manson when she spent a lot of time in her room 'digging deeper for bigger answers'



Consent: Mr Burton said that she 'didn't just run off' to California to be close to Manson. She was driven to the train station by her grandfather and her parents gave her a cellphone and made her vow to keep in touch



Much has been made of Afton’s physical resemblance to Susan Atkins or ‘Sexy Sadie’ who was convicted of participating in eight of the Manson killings. Many have caught in her a disturbing echo of the troubled young female devotees who were once part of his 'Family'.

But Afton was never ‘troubled’ according to her father and her own family is strong. She was a student at Bunker Hill High School and a ‘flower child,’ according to her father, wearing long dresses, putting flowers in her hair and wearing sandals on her feet.

As one of her assignments she had to write a biography about a famous person. She chose a politician. Her friend chose Charles Manson.



Phil says: ‘This particular friend of hers got hold of a lot of pro Manson literature. She’s a kid. She didn’t dig. She didn’t research. She’s just wanting to do her paper. And it had a lot to do with what he’s doing now with ATWA (Air Trees Water Animals and All the Way Alive).’



ATWA stands for the uncompromising ecological mandate expounded by Manson and members of his family and based on protecting the unifying forces that they saw as balancing the earth.



Phil says, ‘That is Afton’s cup of tea. She’s all about nature and being one with nature. So that particular thread attached to her and she started doing her research. That’s basically how it started.’

According to Phil his daughter is extremely intelligent, creative and sensitive. School was easy for her and she didn’t have to work hard to do well. She always seemed to exist on ‘a different level of consciousness.’

Resemblance: Much has been made of Afton’s physical resemblance to Susan Atkins or ‘Sexy Sadie’ who was convicted of participating in eight of the Manson killings

Family: Manson family members and murder suspects Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Leslie van Houton pictured in August 1970, in Los Angeles, California with marks on their forehead

Mark: Mr Burton is unfazed by pictures that showed Star with an X ‘carved’ into her forehead in a seemingly chilling reference to the act of Manson’s female family supporters during his 1970-71 trial. He says, ‘That was just a scratch done with a fingernail or something silly. It’s completely healed now'

Unbeknown to her parents, Afton began writing to Manson in his Corcoran jail and he began writing back. She had her correspondence sent to a friend’s address.

The truth only came tumbling out when her mother found a letter that Afton had brought home to read one day.



‘We never even knew she was talking to the guy,’ Phil says and the shadow of that initial shock flits across his face at the memory.



Manson is currently serving a life sentence for his role in seven of nine murders that took place over a period of five weeks in 1969. Most notorious were two nights of brutality in the hills above Los Angeles that left seven dead, including Roman Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate.



She was eight months pregnant when she was stabbed to death in her home along with three of her friends.

So how did Phil react to discovering that this was his daughter’s suitor and penpal?



‘Well, if your dad found out you were talking to Charles Manson he’d be pretty mad with you wouldn’t he? If I’d have known what was happening I would have been writing back. Trust me.



‘But she was an adult. While she lived under my roof she abided by my rules but she made it very clear from the beginning what she intended to do and she has done just what she said every step of the way.’



'Well, if your dad found out you were talking to Charles Manson he’d be pretty mad with you wouldn’t he? If I’d have known what was happening I would have been writing back. Trust me. But she was an adult'



Such a discovery and such a dramatic outcome is the stuff of any parents’ nightmare. Yet at the moment when he and his wife could have lost their daughter for good they chose to control only what they could and accept what they could not.

‘Anything else will just eat you up,’ Phil says.



‘She didn’t just run off it wasn’t like that. Everybody knew she was leaving. Her grandfather drove her to the station in Alton where she got the train. We’re a very supportive family.’



Her parents gave her a cell phone, made her vow to stay in touch and watched as their daughter embarked on the first step of her extraordinary 'path'.

Phil says, ‘You know we’re proud of the fact that she’s been able to leave this state at the ripe age of 18 on her own and travel to California and she’s completely supported herself form day one. She’s never asked for a dime.’

For a while Afton worked at MacDonalds – earning the distinction of employee of the month. Today her father isn’t sure what she does to pay her bills and doesn’t delve into the finances that he views as none of his business.



