Like Manson, prisoners in Illinois can wed but not honeymoon

I suppose the bride will wear white, and the groom will sport the swastika he carved into his forehead years ago. But don't expect murderer Charles Manson's planned nuptials in his California prison to spark a rash of copycat killer weddings in Illinois prisons.

And that's not just because all the good ones are taken.

For starters, the Illinois Department of Corrections is a bit less carefree than the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The state prison in Corcoran, Calif., will allow Manson to invite 10 guests or "Family" members. According to state statute, Illinois inmates (even the nonviolent ones) are limited to six wedding guests, and wardens have the power to restrict that number even further and veto guests, says Tom Shaer, director of communications for the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Infamous mass murderers, spouse-killers, arsonists, rapists, robbers, drug dealers and even run-of-the-mill thieves and shoplifters among the 48,000 or so inmates in Illinois haven't been clamoring to add the additional figurative ball-and-chain while in prison, Shaer says. Neither federal nor state prisons in Illinois keep track of the number of marriages involving inmates, but Shaer says the state's chief chaplain estimates that Illinois prisons have hosted fewer than 75 marriages during the past five years.

"I would say it is relatively rare," agrees Chris Burke, spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which houses 213,461 inmates in 120 institutions.

Any Illinois prison marriages require the approval from the warden and the chaplain, who performs the service, Shaer says. No outside photographers are allowed. Inmates are not allowed to marry each other.

"There have been no same-sex weddings thus far … nor any requests for a same-sex wedding ceremony," Shaer adds, noting the rules for approval and guests remain the same.

Nothing in Illinois could match the spectacle of the anticipated nuptials of Manson, 80, who is serving a life sentence for orchestrating nine gruesome murders near Hollywood in 1969, and his fiancee, 26-year-old Afton Elaine Burton, who was a high school girl living in Bunker Hill, north of St. Louis, when she started writing the convicted killer. According to The Associated Press, Burton, who often goes by her Manson nickname of "Star," applied for their marriage license on Nov. 7 and now has 90 days in which she and Manson can marry. She also says she loves Manson's ATWA (Air, Trees, Water, Animals) philosophy on life, which fuels websites selling Manson artwork and songs.

Reporters from TMZ, the "celebrity" news organization, already asked officials in charge of the Manson wedding "if tongue is allowed" when the bride and groom kiss, says Shaer, who has been in contact with his California peers. Officials didn't respond to that question.

In Illinois, "a light kiss and/or hug is allowed in visits and would be allowed in relation to a marriage ceremony," Shaer says, emphasizing that "light" means "means nothing lengthy and also nothing of a nature to lead to probable stimulation. No conjugal visits are ever allowed."

The closest Illinois has come to approaching anything that would attract the kind of interest as a Manson wedding was the attention once given John Wayne Gacy. Put to death in 1994 for murdering 33 boys and young men, Gacy received letters in prison from women who offered to marry him. Serial killer Ted Bundy not only attracted female suitors in prison before he was put to death in a Florida electric chair in 1989, but he also used an obscure state law to declare himself married to a willing woman while she was testifying on his behalf.

Convicted of more than a dozen rapes and murders in California in the early 1980s, notorious "Night Stalker" murderer Richard Ramirez married a female pen pal in prison in 1996, but they separated before his death from leukemia last year. The two men convicted in the "Hillside Strangler" murders of girls and women around Los Angeles in the 1970s married pen pals in prison. Convicted of the 1989 murders of their wealthy parents, Erik and Lyle Menendez both married women while serving life sentences. After his marriage to a former Playboy model folded, Lyle Menedez married a second woman.

Manson Family members Susan Atkins (two marriages before her death in 2008) and Charles "Tex" Watson (father of four from the old days of conjugal visits) married in prison. It's rare for women inmates to marry a male pen pal, but several websites such as Meet-An-Inmate.com and PrisonTalk.com do address all manners of inmate love.

The Manson-Brown wedding might be one where guests do whisper, "This will never last." But there is some encouraging news for inmates who marry in prison. A U.S. Health and Human Services' report says prisoners who marry show a 12 percent decrease in committing new crimes and a 2 percent decrease in substance abuse once they get out.