Charles Manson Is Getting Married To A 26-Year-Old

The man we all know and abhor for the murder of seven people, including actress Sharon Tate, is getting his happy ending, after all. No, he's not getting out of prison for his atrocious crimes — rather, Charles Manson may marry his fiancée, Afton Elaine Burton, after obtaining a marriage license from Kings County, California, earlier this month.

Jeffrey Callison, the Department of Corrections spokesman, confirmed that the license was issued by the county on Nov. 7. The license will hold for 90 days, so if their wedding doesn't take place within the next three months, they would need to get another. Although a wedding date has yet to be set, 26-year-old Burton —who now goes by the name "Star" — told AP that she and Manson will be married next month:

Y'all can know that it's true. It's going to happen. I love him. I'm with him. There's all kinds of things.

OK, so Burton may not be the most eloquent of people, but what's bizarre — besides allegedly falling in love with a man who orchestrated the gruesome and high profile murders that put him behind bars for life — is that Burton found out about Manson as a 16-year-old in Illinois, and had a correspondence going with him through letters and phone calls.

She told CNN that at 19, she moved to Corcoran, the city Manson's prison is located, to be close to him. Burton has been campaigning for his release ever since, because she believes him to be innocent. The happy couple has been dating — the word being used very loosely, because being visited in prison can hardly count as a date — for about six years now. She said in the interview:

I don't care what those kind of people think. It doesn't make any difference. The man that I know is not what they have in the movies or in documentaries and the books. He's nothing like that. He doesn't tell people what to do. He's not manipulative at all.

Burton told AP that they could have gotten hitched earlier, except that Manson encountered "some situations" at the prison. According to the news agency, another spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections, Terry Thornton, said that Manson had three violations in February: possession of a weapon, threatening staff and refusal to provide a urine sample. Thorton didn't elaborate any further, but the violations likely pushed back the wedding date.

Manson, who is now 80, and his fiancée, have almost-matching scars on their foreheads — he of a swastika, she of an "X" similar what girls in the "Manson Family" had during his trial in 1971. Manson won't be fulfilling dreams of fatherhood, though, as he isn't allowed conjugal visits. Perhaps this tweet sums up the oddity of this situation perfectly:

To make things weirder, Manson told the Rolling Stone in 2013 that the marriage rumors going around at the time weren't true:

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

Don't worry — I'm confused, too. But we all know that life doesn't make any damn sense sometimes, and if they actually do get married, it'll be a prime example of how good things can happen to the worst people.