The Underworld Podcast - The Biggest American Weed Cartel Ever: The Cornbread Mafia

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

When the Cornbread mafia started to unravel in the late 1980's, the feds had no idea what they had stumbled upon. Within a few years, they had seized 400 million dollars in marijuana grown in 30 locations in 10 states, indicting 70 people. And it all started with some country outlaws. These men were farmers, mechanics, and handymen by day, and by night, they transformed into savvy businessmen managing an underground empire. They recruited others from the local community, including friends, neighbors, and even family members, creating a tight-knit organization that was as much a fraternity as it was a criminal enterprise. This is the story of the Cornbread Mafia, This is the story of how a bunch of good ol boys from the same rural county in central Kentucky built the biggest homegrown weed cartel in American history.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Late October, 1987, at a farmhouse in small town central Minnesota. Johnny Boone is sitting on tens of millions of dollars of unharvested marijuana. But Boone has got a big problem. We'll get to that. Boone's no stranger to making big money growing weed. He's part of a loosely organized group of good old central Kentucky boys dubbed the Cornbread Mafia, all from basically the same small county, an underground syndicate of farmers and moonshiners, turned cannabis cultivators, whose ingenuity and audacity is going to challenge law enforcement

and captivate the country as they become the biggest homegrown American weed cartel ever. They started up in Kentucky in the 70s in Marion County, a rural area known for its outlaw culture, and they put their generations of expertise at growing crops like tobacco into a new crop, a real cash crop. In the 80s, law enforcement in Kentucky brought the heat down and made it. regular use of helicopters and planes to spot out crops. So a bunch of those Marion County boys started looking for spots where the birds didn't fly in the Midwest. A bunch of the crews of growers expanded outwards into states like Kansas and Missouri. Boone, one of the central figures,

chose Minnesota, and he had about 20 Kentuckians working for him there on his latest farm. He'd been warned that the new, much stricter drug laws that Ronald Reagan's administration had recently passed were going to make the growing seas of 1987 a particularly risky one. But Boone already had the wheels in motion. He couldn't not move ahead. Ice cold Minnesota may seem like a not great place to grow, and you might lose a few plants to the earlier frost and the cold weather, but it was still great for growing the special Kentucky sensamilia that Boone had basically invented. They just had to make sure to plant rows of corn interspersed with the marijuana to camouflage it. Things start off all clear that season, but in late September, something happens that throws everything out of whack.

A cold storm blows in from Canada, snow and ice and freezing temperatures. Boone wakes up in the morning, worried his precious plants are all dead, his bumper crop. But it turns out, they're hardy guys. It's some sort of Russian seed breed Boone had gotten from a mysterious world-traveling weed-growing seed expert dubbed Mr. X. It's a huge relief to see the plants aren't dead, but the relief doesn't last long. There's a major problem. The corn that was camouflaging all the weed plants, it's not as hardy. It's all dead, and the weed is exposed.

Boone frantically calls some of the folks in Kentucky, says he needs even more help harvesting, send whoever can work. But it's already too late. The massive acres and acres of marijuana fields have already been spotted from the air. The morning of October 23rd, 1987, a truck pulling a horse trailer rolls up to the farm property. The alarms are triggered. The weed harvesting crew is alert, but not super worried about the truck. That's when the cops bust out of it guns drawn, like some modern-day Trojan horse. Johnny Boone heads for his truck, high tails it, hoping to lure some of the raiding party away from his crew so more can escape. They follow and arrest him.

Boone's been busted before. He took a few. He took a few. fall in 1982 for getting caught importing 500 pounds of weed from Belize. Oh yeah, these Kentucky boys, they're not just incredible farmers. They were also logistical masterminds who, when they weren't growing massive amounts of weed, were smuggling it in from Colombia or Belize or even Canada. He did a little jail time, but it wasn't no thing. Unfortunately, things have changed. And after two big federal crime bills are passed in 1984 and 1986, the penalty for getting caught with this much weed, it's not going to be the previously typical slap on the wrists. Everyone in the crew eventually ends up getting caught.

Law enforcement takes inventory of the farm, both harvested and unharvested, and there's 45 tons in all. It's the largest bust ever in the state of Minnesota, and it really causes the DEA to take notice and start unraveling this nationwide network of Marion County Kentucky weed growers. By 1989, there'll have been 70 of them indicted, covering 29 farms across nine states with the wholesale value of the weed confiscated at $364 million. And that's 1989 money.

And it's only the stuff that got caught or that the feds knew about. This is the story of the cornbread mafia. It's the story of how a bunch of good old boys from the same rural county in central Kentucky built the biggest homegrown weed cartel in American history. This is the underworld podcast. Welcome back, dear listeners, to the Underworld podcast, a podcast that details the scams, flim flams, and other zany hijinks involved in the criminal underworld across the world. Also, there's a whole bunch of murdering and drug dealing and human trafficking that goes on too.

It's brought to you by two journalists, myself, Danny Gold, and my long-suffering partner, Sean Williams. We have traveled across the globe reporting on these stories and are now aging ungracefully while bringing you episodes every week where we trade off narration duties. Cautionary tales from Cautionary Tales and this week we are bringing you the tale of the good old Kentucky boys known as the cornbread mafia. But before we get going,

don't forget to support us at patreon.com slash underworldpodcast for bonus episodes or on Spotify or on iTunes. You can buy our styling t-shirts and other things at underworldpod.com at the merch tab. And, you know, if you own a villa somewhere and want to house me in the winter,

just holler at us, The Underworld Podcast at gmail.com. I guess you could also send tips and compliments and ideas No complaints, but, you know, all that good stuff. Sean, you're on the road again soon. Do you want to do like me and kind of beg our listeners for some sort of connection or, I don't know, a ride in a G6 or whatever? Yeah, I mean, if yesterday's anything go by, I need a golf pro.

