Tiler Evan Pribbernow, the star witness who the judge said helped “break the case open” for prosecutors in the Gypsy Joker Motorcycle Club racketeering trial, was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years and eight months in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman said the significant departure from the sentencing guidelines, which called for at least a 30-year sentence, was warranted, given Pribbernow’s quick acceptance of responsibility and his willingness to testify in depth against club leaders at great personal risk.

Mosman said he also weighed Pribbernow’s U.S. military service in Iraq that likely “deadened to some degree his shock to violence” and Pribbernow’s difficult early childhood.

Pribbernow, a member of an affiliated support club to the Gypsy Jokers, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and provided a “full-out confession,” the judge noted, within days after being charged in the 2015 beating and killing of Robert “Bagger” Huggins Jr., 56.

Huggins, a disgraced Joker member pushed out of the club in 2014 after he stole money from the Portland clubhouse till to feed a heroin habit, was killed in a shed in Washington state in retribution for robbing the Woodburn home of the club’s Portland chapter president, Mark Dencklau, earlier that month, prosecutors said.

Pribbernow delivered the fatal blows to Huggins with a wooden Louisville Slugger after cutting off Huggins’ nipple with a hook knife and waterboarding him, but Mosman found he didn’t act independently.

“They all killed him,” he said. “It can’t be laid at the feet of any one person in particular.”

Pribbernow, wearing a dark short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans in court, apologized to the Huggins’ family. He told the judge that accepting responsibility “has been weight lifting” and that he’s relearned “who the good guys are and who aren’t” through his work with police and prosecutors.

Deciding to cooperate with the government “went against all I understood, my sense of who’s right and who’s wrong. Good, bad had been obscured over the years,” he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Leah Bolstad described how Pribbernow “came in and copped to his actions,” admitting to horrific acts of violence and participating in the killing of Huggins. Pribbernow also told investigators about others who were involved in club violence that they didn’t know about, described their roles and methods of operation, according to the judge.

“Mr. Pribbernow’s testimony in this case is unheard of,” Bolstad told the judge. “Without his assistance, this prosecution would not have been so successful.”

Pribbernow, now 40, spent 2½ days on the witness stand and painted a disturbing picture of the inner workings of the club operating in Portland and the Northwest.

He described the beating and killing of Huggins as “Mark’s show,” and said Dencklau was “the one calling the shots.” Pribbernow testified that he felt he had no other choice than striking Huggins in the head with a bat or he’d meet the same fate.

Prosecutors described the club as an “outlaw gang” that engaged in years of brazen assaults. Prosecutors and Pribbernow said the Jokers knocked out people’s teeth or struck them with wrenches if they crossed the club, delivered punches that left black eyes on comrades who violated club rules, stole motorcycles of ousted members who were declared “out bad,” used and dealt methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine, robbed homes, tampered with witnesses and tortured Huggins to death.

Pribbernow pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy on Nov. 7, 2018, just four months after his initial court appearance.

“Importantly, no other defendant in this case, no other testifying witness came to us and told us worse things that Mr. Pribbernow had done, that he didn’t already tell us himself,” Bolstad said.

Prosecutors urged a 12½-year sentence.

Pribbernow’s lawyers, Matthew McHenry and Kathleen M. Correll, argued for an eight-year prison term.

Since his decision to cooperate, Pribbernow has done everything he could “to demonstrate to your Honor and to the government and to the public, frankly, that his reform is sincere, that his remorse is sincere and that his desire to leave that life behind is sincere. He is not a monster, as he was described at times during that trial,” McHenry said.

Pribbernow will be forever haunted by Huggins’ killing, McHenry said. “The greatest regret he has is the role he played in Mr. Huggins’ death,” McHenry said.

Throughout the trial, lawyers for Pribbernow’s co-defendants questioned Pribbernow’s motive, saying he was cooperating to escape a life sentence and already had received financial or other support from the government to relocate his family.

In fashioning the sentence, Mosman said he also weighed Pribbernow’s prior criminal record, which included four convictions in Multnomah County for attempting to elude Portland police. Mosman accepted as plausible the explanation given by Pribbernow’s lawyers for their client’s fear of police.

In 2005, Pribbernow during a road-rage encounter with another car ended up shooting a man in the face, chest and arm. The man who was wounded, Kent Kotsovos, was the nephew of then-Portland police Lt. Jeff Kaer. Pribbernow was arrested on an attempted murder allegation but a grand jury didn’t indict him, finding he acted in self-defense.

A year later, Kaer, while on duty, fatally shot a man sitting in a car idling outside his sister’s house in Portland, where her son, Kotsovos, was recovering. Kaer suspected the man in the car was Pribbernow, according to Pribbernow’s lawyers. Kaer told police investigators he didn’t know who was in the car and shot and killed a man with no ties to Pribbernow. Kaer was later fired for inappropriate tactics leading up to the shooting, but an arbitrator reinstated him. Kaer did return to the police bureau before retiring.

Mosman called the story unusual but said it presented a “compelling reason” why Pribbernow would continue to run from police.

Later this week, prosecutors will urge the same judge to sentence Dencklau and co-defendant Chad Leroy Erickson to terms of life in prison for the same crime.

A jury in November convicted Dencklau, now 60, of racketeering conspiracy, murder in aid of racketeering, kidnapping in aid of racketeering resulting in death, kidnapping resulting in death and conspiracy to commit kidnapping resulting in death. Erickson, 51, was convicted of murder and kidnapping in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to kidnap and kidnapping resulting in death. He was found not guilty of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy.

Mosman asked if any restitution payment was being sought for Pribbernow. Prosecutors said no.

Huggins’ family did not attend the hearing.

Bolstad said of Huggins’ family, “They don’t want any money from these individuals.”