Five Racist Gang Members Accused of Torturing Alleged Informants
Five white supremacist gang members in Portland, Ore., are accused of kidnapping and torturing two men they suspected of cooperating with authorities in “Operation White Christmas,” a major investigation that subsequently led to more than 70 arrests in Oregon.
The massive investigation — resulting in charges including murder, attempted murder, assault, kidnapping, drug possession and identity theft — is a case study in the relationship between white supremacists and outlaw motorcycle gang members on the streets and in prisons.
Authorities say criminal enterprises identified in the investigation include the Gypsy Jokers outlaw motorcycle gang and five street- and prison white supremacist gangs: the Rude Krude Brood; European Kindred (EK); All Ona B---- (AOB); Fat B---- Killers (FBK) and Insane Peckerwood Syndicate (IPS).
Criminal charges against 70 defendants have been filed in state and federal courts. “We’ve also seized over 100 guns as part of this investigation,” Multnomah County Sheriff’s Detective Joshua Zwick told Hatewatch today.
Most of the crimes, investigators say, involved gang members victimizing other gang members, including those suspected of cooperating with investigators.
In the first incident, David Ray Bartol, 34, and David Bruce Corbit, 47, are accused of kidnapping a man at gunpoint from his Gresham, Ore., home on Dec. 21, 2012, and taking him to Tom's Auto Painting & Body Shop in southeast Portland. There, the attackers stripped the victim, struck him with bats and used a belt sander on his left upper arm, the Oregonian reports.
The attackers then are accusing of putting a helmet on the victim’s head and firing a silencer-equipped rifle, striking the man's head four or five times. They then injected the victim with heroin and dumped the unconscious man in the street about a mile away.
The second incident occurred Feb. 12, 2013, in the same auto body shop. Four suspects, Michael Philip Donald O'Malley, 25, Michael O. Newcomb, 27, and Joseph Gerald Schwab, 51, and Bartol are accused of torturing, robbing and twice shooting another man in a spray booth in the auto shop before dumping him on Southeast Powell Boulevard. That victim was hospitalized for several months and sustained permanent injuries, investigators say.
Corbit, an admitted heroin addict, is an enforcer in for the Rude Krude Brood white supremacist gang and co-owner of the auto shop where the alleged attacks took place, the Portland newspaper reported.
Bartol is named in a 14-count state indictment related to the two body shop assaults. He is charged with attempted aggravated murder, four counts of first-degree kidnapping, first- and second-degree assault, four firearms counts and two counts of forcing another to ingest a controlled substance.
For his role in the first kidnapping, Corbit pleaded guilty in January to unauthorized use of a weapon, first-degree kidnapping and second-degree assault and injecting drugs into the victim.