She runs Manson’s ATWA website and a variety of other pro-Manson sites and she visits him every Saturday and Sunday.



Phil appears unfazed by pictures that showed Afton with an X ‘carved’ into her forehead in a seemingly chilling reference to the act of Manson’s female family supporters during his 1970-71 trial.



He says, ‘That was just a scratch done with a fingernail or something silly. It’s completely healed now.’



If Phil was ever tempted to dismiss the relationship as an adolescent whim he certainly takes it seriously now.

Limits: Mr Burton says that while they accept she'll marry him in a prison waiting room, they won't attend the wedding, and 'we’ve never, ever, ever told our daughter that Charles Manson would be welcomed in this home'

Focus: Mr Burton told MailOnline: 'She doesn’t care about what he’s done. She doesn’t care about who he’s been with. She doesn’t care about anything in the past. All she’s focused on is him right now and what he’s trying to accomplish through their website with the trees and the water and the animals'

He says, ‘I take it seriously because my daughter does. The facts are the facts. She wants to be there. She wants to visit him and spend as much time with him as she can.’



But he dismisses her claim that he and his wife have told her that Manson was welcome in their home. He says, ‘We’ve never, ever, ever told our daughter that Charles Manson would be welcomed in this home.



‘The reason it’s not been said is that it’s not worth saying. He’s never going to be in this home. He’s never going to be in anybody’s home. He’s never getting out of that box and I don’t believe he wants to. He is home.’



Phil’s belief seems borne out by the fact that Manson was denied parole for the twelfth time in April 2012 after he himself told a prison psychologist that he remained a ‘very dangerous man.’



As for the wedding, Phil says, ‘I won’t be hopping on a plane. If they get married it’ll be in a prison waiting room anyway and it can’t be a marriage in the true sense. It’s a legality.





'She doesn’t care about what he’s done... All she’s focused on is him right now and what he’s trying to accomplish through their website with the trees and the water and the animals'

‘It’s never going to be able to come to fruition. It’s never going to develop into a full blown relationship and I think that may be a part of what eases me a little as a parent.’



Lifers in California no longer get conjugal visits so if his daughter ever chooses to have a child, Phil says, ‘The question is who’s going to be the daddy? Cos it’s not going to be him, that’s a physical impossibility.’



Today, as far as Phil is concerned, his daughter is ‘running the show over there.’



He says, ‘I’ve talked with him and I don’t mean this as an insult, it’s an observation, I think maybe there’s been a bit of Napoleon syndrome over the years. He’s not a tall man and perhaps he’s made up for that by becoming this big personality.’



Phil continues, ‘This is just my opinion, but I think he’s at a point in his life where he sees the end of the road.



‘He has a reputation that is huge and if the right person isn’t in place when his road ends, his road will just end. I think he’s making sure things are handled in a proper way that would give him the final respect of being a man – regardless of his past.



‘The past 10 years or so of his life he’s been doing what he feels he needs to try to do to make the world a better place. No matter how distorted or warped people think he is I think he’s trying to do something – go out on a good note, who knows?’



Afton visits home regularly and is part of the family photos of holidays and events that cover the walls of their home. She texts, talks and Skypes with her family as often as possible and they hope that, one day, she’ll come back to them.



Future: Mr Burton is unconcerned about the marriage because he knows Manson can't have conjugal visits and believes he will never be allowed out of 'his box'

Feeling good: 'I now, as an adult, have a positive relationship with my entire family', Star told MailOnline

For her own part Afton says, 'I now, as an adult, have a positive relationship with my entire family.'



Phil says, ‘There’s really not a lot of people like her. She’s pure. She’s genuine.



‘Manson is a quick read on people. I think he saw that wholesome and pure heart straight off the bat.



‘She doesn’t care about what he’s done. She doesn’t care about who he’s been with. She doesn’t care about anything in the past. All she’s focused on is him right now and what he’s trying to accomplish through their website with the trees and the water and the animals.



‘All of this stuff is a distraction.’



With a rueful smile Phil reflects, ‘Look at what I’m going through as a parent. Look at the magnitude of that. You couldn’t script it. It’s so far outside the box I don’t think they ever made a box for it.



‘But I have a sort of confidence that I think a lot of guys don’t have because I know how the story ends. God already wrote the book.

