softheart
02-12-2005, 02:08 PM
I watched the show I was shocked at what a difference. He didn't even look close to the same guy. He deserves everything he got and maybe this will be a new start for a new life for him.
softie
By TERESA ANN BOECKEL
Daily Record/Sunday News
Friday, February 11, 2005
Crews styled Ray Krone's hair, put makeup on his face, dressed him in a suit and wheeled him in front of a mirror to see his "Extreme Makeover" for the first time.
Three years ago, a sallow and thin Krone emerged from the gates of prison after DNA testing cleared him in the 1991 murder of a Phoenix barmaid.
Since then, he's worked some odd jobs and was in demand as a speaker about death penalty issues, but he hadn't found a career. He was, he said, still looking in the rearview mirror.
On a January day in Hollywood, he saw a reflection of the new Ray Krone: a perfect set of white teeth, smoother skin and a full head of hair.
"Who's that guy?" Krone thought.
It's a question he's still trying to answer. The show had reinvented his look, but his future was not in focus.
Krone's evolution
In 1991, when he went on trial, he got a nickname — "the Snaggletooth Killer."
One of his teeth jutted out as a result of a car accident years before. That tooth gave Krone a distinctive bite mark that prosecutors said was found on the victim's breast.
He spent 10 years in prison — two on death row — while maintaining his innocence, reading his Bible and praying that the truth would emerge.
It did with the evolution of DNA testing. Evidence from the crime scene matched another man, who is now charged in the murder and is awaiting trial.
Krone walked out of prison in April 2002.
He returned to his hometown to start a new life.
He set up an apartment in a place his parents own. He played on a softball team. He spent time with his family and friends.
Krone started accepting speaking engagements, taking his message across the country and around the world. He has advocated for criminal justice reform, abolishment of the death penalty and accountability for law enforcement, speaking to high school and college students, four parliaments in Europe and even the United Nations.
But he never found a direction for his future. While Krone spoke, traveled and did odd jobs, his mother, Carolyn Leming, noticed her son couldn't seem to settle on what he was going to do.
He spun around like a spinner on a board game, she said.
A transformation
Then ABC's "Extreme Makeover" show offered Krone a chance to change the image people knew from the days of his trial.
Producers wanted to find someone who had been wrongfully convicted of a crime based on looks and give them a new start. What they didn't want, though, was someone who was exonerated of a crime but still had a rap sheet.
Their searched turned up Krone.
The show called Krone and asked him to fill out an application and send in a four-minute video describing what he dreamed of changing about his appearance.
"Is this for real?" he asked.
Just to see what would happen, he and his sister, Amy Wilkinson, shot a video and sent it in.
Krone made his teeth a top priority.
"Look at this grill," he said for the camcorder. "It's been like this since the car accident. I was called a 'Snaggletooth Killer.' It caused me to go to prison."
Months passed, and he didn't hear from the show. Krone thought it was over.
But then he received a couple calls from the show, still interested in his case.
In September, he flew to Los Angeles for a few days to meet with doctors, do on-camera interviews, and undergo physical and psychological tests.
Two months later, a camera crew came to the Lemings' home in Dover Township to film Krone with family and friends at a dinner party.
Suddenly the door opened.
In walked Christopher Plourd. The San Diego attorney had represented Krone during his second trial and became a family friend. The two had not seen each other in over a year.
Pleased to see him but perplexed, Krone wondered why Plourd was there.
"Well, Ray, I've been thinking about a career move," Krone recalled Plourd saying. "I'm thinking about moving on to become a judge. But if I'm going to become a judge, I'm going to have to practice passing sentence.
"So I'm here to sentence you to two months in Hollywood to be on 'Extreme Makeover,'" he said.
For Krone, who had spent 10 years living day to day and still found it hard to envision the future, the decision wasn't that easy.
What was it going to be like changing himself? Would his 4-year-old niece recognize him?
"I went through a lot of anguish, a lot of anxiety," Krone said recently at his Dover Township apartment.
But he thought about the audience of "Extreme Makeover" — about 6.5 million viewers per episode. And he thought about the one thing he'd done consistently since his release from prison — speaking publicly about his opposition to the death penalty and the need for criminal justice reform. That's what convinced him to do the show.
"A lot of people now are going to hear what can go wrong with our justice system and what needs to be changed," he said.
He flew to Hollywood Nov. 18.
For the next two months, doctors and oral surgeons worked to erase the image of the old Ray Krone.
