According to journalist Daniel Simone, 27-year old Afton Elaine Burton, now known as Star, was hoping that she would gain possession of Manson’s corpse through marriage so she and a couple of friends could put it on display in a glass case in LA.
They apparently thought the Lenin’s Tomb-esque attraction would draw a huge number of visitors and make them a lot of money.
Manson, Lenin, I get the two confused all the time. I think “Star” is a wee bit cracked. I’m not sure that there’s an audience for a mass murderer’s pickled corpse in a jar. I think there would have been a wee controversy, which might have hurt attendance. I suspect Manson’s body would have been on display for a much shorter time frame than Lenin’s; at least I hope so.
It is, however, somewhat reassuring that “Star” (if my name were Afton, I’d change it too) isn’t one of those soppy eyed chicks who marries an imprisoned lunatic. She’s a hard eyed cynic with an eye on the bottom line.
Speaking of bodies on display in public. We’ve had some experience with that recently in New Orleans. Bizarre funerals in the Big Easy? Anyone surprised? I thought not:
Most of those in attendance seemed to agree that Mickey Easterling went out Tuesday evening just the way she would have wanted to — well-dressed and in the thick of things.
Friends of the local philanthropist, socialite and party hostess packed the gleaming marble foyer of the
Saenger Theater on Canal Street, plucking champagne and fried eggplant from the trays of passing waiters. Music sounded from a jazz combo parked on the balcony overhead.
And Mickey, as everyone called her, took in the whole scene from her perch on a wrought iron bench, her famous accouterments of hat, feather boa and cigarette holder all in evidence. She even wore a diamond-studded “Bitch” pin on her chest.
Ya know, I think La. Easterling had a fine idea. We in the U.S. are so creeped out and scared of death, when it is just a part of life. People used to sit with the corpses of their loved ones in the past as a way of accepting their death; I guess La. Easterling wanted something of the same, only in a fun way.