So if anyone's in the Wellington area that can play golf, I'd do that. But actually, I got like two great, great helps from listeners this week. One guy was giving me a bunch of recies for Warsaw, where I'm going to be for like a day as part of this mad trip that I'm doing. It's a Melbourne, Seoul, Warsaw, Zagreb, London and Beijing. It's just a usual work trip there. And another guy helped me translate Vedic text for a story that's coming out in like a couple weeks or so. So, yeah, that is awesome. But now, I'm good.

I mean, unless anyone wants to take me out in Korea, that would be pretty cool. I like moving back. And I want to know who Mr. X is and what Russian weed is. I never knew that was a kind of thing. So I'm very keen on the next, what, 45, 50 minutes. say. Yeah, you know, I didn't really know that Russian weed was a thing either. And I've read a lot of books and talked to a lot of guys who were smugglers. And that's the first I've ever heard of it. So maybe, you know, I'm educated in that world or whatever it is. But it's

surprising when they start talking about that. But yeah, also, the holiday season, upon us, go ahead, support our sponsors and advertisers. So they keep buying ads with us. They are good folks who support us and the media and whatnot. Now, Kentucky, sweet Kentucky. The major sources for this episode are a book by one of the main guys in the cornbread mafia. His name is Joe Keith Bickett. The book is called Cornbread Mafia, Outlaws of Central Kentucky, self-published. I think it's the second of three books he wrote. I was only able to read the second one because time, you know, you got to just keep it moving. You know, you got to feed the content machine. Time is not on our side. You know, Sean, time isn't really on anyone's side. It just keeps,

it keeps flowing forward, like a river. You can't stop it, you know, unless. Ah, wait, never mind. That won't work. Nah, it will. It will. And then the other major source, the book, Cornbread Mafia by James Higden, who is a journalist from the area. I think he's from Marion County. And he wrote basically the full story. Like, he's the reason we know most of this. We'd actually traded emails for a while, and he was going to do an episode with me years ago. But I think, I'm pretty sure I flaked numerous times and then couldn't get back in contact with him. But it is what it is.

You know, that's the, it's probably on me. So sorry about that, James, but buy his book. and he actually started a CBD company called cornbread hemp, so support him there too. Yeah, so before we get into the meat of it, who is claiming cornbread? Because I love the stuff. Obviously, I've just been having it down in Oki and Texas, but is there some kind of like Middle East hummus-style rager going on

about where it's from in the southern US? You know, I haven't paid attention to that. I think we all just love cornbread so much and no one's willing to fight about the origins. I'm sorry there are probably some people. But the kind of people I feel like who make cornbread are not the kind of people who are going to be like, you know, arguing about who, maybe, who knows?

It's delicious, though. We should all, we should all, you should all eat cornbread if you haven't. We were definitely going to yell at in the comments for, for rambling on in the beginning like we always do. But it just makes us want to do it more, people. You're just, you're just making us want to do it more. All right. Higden spent five or six years researching and writing.

It's very thorough. And it has some great historical background, which we'll get into. The area that the cornbread mafia originates from and where they first drug growing weed is Marion County, Kentucky, I think two neighboring counties as well, which is right smack in the center of the state. I think a lot of people, myself included, assume that it's like, you know, Appalachia, mountains, that sort of gritty mountain folk stuff. What am I thinking of the movie with the woman from, with Jennifer, what's her name, where she got famous? And it's like an Appalachia murder meth story. Winter's Bone. No. Winter's Bone, dude. Matt Stars Born.

Winter's Bone. That movie rules. But, okay, it's not Winter's Bone and it's not actually part of Appalachia, it is though an area with a deep history of whiskey distilling, bootlegging, law-breaking, outlaw country type of stuff. You know, the whole just too good old boys, never meaning no harm, in trouble with the law since the day they were born sort of vibe, even though, like I said, it's not that far south. Interestingly, it's settled by what Higman calls refugee or frontier Catholics from Maryland in the late 1700s who went south.

Real sort of pioneers who moved into the hollers with that Appalachia style of, you know, distrust of outsiders, you know, and the we live by our own rules that's persisted to this day. And the area gets popping with distilleries. You know, they're making that good old Kentucky bourbon, including the famous old granddad. People around there, they drink a lot of booze. Remember, this was all legal at this point. And those distilleries employed a lot of folks. So when prohibition hits in 1919, there's a lot of people out of work. So what happens? When the law threatens the way of life, Sean, the people become outlaws. And that's really the start of the outlaw culture there, I think. It's interesting how these sort of situations can act like a

gateway to organize crime. I think even a lot of the old Mexican smuggling families started with booze before transitioning into drugs. What was it? I think after Prohibition fell, the booze runners in Mexico actually transitioned to opium once Prohibition got repealed because they lost their moneymaker and they kicked out or finally took over these opium fields that Chinese workers had brought with them and planted from China. I think, Jamie pulled that up. I think fact checked that, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. True. We've said this before. Yeah, like gateway drugs do exist, but on the most part, they're for the smugglers, not the users. I mean, the gateway drug thing, like, is kind of true. No one's like, oh, I'm not going to smoke weed. I'm going to go right to heroin. You know, it's only just makes sense. I don't think it necessarily leads to that.

No, okay. No, but I don't necessarily think it leads to that automatically, but it's kind of like, yeah, like you're going to try the soft ones before you move on to the whole. That's just the way it is. Doesn't mean that. Whatever. Whatever. Well, it's not going to tell you philosophy. All right. So this is when you have the rise of the moonshiner's. Then in 1933, Prohibition ends, and the distilleries get legalized and start cracking on. But, you know, you still got people who have learned to play by their own rules. So we have that genesis where the people turn to moonshine and bootlegging. It even continues into the World War II era where they trafficked sugar, which was being rationed, but they needed it to make booze, so, you know, they broke the law.

