Behind bars with America's most notorious serial killer

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, plans to marry a 25-year-old follower, 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 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.

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 the serial killer has given to Rolling Stone.
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.'

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 seven 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 murders in the 1960s, has befriended a 25 year old woman named Star (right)

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.'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.

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

Sick: 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 SwastikaThe 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 bore 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 murder 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 as a fight between two long-time adversaries.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) the most infamous and stories serial killer in American history

Forty-four years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, Rolling Stone's Erik Hedegaard has waded into California's Corcoran State Prison to spend some time 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 ha insisted on 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?'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 nine 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) are friends of Charles Manson (right) who is serving a life sentence in prison since 1972. They have befriended the convict and visit 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: And 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.'
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'.

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