"Every time he looks in the mirror, he sees that snaggletooth," said Dr. William Dorf- man, the dentist who worked on Krone's makeover. "It can't help but remind you of those 10 years."
Dorfman whitened Krone's teeth and then pulled four of them — including the notorious one.
Dorfman then placed four new teeth in Krone's mouth. He also gave Krone 17 crowns and caps.
One time when the cameras weren't rolling, Krone turned to Dorfman.
"Doc, you'll never know what this mean to me," he said.
People who followed Krone's trials and his exoneration knew him for more than his teeth. He was balding, but what hair he had flowed to his shoulders. He had acne scars, and his face had what Krone referred to as a "scowl."
Doctors went to work on those areas, starting with his hair.
A doctor cut a smile shape out of the back of Krone's scalp. His staff separated each individual hair. They got 4,053 hairs, Krone said.
Then the doctor planted the hairs in Krone's head atop his head. The procedure took 10 hours.
Doctors softened his face by giving him brow and eyelid lifts. They worked to remove the acne scars on his face with plastic surgery.
He underwent laser surgery on his left eye so he wouldn't have to wear glasses. He's had a prescription since he was in prison. Krone believes his vision suffered from staring at the same walls.
"You really can't focus long distance," he said. "Everything in reality is no more than probably four to five feet away from you."
He watched parts of his face change one by one. But when the show's staff wheeled him in front of the mirror for the first time to see the final product, he expected to only see a subtle change.
"I was like, 'Whoa, where am I at?' " he said.
Krone revealed his new image to family and friends at the Valencia Ballroom on Jan. 19.
The crowd clapped and hollered as they waited to catch their first glimpse of him. Cameras rolled as Krone suddenly emerged on the ballroom's stage.
He flashed his new smile.
He nodded his head, now full of hair.
He turned to the side, showing his body in a $3,200 Stefano Ricci pinstripe suit the show's producers bought for him.
"Oh, my gosh!" his mother, Carolyn Leming, kept repeating over and over.
His wide-eyed sister, Amy Wilkinson, covered her mouth with a hand, then took it away.
"Wow," she said.
Friends and family marveled at his new look.
His stepfather, Jim Leming, couldn't believe how his stepson looked.
Leming admitted he had reservations when Krone first talked about going on the show. He worried that the show would change his stepson.
While Krone appeared different physically, the core of his character remained the same. His sense of humor, humility and friendliness was still there.
"I see the same old Ray, and that's what makes me happy," Leming said.
Leming thinks Krone's makeover will help him more effectively deliver his message when he speaks to people.
"I think people in general are vain," Leming said. "People will listen to someone who has straight teeth and has taken care of himself versus someone who has been through 10 years of torture."
Doctors had remade Krone's image. No longer would a mirror reflect the man who was wrongly arrested in 1991 and given a death sentence for a crime he didn't commit.
But he would come to learn that for the new Ray Krone, the past held the key to his future.
Reintegration
Krone's new physical appearance didn't automatically mean he knew what he'd do with the rest of his life.
He's still trying to assess his future, his potential and his long-term goals.
While people his age plan for retirement, he's just concerned with waking up each morning. He learned in prison just to get through each day — not plan for the future. Counting off the days in prison "kills you," he said.
Krone still avoids stress and conflict. He dealt with that constantly in prison.
Sherrie Isenberg, who has been dating Krone, has noticed a change in that. Years ago, he would walk away mad if she did something he didn't like. Now, though, he's more likely to open up and talk about it, she said.
Trust remains a problem for Krone. While he will meet new people, he keeps them at a distance.
"My sense of trust has been curtailed. I'm real careful of everyone I'm around," he said. "I don't open up myself as much as I would to my family, my friends and the people around back here."
Marriage?
Maybe.
Children?
"At this point in my life, I can't see me doing that," he said.
Krone pointed out that some women his age can't bear children anymore.
He could possibly find someone younger, but where would the attraction be 20 years down the road? And he would be of retirement age with teenagers still in the house.
"But my life's been crazy anyway," Krone said. "So who knows? Anything's possible."
One thing that has helped Krone, though, is speaking about what he went through — his arrest, conviction, retrial, second conviction, and his life in prison and on death row.
Public speaking was what he thought about when he decided to do the show — it would get him in front of a bigger audience. As much as anything, it was the focus of his new life.
"It's what I need for my therapy, for my rehabilitation, my reintegration into society," he said.
New direction
At the end of the night at the Valencia, as the cameras disappeared and crews tore down the set, Krone's future awaited.
The makeover was done. The taping was over.