You see, Sean, in America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women. another important factor in the rise of the cornbread mafia, you had hemp growing in Kentucky in the 1800s, like a lot of it. And in 1937, the feds criminalized weed and hemp. But the government still uses it, especially the Navy, which obviously needs it to make things, make ropes, I think especially. Still, the U.S. had hemp plantations all over the Philippines, so everything was cool for a minute until the Japanese attacked the Philippines in World War II

and the U.S. loses its plug. So the states have to start growing it again for the war effort. yeah philippines mentioned drink is that is that a thing now are we doing replacing albania i don't know it's like a bar to mine off thing now i'm going out there in february and everything i seem to see is philippines related so yeah god i'll drink some more on the road nonstop what a life what a life sean williams

what a what a parent yeah you said it for some reason the feds end up wanting seeds from marion county kentucky enough to plant 500 acres so the young farmers of marian they grow it and they harvest it, but the government only wants the seed, so the farmers are left with everything else. Still, though, you don't really have like a weed culture there, you know, but the war ends, the hemp isn't needed as much afterward, but obviously some of it's there. You know, it's not really in the weed game, but it's growing.

The Marion County farmers, though, they're focused on growing crops like burly tobacco, which is their big moneymaker. In the 1950s, a 13-year-old boy by the name of Johnny Boone, our guy from the Cold Open, wins the youth tobacco growing championship, which I guess is a thing that they thing they do in rural areas, 4H and whatnot. What's 4H? You know, I'm a northeastern city kid. It's like, I think it's like a society, like an agricultural society thing.

Probably should have looked that up before mentoring it. But I feel like, you know, they always, I've gone to like state fairs and they always have boots there for like, you know, the prize-winning pig and crops and things of that nature. So I'm going to go with like an agricultural society thing, maybe geared towards young people. I don't know, man. But call me out. So they do like, which, which.

eight-year-old kid can grow the best tobacco, that kind of thing. I don't know if it's like that, but it's, you know, it's, uh, it's something along those, like, for all, for all I know, it seems like a very good thing to do. Boone is from a broken family. He's got an alcoholic abusive dad, but he learns all about farming from his maternal grandfather, and he excels at it. He's also, like, really smart. He's great in the classroom.

He's great on the football field. Yeah, I think he has a scholarship at one point, but instead of going to the University of Kentucky, he decides he's going to get married and go into. to farming. His grandfather is also a moonshiner, and he knows how to game the system by growing more crops than he's allotted to by the state, and he schools Boone on how to do this too. After Boone graduates from high school in 1961, he lives like a minor outlaw life. He's moonshining. He's growing what they call red car tobacco, which means this extra tobacco that was illegal, but like you grew it anyway and figured out a way to sell it. He maneuvered. He was a maneuver.

Meanwhile, parts of Marion County are sort of becoming hot spots for legality, gambling, prostitution, moonshining, like everything fun. And there's a real rural outlaw life that they don't take kindly to law enforcement budding their heads into it. Even one of the mayors of one of the big towns in the 60s is a known outlaw and hustler. I just kind of keep hearing the voice of Boyd Crowder in my head, you know, as I'm researching this going like, I am an outlaw. But yeah, I think actually the writers have justified borrowed heavily from the lore of the Cornbread mafia. It gets confused for the Dixie Mafia sometimes, but that's an entirely different thing. And those guys were down in Mississippi.

Maybe I should get into Justify. It looks pretty good. I've been dining purely, purely out on British spy dramas this year and there. Pretty mixed bunch. I mean, I just watched the ending of the Day of the Jackal and it was toilet, like toe pants. I mean, if you hire someone like Eddie Redmayne to do that kind of job, you tread in such a fine line between upper-class British psychopath, which is good, and bow-tie idiot at the golf clubhouse, which is not good, right?

You know what you mean? I have no idea what you mean. But justified rules. It takes a few episodes to get into, but once you get into it, it is an incredible show. Definite Underworld podcast recommendation. Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals?

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only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. So, we're in the 50s and 60s, right? The area is also getting famous for having bars and clubs on what's known as the Chitlin Circuit, which is like blues and jazz clubs where black musicians would tour

Otis Redding, Little Richard, Ike and Tina, they all come through it's got that great R&B, rock, 50s, 60s stuff and those clubs pop off and there's gambling there too and weed was kind of a big part of that scene, especially in the 50s, you know, in 60s think of like Jack Kerouac, beatnik culture,

think of jazz and all that. And as the 60s turned to the 70s, you have a bunch of these local boys getting back from Vietnam where they had also picked up smoking weed and they're seeing it in these clubs and the around them back home and realizing, you know, people are willing to pay good money for this stuff. And soon enough, they realized due to that hemp situation, there's a whole bunch of this stuff

growing naturally. So you had weed growing there naturally. You had weed being smoked in the clubs and the Vietnam vets smoking it, and you had these A1 top tier farmers looking to make a buck. All the ingredients are right there. So during the 70s, these young men, fresh from Vietnam or fresh out of high school, they start growing weed, using some of the seeds of those plants. because also in that time you had a lot of small farms losing their ability to make money,

tobacco started being imported instead of being bought domestically because it was cheaper. So once again, you had a lot of folks losing their ability to put food on the table. For generations, farmers on those parks had kind of hone their skills and growing tobacco, which was a big cash crop that demanded a lot of patience and expertise. But by the late 20th century, when all this is happening, the bottoms kind of fell out of the tobacco market. And many farmers are looking for alternative ways to make a living. What happens is, remember, this is the 1970s.

They don't have the technology to make super weed like they do now or the knowledge. All they had was like Mexican brickweed or Colombian stuff like you used to get in high school in the 90s, right? Picking out seeds and stems and all that. But these guys, they were real farmers like Johnny Boone. They know how to grow and the Kentucky bluegrass lands really fertile. You know, it's easy to grow stuff there. So they start kind of breeding weed, trying to make better and better versions, figuring this out from scratch. There's also a guy by the name of Mr. X, or at least that's what Higden and Johnny Boone referred him as.

