Johnny Boone Obituary: Johnny Boone, a marijuana outlaw from central Kentucky who avoided a federal manhunt for eight years, died on Friday night at the age of 80. Boone, known as the “Godfather of Grass,” led the “Cornbread Mafia,” which federal prosecutors described in 1989 as “the largest domestic marijuana-producing organization in the history of the United States.” Joe Keith Bickett, a fellow Cornbread Mafia leader, confirmed the news on Facebook that Boone died Friday night. “He was a great friend to many of us,” Bickett wrote. “Always willing to help his friends and neighbors. Prayers and thoughts for all the Boone family. He will be greatly missed.”
During the 1970s and 1980s, John Robert Boone and his close-knit companions grew significant amounts of marijuana in Marion, Nelson, and Washington counties. The organization eventually expanded its illicit trafficking enterprise to ten states in the Midwest, before federal agents caught and charged scores of them in 1987. Boone was one of those detained and later sentenced to 20 years on drug charges, but prosecutors were hampered by the fact that none of the more than 100 others caught cooperated with authorities in exchange for reduced terms.
Following his parole, Boone’s outlaw folk legend increased in 2008, when state police and the DEA searched his Springfield property, discovering 2,400 marijuana plants. Boone fled to avoid arrest and remained a fugitive for the next eight years, as a “third strike” for a federal narcotics conviction might result in a life sentence. Boone was eventually located and arrested in Montreal in late 2016. He pleaded guilty to one crime and received a 57-month sentence the following year. He was released early from prison in 2020 due to a COVID-19 epidemic at his federal penitentiary in Ohio.
Federal authorities’ difficulty in finding Boone while he was on the lam was attributed to the same reasons they couldn’t get defendants to flip in the 1980s: the “code of silence” surrounding the Cornbread Mafia and the goodwill they had earned in the community. Former U.S. Marshal Rick McCubbin told The Courier-Journal in 2017 that they ran into a wall of silence when attempting to find Boone in his old haunts, as he had taken care of his community and they repaid him with loyalty.
Johnny Boone Convictions and Sentencing.
Boone was initially convicted of a federal marijuana conviction in 1982, and in an October 1987 raid, he was captured in Minnesota alongside colleagues who were producing marijuana. Boone oversaw operations at the Minnesota farm, where authorities recovered 47 tons of marijuana. According to Higdon’s book, Boone was chased from the farm by three police cars before being apprehended. Officers discovered a loaded rifle, handgun, and thousands of rounds of ammunition in Boone’s truck, but he fired no shots at the officers.
By the end of 1987, the DEA had raided marijuana fields in nine additional states linked to the Cornbread Mafia organization, seizing 182 tons of marijuana (worth $350 million at the time) and detaining more than 80 people, the majority of whom were from Marion County. The syndicate was heavily armed and built up extensive fortifications to protect its crops, allegedly involving boobytraps, bears, and lions, with federal prosecutors describing them as a “paramilitary force.”
Just before being sentenced to 20 years in prison for his 1988 narcotics conviction, Boone told the court that he and his accomplices were not violent criminals, but rather people attempting to make a life. When Boone escaped to evade arrest in 2008 and began his eight-year stay in hiding, retired Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten described the law enforcement chase as “like trying to catch a ghost.”
Locals cheered on Boone as he eluded federal law enforcement and became an outlaw folk hero, even appearing on an episode of America’s Most Wanted, with many purchasing T-shirts that read “Run Johnny, Run.” An Associated Press piece from 2010, when Boone was still on the run, showed Marion County residents praising his kindness and hoping he would avoid being apprehended and sentenced to life in jail.
Following his early release from jail in 2020, Boone joined Joe Keith Bickett and Jimmy Bickett, two Cornbread Mafia founders imprisoned to 20 years each, in promoting Bickett & Boone, a hemp CBD enterprise. A member of the Bickett family runs the enterprise, which grows low-THC cannabis on their Raywick farm. Growing and using marijuana for recreational purposes remains illegal in Kentucky, as it is in about half of other states, while medical marijuana will be allowed in 2023. The carefully regulated program will formally debut in January 2025, allowing patients to legally purchase medical cannabis, with licensed farmers anticipated to begin sowing seeds later this year.
President Joe Biden said in April that his government intends to reschedule marijuana as a Schedule III drug, which would result in reduced criminal penalties and increased opportunities for medical study. Marijiuana has been a Schedule I substance since 1970, alongside heroin, ecstasy, and LSD. At what was labeled a “Cornbread Mafia reunion” on April 20, 2023, in Lebanon, Ky., with Boone in attendance, Joe Keith Bickett told a local media that the enormous local turnout was “a tribute to the guys who spent a lot of time in prison for something legal today.” People make money doing the same things we did back then. “It has come full circle.”
Johnny Boone Funeral Arrangements will be Released by the Family.
