LOS ANGELES: American mass murderer Charles Manson, 80, has been granted permission to wed a 26-year-old woman who has been visiting him in prison.

Manson, who is serving a life sentence for slaying seven people in a massacre that shocked the nation, plans to marry Afton Elaine Burton, described in US media as a slender brunette. “He has received a marriage license,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said on Monday.

The application for the license was made on Nov 7, according to the website for King’s County, California, where Manson is in jail, but no date for the nuptials has been set.

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.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2014