He's never been caught as far as I know, so the alias is what they go with. X is a local boy, but he's also a globetrotter, going all around the world, finding the high-quality stuff. He's one of these characters you can only kind of find in these stories of smugglers and growers in the 60s and 70s, guys who kind of figure things out on the hippie trail and, like, disappeared in Afghanistan or the Hindu Kush or the Amazon for a year, emerge as some like slick operator type man of the world. He's the one who puts Boone onto issues of High Times Magazine from right when it came out, which was kind of like the Bible basically for weed growers. And also taught him how to make sense Amelia. X was all over India, Afghanistan, Russia, finding, you know, Indica, Sativa, all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, that high times, there's some good stories from that back in the day. I think it's all like printed out and on the way back machine. But there's a guy living in Oklahoma, actually. was a source of my Nepal weed story and he's called Joseph Petrie. It ended up smuggling all this stuff. Oh, I read his book. Oh, did you read his book? Oh, man.

A long time ago. I think it's like self-published. The kingdom of Nepal, I think it's called, right? That is so random. How the hell did you end up reading that? Dude, when I was like, you know, I think when I was like in my earlier mid-20s, I like stumbled on the book, can't find my way home, which is a history of like drugs in the U.S.

And it tells the story, you know, in the 50s that, like, 20s or 30s they talk about heroin and the jazz scene, the 50s to talk about the beatniks and weed, uh, going up into the 60s and 70s and Coke and all. And it's basically like a history of decade. I think they made a documentary out of it for like news channels, but it was fascinating. And it had all these little stories in it. And it made me, I think from there I read like books about like, like, Mr. Marks, uh, Mr. Nice Guy, Howard Marks. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Found like a couple of others. This is like mid-2000s, I want to say. Um, and he was just one of the ones that I found and read. And I was like fascinated by that by that stuff way back.

Dan. Yeah, well, he doesn't like me now because he thinks I'm as characterized him in the article, even though I think I mentioned him for about half a sentence. He got kind of weird, actually, but yeah, the book's cool. Maybe don't buy it. Maybe pirate, I don't know.

But he's a bit of a dickhead. But yeah, it's an interesting story for sure. Sean Williams. But yeah, when it comes down to that stuff, though, it's also all just kind of like weed to me. I don't care what anyone says. Like, I haven't smoked in like seriously

in like 15 or 20 years but even when I did it was just weed oh this one this one produces a more chill high it helps you focus and blah blah look it's just weed dude I want to make Mario Kart more fun like stop talking and just give it to me I bet you were great at university

I was a lot of fun yeah I mean I I kind of agreed to be honest the last time I took weed I was like last time I took weed what a loser took weed yeah Listen to you. That's how far. That's how long ago it was. Now you're saying, oh, the last time I took it. I'm going to, I'm just going to leave it there. I was laying on the floor like basically crying because I, I can't handle it anymore. I don't know. I can't handle it. Where was I? Oh yeah. Mr. X and Johnny Boone and create a Marion County seed bank. They're connoisseurs, like real scientific agricultural masterminds before their time. They find the best stuff suitable for their growing environment. They crossbreed and they crossbreed to have the best high. The most potent stuff. stuff, like the easiest to grow.

And their Kentucky Sonsamia gets so popular, distributors from all over start going there to get weed, which is great because it's one thing to grow it, right? It's entirely different thing to move it. California growers, who I always assume were the biggest, actually try to talk shit about it because they don't like the Kentucky boys taking over the market, making better stuff than they do,

and they start calling it Hillbilly weed, which not nice. Kind of cool. Yeah, I mean, it actually reminds me, there was a guy a couple years ago with a big grow up in California who wanted to tell us stories, and hang out with us and he just disappeared after I was like planned to go out there.

I don't know what happened to you dude but if you're still listening call me man. Hope you're okay. Let's hang out. So Boone becomes one of the main growers and he's the main connect to Mr. X but he's not the only one

getting going in the 1970s. You had guys like the Bickett brothers who I mentioned one of them wrote a book Joe Keith and Jimmy Bickett you had Bobby Joe Shoemaker which great name and you had some others. Yeah these are like I mean these sounds like pseudonyms

they're so perfect. No they're real dude. NASCAR team or something. No, they're real names, dude. These guys rule. Oh, so cool. So there wasn't a real hierarchy, though, right? It wasn't like a top-down organization.

They were just guys who would organize crews and organize fields. Some like the ones I mentioned were leaders. Others would just jump aboard. But even with these factions, they were more like friendly competitors. They weren't rivals by any means. They would help each other out. Growers would sometimes sell together or one might fall short. He might need 10 or 15 pounds to finish up a load selling to someone else.

So they would get it from one of these. the other crews, sometimes one group would agree to give another group a percentage of their crop and vice versa. So that if one got knocked or died, the guy who got busted or lost his crop would still have some product coming in, like an insurance policy almost. Yeah, I mean, or like a union, right? It really makes you think. But this is probably Democrat era south, right? I mean, this is like Dixie Democrats and that kind of stuff still. These guys, it's hard to tell.

I mean, they, the book like Bigot's Booth is full of just hating politicians and the government. You know, they were just real. That's the only political view that is correct. Yeah. So it was loose affiliations, right? Whoever was trying to organize that go around, you went with it. It kind of reminds me how we talked about the Russian mafia that was in New York, right? There were certain leaders, but it wasn't one big organization.

You just went in with someone when they had the scam or the idea to make money, though these guys, I think, were a lot friendlier than the Russian mobsters were to each other. That's not tough. And this kind of, you know, these keep things mostly friendly with each other. there wasn't really too much violence between them and they kind of got known for that afterwards it got exposed though they didn't operate like others day when we think of the world of cartels or big time smugglers

and so you had a couple of dozen young men who get involved in the weed game and Marriott County Kentucky becomes this domain of the outlaw farmer and the capital of weed growing in America at the time which is surprising because I probably would have guessed Humboldt County and I don't know I mean I don't know how you describe the capital like I said these guys end up being the biggest weed growing cartel homegrown in America in 1989.

Where's Humboldt County? It's Northern California. Uh-huh. Cool. They would grow the weed in like secluded hollows and valleys, eventually farms, sometimes interspersing it with corn or soybean, which helped to keep it hidden, right? It would grow over it.

Eventually, they would have to move out of state when Marion gets too hot, but in the beginning, it's county grown in the couple of counties over there. These guys are, they're farmers, their mechanics, they're handymen by day. And by night, they transform into these savvy businessmen managing an underground empire. They recruit others from the local community. They get friends, neighbors, even family members.

