In love behind bars, Charles Manson, 79, and the 25-year-old woman he's going to MARRY as America's most notorious serial killer reveals he's bisexual... and STILL claims he's innocent

Manson has given an unrepentant interview in which he protests his innocence, reveals details about his sexual preferences, and the company he keeps in jail

Manson revealed to be in regular contact with a 25-year-old woman he has named Star - who claims to be his fiancée

Star visits California's Corcoran State Prison regularly - but claims not to have had a conjugal visit with him



Disturbing interview sees Manson, 79, rage against the prosecutor who successfully convicted him



Rolling Stone interview comes 44-years after Manson's followersy committed eight gruesome murders in LA

Known as The Family, Manson's followers killed Sharon Tate - the wife of director Roman Polanski - who was eight months pregnant at the time

Gruesome killings shocked the nation and led to Manson achieving a notoriety bordering on celebrity




Proving that he has not lost his ability to unnerve or disgust, Charles Manson rages throughout a new interview - in which he 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 fact that Manson, 79, spends his days happily mingling with the dregs of American society is just one of many revelations in a bizarre and unsettling interview two years in the making that the serial killer has given to Rolling Stone.

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

The most eye-catching part of the interview is that Manson is to marry a 25-year-old 'fan' named Star - a name he gave to her.

She moved near to Corcoran State Prison when she was 19, just to be closer to him. She has recently carved an X into her forehead - a self-inflicted mark that many Manson followers have made on their foreheads over the years - matching the swastika tattoo Manson has.

The unlikely couple are seen posing for photographs taken from inside the jail where the killer will most likely die.

In the Rolling Stone interview Star said: 'Yeah, well, people can think I'm crazy, 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. Atkins died in jail in 2009.



Star told Rolling Stone: 'That b**** was f***ing crazy. She was a crazy f***ing w****. "Oh Charlie, I did this for you." She didn't know what she was doing.'

During Atkins's trial in 1970, she took 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?'



Making the Family: Charles Manson 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 knew she would be his wife.



She said: 'I'll tell you straight up, Charlie and I are going to get married. 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.

Marked: Star seen with a shaven head and an 'X' cut into her forehead, above left, and with the convicted murderer during one of her visits to Corcoran State Prison. She moved next to the prison when she was just 19 to be closer to him

Bizarre couple: Manson plays for the cameras with Star. Now 79, he is serving a life sentence for the seven Manson Family killings and the murder of an acquaintance, Gary Hinman, who was stabbed to death in July 1969 Regular visits: Manson sports various looks in pictures with Star, an artist who was born in St Louis, Missouri, to a religious family. Her parents locked her in her room throughout her high school years after she refused to go to church and started taking drugs

Jail buddy: Manson claims to be friends with Phillip Garrido, above left, who was convicted for 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. She claims that her parents not only like him but have invited him to stay with them 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 has said are not enough.



She said: 'I just want to be alone. 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?'



Manson and Star are also pictured with Craig Carlisle Hammond, 63, who Manson has renamed '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 above left and above right with her husband director Roman Polanski. She was eight months pregnant when she was killed in 1969



Forever changing: Manson arrives at his penalty trial in 1971, having had his long hair shaved off into a severe buzz cut in 1971. The beard and the hair were longer again, and showing signs of grey, as Manson read a statement at his parole hearing in San Quentin in 1986

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



He said: 'Sex to me is like going to the toilet. 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 asked a man to have sex. When the man refused, Manson brandished a razor blade and promised to take the blame if they were caught. The man agreed.

He said: '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.'

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



This image is seared on the public consciousness, four decades after Manson ordered his Family members to slaughter Sharon Tate, the actress wife of Roman Polanski, and three of her friends at her home above Beverly Hills . Tate was eight- and-a-half months pregnant.

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 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 infamy of Manson and his hippie cult-like Family has grown with time.



Manson has always maintained that society gradually turned him into the person he became.

He uses the interview with Rolling Stone's Erik Hedegaard to repeat his denial of the infamous 'Helter Skelter' theory, put together by prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi, which led to his conviction for the murders of Tate and seven others.

It was Bugliosi's theory that Manson had convinced his followers that they were about to start a white-versus-black 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'.



Bugliosi said that Manson referred to the coming war as Helter Skelter, a track from The Beatles double album - commonly known as the White Album. Manson had became obsessed with the lyrics of songs from the album, and Helter Skelter in particular.



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.

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 (above left). Known within the Family as Sexy Sadie - after The Beatles song - Atkins participated in eight murders carried out under the orders of Manson. She claims to have stabbed pregnant Sharon Tate to death and written 'pig' on the door of the crime scene in Tate's blood



All marked with 'X': Manson Family members and murder suspects (left to right) Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Leslie van Houten in 1970, all with self-inflicted marks as they arrive at court to be tried for their part in eight murders in 1969

In the course of the interview, the denial of Bugliosi's theory rings out the loudest, with Manson raging: 'That doesn't even make insane sense.'

