Cornbread Mafia

{{short description|American criminal group of marijuana producers}}

The "Cornbread mafia" was the name for a group of Kentucky men who created the largest domestic marijuana production operation in United States history.James Higdon, [https://books.google.com/books?id=8-WGDwAAQBAJ&q=domestic The Cornbread Mafia], Lyons Press 2012, p. x It was based in Marion, Nelson and Washington counties in central Kentucky. The term "Cornbread Mafia" was first publicly used by federal prosecutors in a June 1989 press conference, where they revealed that 70 men had been arrested for organizing a marijuana trafficking ring that stretched across 30 farms in 10 states stretching from the Southeast into the Midwest.James Higdon, [https://books.google.com/books?id=8-WGDwAAQBAJ&q=press+conference The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History], Lyons Press, 2012, p. 268 The story was first reported in the Courier Journal newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky on October 8, 1989, and then in 2012 in the narrative non-fiction book The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History by James Higdon.

In his first two books,The Origins of the Cornbread Mafia, a Memoir of Sorts (2016)Joe Keith Bickett, The Origins of the Cornbread Mafia, a Memoir of Sorts, {{ISBN|9781536814446}} and Cornbread Mafia, The Outlaws of Central Kentucky (2018)Joe Keith Bickett, Cornbread Mafia: The Outlaws of Central Kentucky, {{ISBN|9781725563636}} author and founding member Joe Keith Bickett, chronicles his first-hand account as to how the term "Cornbread Mafia" was coined in Kentucky in the late 1970s.Joe Keith Bickett, The Origins of the Cornbread Mafia, A Memoir of Sorts, {{ISBN|9781725563636}} and the group's ultimate downfall in the late 1980s.Joe Keith Bickett, Cornbread Mafia, The Outlaws of Central Kentucky, {{ISBN|9781725563636}}

Bickett wrote his first two memoirs "The Origins of the Cornbread Mafia, A Memoir of Sorts" and "Cornbread Mafia, The Outlaws of Central Kentucky" while incarcerated in the 1990s but did not publish his books until several years after his release from federal prison in 2011.Joe Keith Bickett, The Origins of the Cornbread Mafia, a Memoir of Sorts. p.5

Origin of the name

Higdon's book reports that assistant US Attorney Cleve Gambill said at the June 1989 press conference: "The organization is a highly motivated, well financed group of marijuana growers from Kentucky who are responsible for growing this vast amount of marijuana [and who] call themselves the Cornbread Mafia."James Higdon, [https://books.google.com/books?id=8-WGDwAAQBAJ&q=press+conference The Cornbread Mafia], Lyons Press, 2012, p. 268 Prosecutors held this press conference to lay out their case against the "Cornbread Mafia" because of the 70 men arrested in association with it, none of them cooperated with authorities, which thwarted a Continuing Criminal Enterprise case against the suspected ringleaders. Internal documents describe the proposed CCE prosecution as "futile" because of the group's collective silence.James Higdon, [https://books.google.com/books?id=8-WGDwAAQBAJ&q=CCE The Cornbread Mafia], Lyons Press, 2012, p. 263 This code of silence persisted until Higdon published his book, The Cornbread Mafia, in 2012.

Joe Keith Bickett was released from prison in 2011 after serving approximately 22 years of his 25-year sentence. In 2016, Bickett self-published a first-hand account in his 2016 memoir titled The Origins of the Cornbread Mafia: A Memoir of Sorts,{{cite book|title= The Origins of the Cornbread Mafia |author= Joe Keith Bickett |isbn= 9781536814446 |date= August 24, 2016 |publisher= CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform }}{{Cite web|url=https://www.pmg-ky2.com/lebanon/|title=The Lebanon Enterprise|first=Paxton Media Group Kentucky Pub|last=Group2|date=June 12, 2024|website=Paxton Media Group Kentucky Pub Group2}}{{cite web|url= http://www.whas11.com/entertainment/television/great-day-live/joe-keith-bickett-shares-the-chronicle-of-the-cornbread-mafia/367360661 |title=WHAS 11: Great Day Live |work=WHAS11 |date= |accessdate=2016-12-09}} in which he provides a first-hand account how the term "Cornbread Mafia" was actually coined in September 1978.{{Cite book|last=Bickett, Joe Keith|title=The origins of the Cornbread Mafia : a memoir of sorts|date=24 August 2016|isbn=978-1-5368-1444-6|location=[Self published]|oclc=968131235}}