And it's a really tight-nate organization that was like almost like a fraternity as much as it was a criminal enterprise. Each member has their role, some tend to the crops, others like handle the logistics, there's harvesting, there's finances, there's some protection. And back then in the 70s, right, when this stuff starts happening on a wide scale, it actually didn't seem like it was too big a deal to get caught growing weed. Boone actually gets caught in 1976, he does a little time. And this is right when he coins the tour.

term for their local weed, Kentucky Bluegrass. Yeah, that's very good name. I'm buying. Although I'm not. I hate weed, but I will buy that because of the name. Mostly it seems these guys get like slaps on their wrist in the early days. Like they might do a little time, but it was nothing serious. I mean, there's bus where they get like six months probation and like a, you know, $5,000 fine.

Like it really, I was surprised. I would assume it would be like draconian in the 70s, but it was not. And they're dealing with local law enforcement at first. And it almost has this weird TV-like quality when you're reading about it. What I mean by that is like, you know, these guys, it was like almost cops and robbers, except, you know, they would meet at the same bar sometimes have drinks. And don't get me wrong. Things get tense with the police and with the Kentucky State Police and the local police sometimes. But it almost feels like a rivalry of sorts that would see them end up. Like I said, jerking at the same bars at the end of the day. I mean, that could be wrong, but that was the impression that I got from it. Also, these guys had like, like I said, this reputation for being not being violent. There's definitely some Robin Hood stuff we'll get into later. So Sean couldn't be. be mad about that. Look, they were down for a scrap and they were outlaws,

but they weren't really gangsters per se. They definitely had guns and guard dogs and stuff. And there's this story of some of them having Rottweilers with their voice boxes removed so they could sneak up on what they called Rippers or people who ripped off their fields and stole from them. But that actually makes me mad, dude.

Like I love dogs too much to see that happen. Yeah. That makes me madder than like drug cartels killing each other, you know? Like I... Oh, 100%. Dude Yeah that's like

Poor dog The worst thing They've done So far Which actually I guess makes this episode One of the more Uplifting ones we've done lately

Which I can't say I saw Dude Every time I see like a golden Retriever In like A husky in like Manhattan

I'm like there's There should be federal laws That if you own a dog In a city like this Once every two weeks You need to take that dog Somewhere It can run without a leash

Yeah man That's how strongly I want them to crack down But anyway Where was I Let's just say this group, they don't really function like your average drug cartel or gang. Which isn't to say there weren't some murders or psychopaths.

Like there's one infamous one who was a member named Garland Russell, who according to Joe Keith Bickett actually coins the term cornbread mafia, though a lot of people say the government did at this big press conference in 1989. Russell was not the romantic outlaw, good old boy. He was a murderer. He had killed people for almost no reason. Everyone was scared of him. But he was a member and a grower. He acted as like an enforcer, especially against. thieves and rippers. One time he caught two and then he poured gasoline on them, but was stopped

before he set them on fire. Apparently there were a few times they had to stop him from killing others. He doesn't last too long though. Like in 1979, he gets caught for stealing mobile homes and moving them across state lines, which amazing crime, amazing crime to go down for. He's looking at a major sentence, possibly life due to all his prior violent convictions. So he goes underground and he ends getting robbed on a deal gone bad, tries to get revenge on the folks who did it. The whole thing is kind of murky. He disappears, never to be seen again. Most of those in the nose seem to think he was murdered, though there was a sighting maybe 10 years later. And a couple of other people tied to him are murder or disappeared in these suing years. So yeah, like not a regular drug

cartel, especially for the amount of money they were moving, but definitely there was some kind of violence and some bodies. Yeah, you know how you say in the trailer for this show that this isn't just some podcast about rednecks killing folks on trailer parks? Yeah, I don't know, do I say that? Yeah. I think the line, no, the line we used to give was like there are too many true crime shows where it's just like you know somebody in a trailer park murders their wife uh so they can date the sister and the bumbling sheriff messes up the DNA and blah blah blah and that's what like every true crime show is so we used to make that joke and like interviews that like that's not our that's what like that's not what we do or and uh people

love them let's make more of them yeah i think this is a little a little different bobby joe shoemaker he's another one of the major players that I mentioned earlier. He's a Vietnam vet and his role is really interesting. There's sort of a nationwide weed underworld involving a lot of Vietnam vets in the years following the war, guys who got him to weed while overseas or come back and want to sell or just be involved in the underworld and get involved in like the counterculture, right? All that sort of stuff. And he's able to really plug into it besides being like, you know, your usual grower and organizer like that.

So that really helps with distribution. So these guys are. growing weed in Kentucky, making a ton of cash, and things by all accounts are going pretty well. But then we have something called the Black Bandit Incident. And this really signals like a big change that's coming. It feels like a turning point. This is in March of 1980, Boone and a few others in a black pickup truck going a rampage of sorts, deliberately provoking and messing with the local police.

They're playing hiding, go seek with police cars, kind of terrorizing the town one night, even smashing into police cruisers and getting away. And apparently they do it because they wanted to start. from a big weed shipment moving through town. And they're able to get away at first. The police later arrest them, but they can't find the truck so the charges can't stick.

But this starts like a real war between the cornbread mafia and the cops. Before then, like I said, things that almost seemed like, you know, kind of cutesy between the opposing forces. Now it's on. And a few months later,

the police get a helicopter. I think it's the state police that get it. And they start going up all day, spotting fields of weed, then destroying them. And one week, they destroy 45 acres of weed fields, another day they get 20 acres in a nearby county.

The growers are losing crops left and right, and now for the first time they're starting to face more serious charges. Kentucky state law, marijuana growing is actually a misdemeanor at the time, which actually, like I said, shocks me. I thought things were way harsher. But federally, it's still a felony and you face five years, which still, I would have assumed in the early 80s, that would be a much bigger sentence,

but we'll get to that when that changes. Yeah, for non-Americans, help us understand how the same crime can be two different things with two sentences. in the same place. I mean, imagine for a second, like, it's tough, but imagine that I'm an idiot and you're telling it to an idiot. You know, I might be an idiot, but I think it applies to like which agencies are going after you, you know, how that qualifies and things like that. That could be completely wrong. I've never actually probably should have chat GPT that.

