Former Skinhead Removes Facial Tattoos and Embraces Family Life

This combination of eight photos provided by Bill Brummel Productions shows the progress of tattoo removal treatments for former skinhead Bryon Widner. For 16 years, Widner was a glowering, swaggering, menacing vessel of savagery – an “enforcer” for some of America’s most notorious and violent racist skinhead groups. Though his beliefs had changed, leaving the old life would not be easy when it was all he had known – and when his face remained a billboard of hate. (AP Photo/Duke Tribble, Courtesy of MSNBC and Bill Brummel Productions)

In this Monday, Aug. 1, 2011 photo, Bryon Widner hugs his 4-year-old son, Tyrson, at their home as his wife Julie watches. After getting married in 2006, the couple, former pillars of the white power movement (she as a member of the National Alliance, he a founder of the Vinlanders gang of skinheads) had worked hard to put their racist past behind them. They had settled down and had a baby; her younger children had embraced him as a father. (Jae C. Hong / AP)

In this Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011 photo, Bryon Widner, left, and his wife are applauded in Pasadena, Calif. after the screening of a documentary film featuring their family. After getting married in 2006, the couple, former pillars of the white power movement (she as a member of the National Alliance, he a founder of the Vinlanders gang of skinheads) had worked hard to put their racist past behind them. They had settled down and had a baby; her younger children had embraced him as a father. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)