In the aftermath of the Manson verdict, Bugliosi wrote a 600-page novel of the trial - entitled Helter Skelter - which has sold seven 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 per cent of people have. An aura. "Vibes", the kids called it in the Sixties.'

Manson has always tried to claim that he never knew about or inspired the killings, twisting the blame onto his followers. But Bugliosi views it differently, saying: 'If you're guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and there is a murder, then you're also guilty of that murder. This is boilerplate law.'



Hedegaard writes: '[Manson] reserves a goodly amount of venom for 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 has announced that she is to marry Manson, and that her parents not only like the killer but have offered to put him up in their home - albeit the basement - if he is ever released from prison

Rare access: Rolling Stone's Erik Hedegaard spent time in California's Corcoran State Prison visiting Manson with Star. The killer's fragmented interviews for the basis of Hedegaard's fascinating and disturbing article

Enthralled: Star shows her devotion to Manson by shaving off her hair and cutting an 'X' into her forehead - a trend that has defined Manson followers for decades

Fall: Manson (pictured left after he fell out of his bunk in July) has given an interview to Rolling Stone magazine in which he persists on protesting his innocence

Corcoran State Prison: The 'protective housing' unit is home to Manson and 15 other high-profile rapists and mass murderers

'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 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?



FAMILY MURDERS: CHILLING TIMELINE OF HOW MANSON 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 multiple murders in LA 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 seven 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 Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson and record producer Terry Melcher.



Summer 1968: Manson fails to impress Wilson with his music and moves his harem into Spahn Ranch.



September 1968: The Beach Boys in fact record a Manson song, called Cease To Exist, which Wilson 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 murders at Cielo Drive .



August 10, 1969: Members of the 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 theft 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 - all of which are later commuted 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 s*** 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 pose for photos. The 79-year-old Manson is occasionally eligible for parole, but it is unlikely he will ever get out of prison

Disturbing images: With a love-struck Star by his side, Manson flashes a chipped-tooth smile for the camera in the visitor section of Corcoran prison



Friends: Craig Carlisle Hammond (above left) is another Manson fan who has adopted a similar look to his friend, and also sports the X-marked forehead. He is another regular visitor for Manson, who is seen here with yet another hairstyle and beard shape



More bizarre poses: Star and Manson ham it up for the camera. Despite her young age and comparatively 'normal' appearance, Star can display bursts of rage - especially when compared to former Manson Family member Susan 'Sexy Sadie' Atkins, who she describes as a 'crazy f***ing w****'

Hedegaard describes some of the more randoms beginnings to phone conversations with America's most notorious serial killer: 'Hello, hello. Are you ready? OK. There's seven steps from the death chamber of holding to the death chamber of release.'

Other calls, which can arrive at any time day or night, have started with: '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'; and 'I've got something important I'd like to explain.’



Is this the creepiest photo taken ever? Grey Wolf, Star and Manson stand together, presumably trying to look as normal as possible

Dividing his time: When not posing up with Star, Manson corresponds with some of the thousands of fans who write to him each year



Old and frail? Manson often uses walking sticks (above left) to get around, but Hedegaard also notes that he often dances and shows surprising dexterity. Star and Grey Wolf try (and fail) to pose for a normal photo with Manson (above right)



In one chilling exchange, Manson explains to Hedegaard how killing someone for the good of the environment is righteous.



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



Hedegaard writes: '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 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 fellow 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 8.45pm for lights out. Despite this seemingly sedentary lifestyle, Manson frets about the prison air-conditioning unit, which he says is killing him - although he does not specify how.



Hedegaard has little admiration for Manson, and often takes him to task about some of his more outlandish claims. At one point Manson claims to have written a song about his prison cell named In My Cell. He claims the Beach Boys 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'. It was also five years before Manson met Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson (Dennis's older brother and Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson has always claimed the song was written in response to the assassination of John F Kennedy in November of the same year).



Manson, along with other convicted Family members, was given a death sentence but spared execution after the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional.



Mixing it up: Some photos show Manson taking a dominant role, with Star literally at his feet. Others show Manson looking frail and Star looking like a carer



Holding hands: Grey Wolf, Star and Manson show how close they are in this photo. It's a slightly disturbing image anyway - even without the fact that the old man on the right is infamous as a mind-controlling mass murderer

Pixie-cut: Star shows off a short haircut and gaunt frame, while Manson looks studious in reading glasses (and Grey Wolf continues to look odd)

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 he used to like watching 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 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 years he has been behind bars he has committed 108 infractions - including one where he was found with an inmate-made weapon.



Prone to unusual and manic outbursts in between his supercilious justifications, Manson repeatedly screams: 'I'm an outlaw, I'm a gangster, I'm a rebel, I'm a desperado, and I don't fire no warning shots.'



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