But, yeah, I mean, when it comes to other crimes, too, like, it can involve moving state lines, things of that nature. But it is interesting to think about why that is, and we should probably know the difference at this point. But, uh, I mean, I lived in Germany and that was federalized and I don't know the difference. So yeah, I'll take the L2. We could, we could look this up right now and edit this out, but we want to be, we're going to be real, you know, we're going to leave it in. The, uh, the Bigot brothers get picked up in 1980, 1980, 1981, I think, with 150 pounds

by federal agents. After a bunch of mistrials on technicalities, one brother gets let off, another eventually pleads guilty to a lesser charge and gets off, like I said, probation and a fine. That same year in 1981, it's when Mr. X brings back this Russian seed that apparently becomes the best one. But still, some of the growers end up losing out on a $12 million crop and the times they're changing. The crackdowns are starting and they're happening all over. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing.

They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Me. murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. B. B. Dürfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history, from killer cannibal brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult, and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times.

They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 100 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. One important thing to note is that the Cornbread Mafia wasn't just growing wheat in Kentucky.

They were expanding operations and they were real deal smugglers. Marion County homegrown was all well and good. But there's an off season for growing and not an off season for smoking. So the distributors were buying off them were going to need keep wanting weed. Usually October to February is when they had their own weed that they had grown to sell. In the other months, they still needed a product to feed their distributors. Johnny Boone had started going down to Belize in the early 70s. He learns from a community of Mennonites down there how to farm and do things in the jungle.

And he starts a marijuana plantation with some locals. Boone would grow it, then take plane loads to dump spots along the Florida coastline. That's, yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, at the end of it, it's just hippie smoking weed. No harm done, all fun and chill, right? I can almost, I mean, I can almost hear CCR playing in the bar pick of this. I don't know, maybe Tommy Lee Jones is Johnny Boone. Should we write it?

This is so good. This is made for a movie, this story. I think Tommy Lee Jones is a little older than we would need. And Boone, if you look at Boone, like he's actually a cool looking dude. You know, he looks like a biker Santa Claus, right? he's a big, kind of stout guy, big stomach, giant beard. You read about him like he used to have on his properties, like his old rural properties, like all these animal skeletons, like on the road to the property to kind of like warn people to stay away.

But he also seems like super friendly who gave always to people in need. And on the normal like drug lord way, even it even feels funny calling him a drug lord. He gets portrayed as like a pretty, pretty chill dude when it comes down to it. Again, I can't speak to the veracity of that, but that's the portrayal from multiple sources that I've seen. Yes, it's so good. Boone's operation ends up getting busted, and he does a few years in 1982. Meanwhile, there's a serious investigation starting to look into Bobby the Shoemaker,

who's growing like 40 to 50,000 pounds a wheat a year, and using tugboat owners to smuggle itself. These guys are growing weed, processing weed, smuggling weed, shipping it, losing fields, getting new ones, all that. 1983 is a big year, though. It's when a drought hits, and it's also when the Kentucky State Police get more aggressive than ever. and the DEA really starts doing aerial surveillance.

Five to ten year prison sentences become the norm. Marion's outlaw culture is feeling the pinch. There's even a few murders that are happening. Some drama starts brewing with the growers even who had been super united because what happens? Cocaine starts coming around and it makes things darker. I feel like that's almost a common trope with all these 70s, 80s smuggler stories, you know? You got to stay off the blow, stay off Instagram, and you'll be alright.

Just a lot of these crews, they're getting heavy into Coke. Some are even selling it a little bit here. here and there. Boom even has a falling out, I think, with Shoemaker and the Bickett brothers about telling them to stay off the EA. The Kentucky State Police are also still in the grind, though it's incredibly hard to get anyone in Marion County to talk or give up the goods. The investigations unit even goes so far as to go undercover by buying a bar and starting to make buys in the county. But soon enough, you know, they get burnt, people realize they're narcs. They make a few arrests, but they face serious enough death threats that they shut the

operation down and leave. The cornbread boys, marrying County, it's a really tight-knit rural community where everyone knows each other. Outsiders are entrusted and this sort of outlaw credo. Cretto, how do you say that, Cretto? Cretto, Cretto, yeah, yeah. You know, I keep sort of bringing this up over and over, but the Cornbread Boys, Marion County, it's a really tight-knit rural community where everyone knew each other. Outsiders were entrusted and there's this kind of like wall of silence that they get famous

for where no one talks. You know, it was so thick for generations, you would have narks like this, getting death threats like that and being challenged. But 1984 is going to really bring the hammer. Because that's when old Ronnie Reagan ups the drug war with new stricter penalties by passing the Comprehensive Control Act of 1984. And two years later, he adds on the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986. And these acts radically transformed the drug war and expand the Fetch law enforcement powers

while also putting a ton of money into like the DEA. Higden mentions a guy who gets caught in 1976 that got a fine in probation for six months who's like a farmer. The new laws make it so that if he was caught for the same thing after November 1st, 1987, when they go into effect, he would get a minimum of 10 years. Yeah, so like, I'm being ignorant again, but what's the thinking back then? Was it genuinely thought of as a deterrent or was it kind of a cultural scare kind of thing? I mean, on a similar note, actually, the Bali 9, you might not know, but they were released yesterday. They were Aussie folks who tried importing several bricks of heroin into Indonesia like 20 years ago. I might

to a bonus on it actually because it's a really interesting stories that's kind of developing now. You know, I think a big part of it is that like the stuff going on between like gangs, like drug gangs and growers and stuff like that in the American cities in the like late 70s with heroin and then in 80s

when it starts up with the crack was like really, really bad. Yeah. Like the violence. If you look at, like everyone knows New York in the early 90s, the murder rate was out of control in like, you know, 93, I think, 92. 77, 77, 78, 78, 79 was really bad too so things were really really really violent and you had a lot of people getting strung out

on on on on on on drugs like first heroin then coke and crack like it was uh you know some of these city like you look at what some of these cities look like back then it was bad it was really bad so i think it was um i think it was a reflection of that obviously there's there's other things that go into it but i think a big part of the push was related to that that they went overboard because of like the chaos that was happening around yeah i mean there's other there's plenty of other reasons I don't want to stipulate that's the only reason. But like things were, things were, it was a reaction to that. An overreaction, for sure, but a reaction.