What would he do now?
The staff of the show quietly surprised Krone by giving him a contact at a speakers' bureau that has worked with celebrities such as Johnnie Cochran Jr., Ted Turner and Sidney Poitier.
Krone contacted the American Program Bureau and received a contract in the mail a couple of weeks ago.
Everyone around him knew: This was it. It was his future.
But Krone wanted to make sure he could still speak to high schools and other groups for little or no money.
He recently accepted the contract. The bureau already has him listed as speaking on topics such as, "Reinventing yourself: Picking up the pieces and moving on," "Justice was not served," and "A Capital Makeover."
"I'm excited about it," Krone said.
The people closest to him say his future is coming into focus.
"I finally feel like he's not spinning anymore," Carolyn Leming said. "He's starting to see the direction he's going to go."
WHO MADE IT HAPPEN
Ray Krone's "Extreme Team" for his makeover included:
· Plastic surgery by Dr. Anthony Griffin, a prominent plastic surgeon, considered to be one of the foremost authorities on plastic surgery for African-Americans and ethnic skin types.
· Dental work by Dr. William Dorf-man, one of the pioneers of tooth whitening, and Periodontist Jeffrey Ganeles, creator of TeethToday. Dorfman's celebrity clientele includes Matthew Perry, Usher, Ali Landry, Brooke Burke and Melissa Joan Hart.
· LASIK eye surgery by Dr. Robert Maloney, considered to be one of the 10 best LASIK eye surgeons in the world. He has performed the surgery on such celebrities as Cindy Crawford and Barry Manilow.
· Facial treatments by Dr. Ava T. Shamban, dermatologist and owner and director of the Laser Institute for Dermatology in Santa Monica, Calif., and Dr. Patrick Bitter Jr., a dermatologist and developer of the FotoFacial, FotoLift and SmoothLift procedures.
· Hair transplant by Dr. Craig L. Ziering.
· Wardrobe selection by Sam Saboura, a wardrobe stylist who has worked with Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, Sarah Jessica Parker, MTV's "Movie House" and the Osbournes.
· Weight loss and body sculpting by Michael Thurmond, a master body sculptor and rapid weight-loss expert who has worked with various red-carpet celebrities.
· Hairstyle and restoration by Piny Benzaken.
· Hair color by hair colorist Kim Vo of B2V Salon
· Customized meals by Sally Ann Catering.
softie
By TERESA ANN BOECKEL
Daily Record/Sunday News
Friday, February 11, 2005
Crews styled Ray Krone's hair, put makeup on his face, dressed him in a suit and wheeled him in front of a mirror to see his "Extreme Makeover" for the first time.
Three years ago, a sallow and thin Krone emerged from the gates of prison after DNA testing cleared him in the 1991 murder of a Phoenix barmaid.
Since then, he's worked some odd jobs and was in demand as a speaker about death penalty issues, but he hadn't found a career. He was, he said, still looking in the rearview mirror.
On a January day in Hollywood, he saw a reflection of the new Ray Krone: a perfect set of white teeth, smoother skin and a full head of hair.
"Who's that guy?" Krone thought.
It's a question he's still trying to answer. The show had reinvented his look, but his future was not in focus.
Krone's evolution
In 1991, when he went on trial, he got a nickname — "the Snaggletooth Killer."
One of his teeth jutted out as a result of a car accident years before. That tooth gave Krone a distinctive bite mark that prosecutors said was found on the victim's breast.
He spent 10 years in prison — two on death row — while maintaining his innocence, reading his Bible and praying that the truth would emerge.
It did with the evolution of DNA testing. Evidence from the crime scene matched another man, who is now charged in the murder and is awaiting trial.
Krone walked out of prison in April 2002.
He returned to his hometown to start a new life.
He set up an apartment in a place his parents own. He played on a softball team. He spent time with his family and friends.
Krone started accepting speaking engagements, taking his message across the country and around the world. He has advocated for criminal justice reform, abolishment of the death penalty and accountability for law enforcement, speaking to high school and college students, four parliaments in Europe and even the United Nations.
But he never found a direction for his future. While Krone spoke, traveled and did odd jobs, his mother, Carolyn Leming, noticed her son couldn't seem to settle on what he was going to do.
He spun around like a spinner on a board game, she said.
A transformation
Then ABC's "Extreme Makeover" show offered Krone a chance to change the image people knew from the days of his trial.
Producers wanted to find someone who had been wrongfully convicted of a crime based on looks and give them a new start. What they didn't want, though, was someone who was exonerated of a crime but still had a rap sheet.
