It’s not every day that a father picks up the phone to hear his daughter say, “Daddy I’m getting married to Charlie.”
The “Charlie” in question being none other than convicted murderer Charles Manson.
Phil Burton says that his daughter was very calm and matter-of-fact when she told him the news, but it was not entirely unexpected. The Mail Online , in an exclusive report, gives the background leading up to this revelation and talks to the father at length.
His 26-year-old daughter, real name Afton, but who prefers to be called “Star,” actually became engaged to 79-year-old Manson eight months ago. At the age of 18, Star had travelled all the way from her home near the Mississippi River to be near to Manson’s prison in California.
Burton finally broke his years of silence to describe his daughter’s religious upbringing, and her relationship with Manson over the past eight years. He explained that the family had decided to act as normally as possible in the circumstances and declared:
“We have not, we are not going to and we never will, no matter what she does in her life, disown our daughter. I love my kids more than life itself. I love my daughter, my wife loves my daughter and I know she still loves us.”
Burton, 45, has had many conversations with Charles Manson and depicts him as suffering from the “Napoleon Syndrome,” which is is characterized by overly aggressive or domineering social behavior. He says that his family — wife Melissa, 47, and sons Colton, 24, Dalton, 18, and Weston, 11 — will not be going to the wedding.
He confides, “If I could have shut it down when it started, of course I would have. But we couldn’t. She was already 18 by the time we found out.”
He says that Afton was raised in a “Christian home with Christian values.” The family is devoutly Baptist and churchgoing, adding:
“I think this particular situation [with Manson] came at a time in her life when she was really digging deeper for bigger answers. But I honestly don’t know where all that stuff came from. Is it her perception? I don’t know.”
Afton contacted the Mail Online to give her account of her adolescent home-life. She says:
“I was forcefully excommunicated from my friends for a long period of time in my teen years. I couldn’t have any contact at all with any of them. It had a big effect on my life. I did spend a lot of time in my room (couldn’t hang out with my friends like everyone else did), but I was not ‘locked’ in my room.”
Phil believes that Afton’s relationship with Manson had its beginnings in “classic teenage rebellion.”
Fortunately, most teenage rebellions have somewhat different consequences from those of marrying Charles Manson.