Meanwhile, Boone gets out of prison in 1984. Cocaine is everywhere in Marion. Paranoia is high. There's guns getting pulled out. There's violence. There's no more good nature, good old boys. Boone even says that he's realizing that cocaine is unraveling everything they built. People are falling into debt.

There's bad blood. The shoemaker crew is selling Coke, and Boone is clashing with them trying to, to get them out of it. I mean, you can see why, right? I mean, these guys might be outlaw players, but they've just, it just seems to me like they've just moved into a completely other world here. I'm guessing this is going to be a hard lesson for staying in your lane, perhaps. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't even know if it's like they got to worry about, like, drug gangs in Kentucky. I think it's more that just like they're using so much. And then also dealing it brings in a whole other level of heat.

I don't think they were dealing it big enough for that some hour. I think it was just they were all using it so much that, like, you know, they're getting tweaked out. And everyone knows what happens when that happens. Like, he gets sloppy. There's a lesson. By the end of 1984, Marion County and Kentucky are just too hot with law enforcement attention. They start moving it out of state. They're growing ops to other states. Missouri, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota.

Different leaders would have different states. You had the Kansas crew, the Minnesota crew, on and on. The Kentuckians and all their workers would go on the road. Though a lot of times, I actually would bring the crop back into Marion to, like, dole it out. Meanwhile, in 1985, the feds are nowering down years of investigating. to the guy they think is the top dog in the cornbread mafia, Bobby Joe Shoemaker. What does him in is the hustle that he had, where they were taking a stolen shrimp boat from Key West to the Caribbean coast of Columbia to load it with weed and then back up through

North Florida and Georgia. So he was another guy who was bringing it in from overseas too. It wasn't just Boone that was doing that, like a bunch of the other guys were doing it. Shoemaker, he's a marine vet who's serving to Vietnam, like I said, a badass, ballsy, big-time grower. He starts in the 70s with the rest of the guys, but he also has a man. that operating Colombian weed in the early 80s. They took advantage of the chaos that was

happening with the Mario Bolt Lift, you know, with the Coast Guard super focused on all the Cubans coming in, and they were using cigarette boats to get weed in through the Everglades, using St. Augustine, North Florida, and moving stuff through Georgia. Hey, who knows? Like, maybe Bum Farto's involved here somewhere. Is that an excuse to play the Bum Farto track again?

Yeah, I'm hoping that Dale's going to stick that on now. Just cue up, cue up 30 seconds. People are still taught, like, reach out to us about that song, like, where they can hear it. Maybe you're going to end up performing it one day. People in Georgia, yet people in Florida he was working with. And unlike the Marion County folk, who are famous for never cooperating opening their mouths, these other guys did not live by such a code.

They talk. And the hammer comes down in December of 1885. 32 co-conspirers are indicted in Savannah for smuggling 25,000 pounds of Colombian pot into Florida and then trucking it into Georgia. There had been an informant. Shoemaker is one of only three who actually takes the trial. He gets convicted, but he goes on the run. And years later, he's still managing a multi-state pocrowing empire.

He hightels it to Windsor Canada just over the border. And him and one of the bickets end up planting a crop near there and even smuggling some Canadian weed into the states. And by 1997, Boone is growing crops again despite the heat and the new consequences. And that's when we get that story from the cold open with Minnesota and that big bust and the eventual unraveling. of all of the cornbread mafia. Or all the guys we know about due to the feds and what the cornbread mafia members themselves

have chosen to reveal both Bickett and I guess Johnny Boone was like one of Higgins' main sources so him as well. The feds eventually realized the cornbread mafia isn't this like single organization led by Bobby Joe Shoemaker or Boone but they soon realize it's more like this

co-op full of friendly competitors like we've talked about. By early 1988, there's even more people arrested. I think it gets into the dozens and dozens 80 tons of weed valued at $144 million is confiscated. None of the Marion County boys end up talking, something criminal groups always romanticized but never actually stick to. Yeah, I can hear the clickety clack of some mafia cartel loving dummies.

Type in Anglia away at that on YouTube. Nah, dude, they all talk. By 1989, there's 70 federal prosecutions, I think, 56 convictions with plenty of other cases waiting, and 487,000 pounds of weed have been. seized. Boone ends up pleading out. He takes 20 years. He's 44 years old at the time. Meanwhile, Bobby Joe Shoemaker is still on the run. He's setting up an op in Kansas with the Bicketts. Joe Keith Bickett is going off the deep end. He's partying for weeks. He's free basing, even smoking crack. Bobby Joe is driving around Kansas and a Ford Bronco with a black bear cub in it. There's also, I think, some lion cubs that he has, too. It's actually, you know, very traditional drug cartel movies when you think about it. In late 1988, Shoemaker's op in Kansas gets busted. He only narrowly gets away. I think he was in a motel nearby and they don't recognize him. A little later, there's a guy from Maine who used to buy from them. He ends up wearing a wire after he gets busted and the bigots go down in 1989. Another crew led by a guy named Tommy Lee Scarface

gets busted in Missouri with 25,000 plants, estimated $25 million worth. He goes down for 250 months. Then in April, Shoemaker finally gets caught in a Canadian lake town on the border. Maybe it was the U.S. Lake Town on the border of Canada. I'm not entirely sure. Oh, I think Canadian because there's a fight over extradition. He gets 25 years on drug charges, 10 for being a fugitive. And by 1989, the cornbread mafia is pretty wrecked. That's also when we get that big press conference in Louisville, revealing the cornbread mafia, even calling it the largest domestic marijuana-producing organization in the history

of the U.S. 29 farms, wholesale value of the weed sees, 364 million. Yeah, that's crazy. Also, Tommy Lee's Scarface just completely passed me by with all the magic. shit that's going on in this script. But I mean, I actually want to write a screenplay about this. Like, I want to actually do it. And at this point of reading your notes, like, I actually went online and looked up what's

been made about this. And there's just some extreme low budget thing called the Cornbread Casinostra from 2018. I mean, we need to get on this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can do better, you know? We can. Just.