Their searched turned up Krone.
The show called Krone and asked him to fill out an application and send in a four-minute video describing what he dreamed of changing about his appearance.
"Is this for real?" he asked.
Just to see what would happen, he and his sister, Amy Wilkinson, shot a video and sent it in.
Krone made his teeth a top priority.
"Look at this grill," he said for the camcorder. "It's been like this since the car accident. I was called a 'Snaggletooth Killer.' It caused me to go to prison."
Months passed, and he didn't hear from the show. Krone thought it was over.
But then he received a couple calls from the show, still interested in his case.
In September, he flew to Los Angeles for a few days to meet with doctors, do on-camera interviews, and undergo physical and psychological tests.
Two months later, a camera crew came to the Lemings' home in Dover Township to film Krone with family and friends at a dinner party.
Suddenly the door opened.
In walked Christopher Plourd. The San Diego attorney had represented Krone during his second trial and became a family friend. The two had not seen each other in over a year.
Pleased to see him but perplexed, Krone wondered why Plourd was there.
"Well, Ray, I've been thinking about a career move," Krone recalled Plourd saying. "I'm thinking about moving on to become a judge. But if I'm going to become a judge, I'm going to have to practice passing sentence.
"So I'm here to sentence you to two months in Hollywood to be on 'Extreme Makeover,'" he said.
For Krone, who had spent 10 years living day to day and still found it hard to envision the future, the decision wasn't that easy.
What was it going to be like changing himself? Would his 4-year-old niece recognize him?
"I went through a lot of anguish, a lot of anxiety," Krone said recently at his Dover Township apartment.
But he thought about the audience of "Extreme Makeover" — about 6.5 million viewers per episode. And he thought about the one thing he'd done consistently since his release from prison — speaking publicly about his opposition to the death penalty and the need for criminal justice reform. That's what convinced him to do the show.
"A lot of people now are going to hear what can go wrong with our justice system and what needs to be changed," he said.
He flew to Hollywood Nov. 18.
For the next two months, doctors and oral surgeons worked to erase the image of the old Ray Krone.
"Every time he looks in the mirror, he sees that snaggletooth," said Dr. William Dorf- man, the dentist who worked on Krone's makeover. "It can't help but remind you of those 10 years."
Dorfman whitened Krone's teeth and then pulled four of them — including the notorious one.
Dorfman then placed four new teeth in Krone's mouth. He also gave Krone 17 crowns and caps.
One time when the cameras weren't rolling, Krone turned to Dorfman.
"Doc, you'll never know what this mean to me," he said.
People who followed Krone's trials and his exoneration knew him for more than his teeth. He was balding, but what hair he had flowed to his shoulders. He had acne scars, and his face had what Krone referred to as a "scowl."
Doctors went to work on those areas, starting with his hair.
A doctor cut a smile shape out of the back of Krone's scalp. His staff separated each individual hair. They got 4,053 hairs, Krone said.
Then the doctor planted the hairs in Krone's head atop his head. The procedure took 10 hours.
Doctors softened his face by giving him brow and eyelid lifts. They worked to remove the acne scars on his face with plastic surgery.
He underwent laser surgery on his left eye so he wouldn't have to wear glasses. He's had a prescription since he was in prison. Krone believes his vision suffered from staring at the same walls.
"You really can't focus long distance," he said. "Everything in reality is no more than probably four to five feet away from you."
He watched parts of his face change one by one. But when the show's staff wheeled him in front of the mirror for the first time to see the final product, he expected to only see a subtle change.
"I was like, 'Whoa, where am I at?' " he said.
Krone revealed his new image to family and friends at the Valencia Ballroom on Jan. 19.
The crowd clapped and hollered as they waited to catch their first glimpse of him. Cameras rolled as Krone suddenly emerged on the ballroom's stage.
He flashed his new smile.
He nodded his head, now full of hair.
He turned to the side, showing his body in a $3,200 Stefano Ricci pinstripe suit the show's producers bought for him.
"Oh, my gosh!" his mother, Carolyn Leming, kept repeating over and over.
His wide-eyed sister, Amy Wilkinson, covered her mouth with a hand, then took it away.
"Wow," she said.
Friends and family marveled at his new look.
His stepfather, Jim Leming, couldn't believe how his stepson looked.
Leming admitted he had reservations when Krone first talked about going on the show. He worried that the show would change his stepson.
While Krone appeared different physically, the core of his character remained the same. His sense of humor, humility and friendliness was still there.
