Shaidon “Don Poppa” Blake — whom prosecutors called a high-ranking Bloods member sent from California to Baltimore to get local members “in line” — got life in prison Wednesday.

Baltimore City Circuit Judge John Prevas sentenced Blake, 35, and fellow gang member Jermile “Smiley” Harvey, 23, of Baltimore, to life for the murder of Terrence “Sky” Randolph, a Bloods street gang member accused of messing up the gang’s drug money, prosecutors said.

Prevas said the murder was “so brutal it probably tops the charts for a generation.”

Randolph’s burning body was discovered April 12, 2006, in the rear alley of the 1900 block of Division Street. A medical examiner determined Randolph was strangled, beaten, cut and stabbed 39 times, and then set ablaze.

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Prosecutors say Blake and co-defendants Harvey and Janet “Lock and Load” Johnson used a sledge- hammer, a box cutter and a Ninja sword. Johnson will be sentenced Friday.

In court Wednesday, Blake tried to diminish his role in Baltimore’s gang problem.

“This is a travesty of justice,” he said. “The situation you’ve got is bigger than me and has nothing to do with me. I offered to solve the problems.”

But prosecutor Brian Fish said Blake is the real deal.

“He was definitely high ranking,” Fish told a reporter after the hearing. “He was either on a council or worked for a council, sort of a Bloods board of directors.”

He was a “one man, nationwide crime spree,” Fish said, noting Blake’s convictions in California, Florida, and North Carolina and an open warrant in Nevada.

Harvey’s attorney, Stephen Sacks, told the judge the city school system failed his client, leaving him with “no marketable skills.”

The prosecutor took issue with that argument.

“The school system that failed, the society that failed,” Fish said, “did not stab a victim 39 times, did not burn him and asphyxiate him.”

lbroadwater@baltimoreexaminer.com