Boone actually ends up serving time in that famous, one of the famous prisons in the U.S. Terhote in Indiana. And he makes friends with Joey Testa, who is a legendary New York mob figure, infamous, actually, who was involved in like hundreds of murders. He teaches Boone about the concept of Omertha, you know, the Southern Italian Code of Silence,

the mafia's famous for, and Boone, who recognizes that's basically what the Marion County boys actually live by, he gets it prison-tatted on his back in like big letters. On October 8, 1989, the Big Kentucky newspaper, the Courier Journal, publishes a story titled,

quote, the cornbread mafia, how good old boys from Kentucky just trying to make a living organize the biggest marijuana farming operation in U.S. history. From one tiny enclave in rural central Kentucky, a good old boy network grew in the biggest marijuana farming operation ever uncovered in the United States, 27 farms in nine men western states, and there may be more. As a writer, there is so much good in those old leads. They're just so cool. They're like an opening of a movie.

I love them. I love American writing from that era. It's quality stuff. Although I think Bickett complains about that article getting stuff wrong, but you know, it is what it is. So yeah. Who cares about accuracy when you can write a nice sentence, yeah? Probably, you know, people get caught. They're always going to complain about accuracy.

That's just how it works. Yeah. But yeah, the legend is sort of born right there. While these guys are all, most of them, I mean, the ones that we know about are in prison. It's a little bit of like a good fellow situation, actually. In Levinworth Prison, Bobby Joe and the Bickett boys are there. Bobby Joe's got 30 years. Joe Keith has got 25.

Jimmy Bickett gets 19. Johnny Boone's got 20. But yeah, eventually Boone gets out in 1999. And around 2006 is when Higden starts working on this book and be friends Boone. In May 2008, Boone who has been out of prison kind of, you know, in bonding with Higden, the author as he writes the book, has a farm that gets raided by the feds and they find millions in weed. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out, it was more of a thinking about run club era.

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At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard... A voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is ours.

It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe, Arrow, the 100 NX files, may cause excitement, loss of sleep and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Choice hotels get you more of what you value. Here's a little tune to help you remember. Same drive, different day.

Don't you wish you were getting away? Pack your bags and come on through Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too. Comfort in, it's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song, book direct at sourcehiltails.com. Boone goes on the run, and all through summer 2008, the U.S. Marshals are after him.

America's Most Wanted even does a segment on him, and Higden ends up becoming the first journalist subpoenaed by the Obama administration to give up some info, which he doesn't do. He also says he didn't know at the time anyway, where Boone was. Here's in November 2010 AP headline that reads Kentucky's King of Pot still on the Lamb

two years after federal raid. And you're not going to like this, Sean, but they talk about him as a Robin Hood. I think it's even somewhat, it might be even applicable here. He's got the folk hero status. Here's a quote, that's all he's ever done, Raisin Pot.

He never hurt nobody. That's not how the story of Robin Hood goes. It seems pretty true for these guys. They really did help out anyone in need of Marion County. He didn't kill anyone that we know of, but, you know, I digress. Joe Keith Bickett is released from prison in 2011. He had done 22 of his 25-year sentence. Obama actually commutes the sentence of a few other members, I think, three in 2015 and 2016.

Meanwhile, Boone is still lost in the wind. In 2016, someone does an interview with Higden and he says, quote, he's a legend where he's from and the U.S. Marshals found this out when they went to go find him for being a fugitive. Nobody in Marion and Washington County wanted to point a finger at Johnny Boone. He has a lot of respect in his community for being a responsible member of his community, who gives back to a lot of people, who helps out a lot of people. Boone ends up staying on the run for eight years before being caught in a shopping mall in 2016, in Canada.

He had been hiding out on a Mohawk Indian Reservation outside Montreal. he thought he would be facing mandatory life, which is why he went on the run. He pleads guilty in 2018 and gets sentenced to 57 months. In May 2020, there's another article from the Courier Journal in Louisville with Johnny Boone asking to be released from the federal prison in Ohio he was serving his time in because of a bunch of COVID deaths. I think he's 76 at the time. He had served 42 months of his 57-month sentence and, you know, big guy, kind of unhealthy.

He is eventually released this past June. He passed away at the age of 80. and that my friends is the tale of the cornbread mafia. I mean, crime pays. There's an image of a view that I have right now, right? And it's Danny sitting by fireside in upstate New York. Little Jimmy on his knee, and he's got a sick fade, of course. And you're telling him the tale of the cornbread mafia and little Jimmy.

He jumps up with a star, he looks in your eyes and says, Daddy, I want to tell stories. And you tell him calmly, yeah, sure, son. I'll give you the number for a guy in corporate PR. And that's how a journalist gets his pension, guys, and there's no other way. You, you know, we're kind of letting things fly this episode, so I was just going to let you carry on, but I'm pretty sure everyone's tuned out. To those of you who haven't tuned out, our numbers were down last week, like big. So old school style, like we used to tell you guys to do, take your friends and family's phones, start push playing our podcast, just leave it playing, do that.

I also want to get back into investing in shit coins, so I'm going to need money. So definitely get those numbers back up, support us. If you have shit coins that are actually going to go up a lot. I want ones that are going to go up like 50 times over. Definitely let me know. That would be a very cool thing for you guys to do. Yeah. But only if it's definite.

We're kind of losing our minds this episode, huh? Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed that. If you're still listening, I don't know why, but I'm glad that you are. Have a great holiday weekend. Holiday week. Holiday month. I don't fucking know, dude. Holiday time.

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