Mass murderer Manson, 80, not marrying after all

US mass murderer Charles Manson is not getting married after all - at least not with the wedding license he secured late last year, a prisons official said Monday.

The 80-year-old Manson was granted permission last November to wed 26-year-old Afton Elaine Burton, described in US media as a slender brunette, who has been visiting him in prison.

But the 90-day license expires this week, and the couple can only wed during weekend visiting hours, which they have not yet done, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.

"The license expires on February 5. Inmate weddings must happen during visiting times. There are no visiting times scheduled between now and February 5," spokesman Jeffrey Callison told AFP.

Manson has been in prison for more than four decades after the 1969 killings, which included the brutal murder of director Roman Polanski's actress wife, Sharon Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant.

But Burton, who also calls herself "Star," said last year that she and Manson were madly in love and already consider themselves married.

"I'm completely with him, and he's completely with me. It's what I was born for, you know. I don't know what else to say," she told CNN in August of the now gray-haired killer, who has a swastika tattooed on his forehead.

She said she had been following Manson's "philosophy" since she was a teenager and moved to Corcoran, where the convicted murderer is detained, to be closer to him.

Manson was married twice before he was jailed, first to Rosalie Jean Willis from 1955 to 1958, and later to Candy Stevens between 1959 and 1963.

He was sentenced to death in 1969 along with four of his disciples for having led the killing of seven people, but their sentences were later commuted to life in prison.

Manson applied for parole in 2012 but was denied release and is not eligible to apply again until 2027.

Manson headed an apocalyptic cult that committed murders in upscale, mostly white neighborhoods of Los Angeles in order to blame the crimes on African Americans, in the hope of sparking what he termed a "Helter Skelter" race war.

The California prisons spokesman said he did not know if Manson or Burton would apply for another marriage license.

"What inmate Manson and his fiancee choose to do is entirely a matter for them to decide," Callison said.

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