"I see the same old Ray, and that's what makes me happy," Leming said.
Leming thinks Krone's makeover will help him more effectively deliver his message when he speaks to people.
"I think people in general are vain," Leming said. "People will listen to someone who has straight teeth and has taken care of himself versus someone who has been through 10 years of torture."
Doctors had remade Krone's image. No longer would a mirror reflect the man who was wrongly arrested in 1991 and given a death sentence for a crime he didn't commit.
But he would come to learn that for the new Ray Krone, the past held the key to his future.
Reintegration
Krone's new physical appearance didn't automatically mean he knew what he'd do with the rest of his life.
He's still trying to assess his future, his potential and his long-term goals.
While people his age plan for retirement, he's just concerned with waking up each morning. He learned in prison just to get through each day — not plan for the future. Counting off the days in prison "kills you," he said.
Krone still avoids stress and conflict. He dealt with that constantly in prison.
Sherrie Isenberg, who has been dating Krone, has noticed a change in that. Years ago, he would walk away mad if she did something he didn't like. Now, though, he's more likely to open up and talk about it, she said.
Trust remains a problem for Krone. While he will meet new people, he keeps them at a distance.
"My sense of trust has been curtailed. I'm real careful of everyone I'm around," he said. "I don't open up myself as much as I would to my family, my friends and the people around back here."
Marriage?
Maybe.
Children?
"At this point in my life, I can't see me doing that," he said.
Krone pointed out that some women his age can't bear children anymore.
He could possibly find someone younger, but where would the attraction be 20 years down the road? And he would be of retirement age with teenagers still in the house.
"But my life's been crazy anyway," Krone said. "So who knows? Anything's possible."
One thing that has helped Krone, though, is speaking about what he went through — his arrest, conviction, retrial, second conviction, and his life in prison and on death row.
Public speaking was what he thought about when he decided to do the show — it would get him in front of a bigger audience. As much as anything, it was the focus of his new life.
"It's what I need for my therapy, for my rehabilitation, my reintegration into society," he said.
New direction
At the end of the night at the Valencia, as the cameras disappeared and crews tore down the set, Krone's future awaited.
The makeover was done. The taping was over.
What would he do now?
The staff of the show quietly surprised Krone by giving him a contact at a speakers' bureau that has worked with celebrities such as Johnnie Cochran Jr., Ted Turner and Sidney Poitier.
Krone contacted the American Program Bureau and received a contract in the mail a couple of weeks ago.
Everyone around him knew: This was it. It was his future.
But Krone wanted to make sure he could still speak to high schools and other groups for little or no money.
He recently accepted the contract. The bureau already has him listed as speaking on topics such as, "Reinventing yourself: Picking up the pieces and moving on," "Justice was not served," and "A Capital Makeover."
"I'm excited about it," Krone said.
The people closest to him say his future is coming into focus.
"I finally feel like he's not spinning anymore," Carolyn Leming said. "He's starting to see the direction he's going to go."
WHO MADE IT HAPPEN
Ray Krone's "Extreme Team" for his makeover included:
· Plastic surgery by Dr. Anthony Griffin, a prominent plastic surgeon, considered to be one of the foremost authorities on plastic surgery for African-Americans and ethnic skin types.
· Dental work by Dr. William Dorf-man, one of the pioneers of tooth whitening, and Periodontist Jeffrey Ganeles, creator of TeethToday. Dorfman's celebrity clientele includes Matthew Perry, Usher, Ali Landry, Brooke Burke and Melissa Joan Hart.
· LASIK eye surgery by Dr. Robert Maloney, considered to be one of the 10 best LASIK eye surgeons in the world. He has performed the surgery on such celebrities as Cindy Crawford and Barry Manilow.
· Facial treatments by Dr. Ava T. Shamban, dermatologist and owner and director of the Laser Institute for Dermatology in Santa Monica, Calif., and Dr. Patrick Bitter Jr., a dermatologist and developer of the FotoFacial, FotoLift and SmoothLift procedures.
· Hair transplant by Dr. Craig L. Ziering.
· Wardrobe selection by Sam Saboura, a wardrobe stylist who has worked with Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, Sarah Jessica Parker, MTV's "Movie House" and the Osbournes.
· Weight loss and body sculpting by Michael Thurmond, a master body sculptor and rapid weight-loss expert who has worked with various red-carpet celebrities.
· Hairstyle and restoration by Piny Benzaken.
· Hair color by hair colorist Kim Vo of B2V Salon
· Customized meals by Sally Ann Catering.