David Corbit, leader of the Krude Rude Brood who used a Portland auto shop for the white supremacist gang's home base to distribute methamphetamine and torture enemies, was sentenced Wednesday to 14 years in federal prison.
Federal and state prosecutors and Corbit's lawyers reached a global settlement that resulted in the sentence.
The agreement covers a drug-trafficking case against Corbit in federal court and two cases in state court that accused Corbit of kidnapping and beating a man in December 2012 and shooting a man in May 2012 during a home invasion robbery.
Corbit, 48, is to serve the time in federal prison.
Corbit, a co-owner of Tom's Auto Painting and Body Shop at Southeast 84th Avenue and Powell Boulevard, was identified as the "enforcer'' of the gang, also known as KRB or Brood. Members used his shop to share and distribute methamphetamine and to attack people who gave the gang members trouble, prosecutors said.
The gang was largely involved in violence against their own members, with robberies and home invasions or kidnapping and assaults to intimidate witnesses. But their members also were enmeshed in methamphetamine dealing. Federal agents working with members of the Multnomah County Sheriff's office Special Investigations Unit used undercover officers to infiltrate the gang in the Portland area.
"This case stands as an example of the clear link between illicit drugs and horrifically violent crime,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Leah Bolstad wrote in a sentencing memo. "Without methamphetamine, perhaps he and his colleagues would not have victimized so many people.''
In state court, Corbit pleaded guilty to first-degree kidnapping and second-degree assault in the Dec. 12, 2012, beating and alleged drugging of a man who was forced from his Gresham home at gunpoint and taken to the auto shop. There, Corbit and others stripped him, struck him with baseball bats and a belt and used a belt sander on his upper left arm, according to court documents.
After placing a helmet on the man's head, they fired a rifle at the helmet, striking it four or five times, while they threatened to kill him, prosecutors said. They finally injected him in the neck with heroin before leaving him passed out on the street in his boxer shorts less than a mile away, according to investigators.
Some witnesses told authorities that Brood gang members would use the auto shop's paint booth to shoot at victims because it could easily be cleaned up, Bolstad wrote in the sentencing memo. During a search of the auto shop in March 2013, federal agents found multiple spent shell casings in the walls of the shop, spent casings on the ground and blood splatter on the ceiling of the paint booth, the memo said.
Corbit was also tied to an assault of another man on May 5, 2012, during a robbery at a Northeast Portland home. He's pleaded no contest to attempted murder and guilty to first-degree robbery and second-degree assault in that case.
His state sentences of 90 months for the May 2012 assault and 120 months for the December 2012 torture case will run at the same time as his federal sentence.
A nearly yearlong investigation of the gang turned up drug trafficking at the auto shop. Surveillance of the shop on May 31, 2013, for example, revealed a motorist stopped at the shop in the middle of the night. She claimed to agents that she was there to get her clutch fixed, but officers found a quarter pound of methamphetamine in the car's glove box, Bolstad said. Other cooperating witnesses told agents that Corbit had warned the driver that police were watching his shop and sent her away with the meth, Bolstad said.
In federal court, Corbit pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.
U.S. District Chief Judge Michael W. Mosman accepted the 14-year sentence, calling it the "fairest and best resolution of this matter.''
Corbit will face five years of supervised release after he completes his prison time. He was also ordered to complete anger management counseling and not possess any alcohol, not associate with any known gang members and not enter any gambling facility.
A co-defendant David Bartol, also facing attempted murder, kidnapping and assault charges in state court, is set to go to trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court in mid-July.
-- Maxine Bernstein
mbernstein@oregonian.com
503-221-8212
@maxoregonian
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