Manson Getting Married: Meet Charlie’s Original Hellish Angels

Notorious 1960s death cult leader and mass-murder mastermind Charles Manson, age 80, has been granted a marriage license so that he can wed Afton Elaine Burton aka Star, his 26-year-old prison groupie. After a letter-writing courtship that began when she was just seventeen, Manson is now legally poised to make Burton the happiest girl with a shaved scalp and an X carved between her eyes on earth.
As head of the Manson Family cult, Charlie assembled a ferocious army of sexy young females willing to kill and die for him. They also remained lethally loyal to Manson during his trial, putting on outrageous displays of devotion him in and out of the courtroom. “Star” is very much in keeping with Manson’s type, starting out as a lovely, long-locked, spacey-eyed beauty who eventually comes to match her man’s taste in anti-hairstyles and forehead engravings.

Read 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Charles Manson here

Let’s take a look back at Charles Manson’s original homicidal hippie chick soulmates.

Susan Atkins

Known as “Sexy Sadie,” a song title from the Beatles’ “White Album” (the same classic on which Manson heard race war instructions in “Helter Skelter” that most other listeners didn’t), Susan Atkins functioned as Charlie’s main old lady during the Family’s infamous 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders. While awaiting trial in jail, Atkins bragged about stabbing pregnant actress Sharon Tate to death and drinking her blood. Atkins managed to get married twice during her forty-year prison stretch, which ended when she died in 1969. Her resemblance to the soon-to-be new Mrs. Manson can only be called uncanny—and, frankly, uncomfortably hot.

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Leslie Van Houten

Luscious brunette Leslie Van Houten made it clear she was property of Charles Manson, but she mainly functioned as the old lady of Charlie’s right-hand maniac, Bobby Beausoleil when the Family undertook its main “creepy crawls. While on trial for stabbing Rosemary LaBianca sixteen times, Van Houten’s lawyer vanished and was found dead. She later used this remarkable coincidence to score a retrial but, alas, she remains behind bars. Unlike her ex, though, she has no present plans to get hitched.

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Patricia Krenwinkel

Currently the longest-serving female in the California penal system, Patricia Krenwinkel, known among the Manson Family as Katie, went from being a teenage Catechism teacher with an eye on becoming a nun to leading the lethal charge on both the Tate and the LaBianca massacre. She also invented a psychotic signature graffiti style when she carved “WAR” into Leno LaBianca’s gut, writing “DEATH TO PIGS” on a wall in blood, and smearing still more plasma onto a refrigerator, where she misspelled “HeaLter Skelter.” Afterward, she went back to the Manson ranch and played with Charlie’s dogs.

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Linda Kasabian

Wholesome-looking blonde Linda Kasabian hightailed it from Maine to California so she could hang with hippies and get high. That she did. While having sex with Charles Manson he said perceived Linda as having daddy issues, with blew her mind and brought her deep into the Family. However, she was the only member to refuse to participate in the Tate-LaBianca killings, and she quickly flipped to become a key witness for the prosecution. Nobody else has ever made snitching look so sexy.

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Squeaky Fromme

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a petite redheaded firebrand who became Charlie’s head courthouse cheerleader during his murder trial, and is the only former family member to go on to a post-Manson career of any note. In 1975, Squeaky confronted record executive Danny Goldberg to pass a warning to Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page, telling him that “bad energy” was putting the guitarist in “imminent danger.” Later that year, Squeaky took a more direct approach in communicating her disapproval of President Gerald Ford by dressing up in a red nun’s robe and attempting to fire a .45-caliber pistol at him. The gun malfunctioned, and the Secret Service squired Squeaky off to lock-up, where she remains. Intriguingly, at present, U.S. authorities won’t reveal exactly where they’re keeping her. Charlie will have to look for a return address should Squeaky send him a wedding gift.