Original members Joe Keith Bickett and others

The original and founding members of the Cornbread Mafia were author Joe Keith Bickett, Jimmy Bickett, Jimmy Downs (aka "Ray") and Garland Russell.Joe Keith Bickett, The Origins Of The Cornbread Mafia, A Memoir of Sorts, p. 167 [self published 2016], ISBN 9781536814446. Bobby Joe Shewmaker, a Vietnam veteran, Johnny Boone and others would join the clandestine operation in the early 1980s.Joe Keith Bickett, Cornbread Mafia The Outlaws of Central Kentucky, p. 15 [self published], ISBN 9781725563636. The group initially operated out of Squire's Tavern in the small town of Raywick located in central Kentucky before the group spread throughout a multi-state area.Joe Keith Bickett, The Origins of the Cornbread Mafia, A Memoir of Sorts, p.19 [self published] ISBN 9781536814446.

Allegations

Between 1985 and 1989, 70 Kentuckians were accused of growing 182 tons of marijuana on 29 farms in 10 states, including Minnesota,{{cite web|url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=PD&s_site=twincities&p_multi=SP&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB5D746453C1064&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM|title=Pioneer Press: Search Results|publisher=}} Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Michigan, Nebraska,{{cite web|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_nIhAAAAIBAJ&pg=1874,4360193&dq=kentucky%20marijuana%20kansas&hl=en|title=Schenectady Gazette - Google News Archive Search|publisher=}} Missouri and Kansas,{{cite web|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YJEzAAAAIBAJ&pg=5141,3615654&dq=kentucky%20marijuana%20kansas&hl=en|title=Lawrence Journal-World - Google News Archive Search|publisher=}} which federal prosecutors considered to be the "largest domestic marijuana producing organization in the nation."{{cite web|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=dvMrAAAAIBAJ&pg=1252,4869514&dq=cornbread-mafia&hl=en|title=Kentucky New Era - Google News Archive Search|publisher=}} By the end of 1991, prosecutors had arrested more than 100 members of the Cornbread Mafia, mostly from Lebanon, Kentucky.{{cite web|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=dv0fAAAAIBAJ&pg=2844,4755844&dq=cornbread-mafia&hl=en|title=The Nevada Daily Mail - Google News Archive Search|publisher=}}

According to Joe Keith Bickett's second book, Bobby Joe "Redeye" Shewmaker, the leader of the Kansas crew, was the only defendant in the group's history to be indicted on a CCE charge (Career Criminal Enterprise).Joe Keith Bickett, Cornbread Mafia, The Outlaws of Central Kentucky, p 230 Jimmy Bickett and author Joe Keith Bickett, along with two codefendants, were the only defendants who proceeded to a jury trial after being indicted in March 1989 in federal court in Louisville, Kentucky on distribution of marijuana charges.Joe Keith Bickett, Cornbread Mafia, The Outlaws of Central Kentucky, p.255 The Cornbread Mafia has been brought up in the Summer Wells disappearance case.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}}

Prison time

In October 2022, author Joe Keith Bickett self-published his third book titled Cornbread Mafia, the Quest for Freedom, a Prisoner's Memoir. {{ISBN|9798437725108}} In his third memoir, Bickett dives deep into the murky world of federal prison as Bickett and many members of the Cornbread Mafia strive for their freedom after being convicted in various federal courts across the country as marijuana offenders. Bickett was sentenced to 25 years. Jimmy Bickett, Johnny Boone, "The Godfather of Grass" and Tommy Lee were each sentenced to 20 years. Bobby Joe Shewmaker was sentenced to 30 years. Many more members were sentenced to serve lesser terms. In this third memoir, Bickett details an unforgiving and sometimes corrupt justice system while incarcerated for years in "the Belly of the Beast".Joe Keith Bickett,Cornbread Mafia, The Quest For Freedom, {{ISBN|9798437725108}}

Johnny Boone

The most notable member of the Cornbread Mafia was Johnny Boone, arrested in 1987 as the ringleader of a marijuana operation in Minnesota, for which he served about 15 years in prison. In June 2008, police discovered Boone growing 2,421 marijuana seedlings on his farm outside Springfield, Kentucky in Washington County, but Boone escaped arrest, under threat of a life sentence without parole because the bust would be his third federal conviction under the Three Strikes Law. Boone became a fugitive{{cite web |url=http://www.lcni5.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?023+article+News+20080916115010023023004 |title=The Springfield Sun News, Sports, Entertainment and information for Springfield, Kentucky |publisher=Lcni5.com |accessdate=2012-07-09 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121210042759/http://www.lcni5.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?023+article+News+20080916115010023023004 |archive-date=2012-12-10 |url-status=usurped }} and the subject of a segment of America's Most Wanted.{{cite web |url=http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=59229&refresh=1 |title=Fugitives | John Boone | Case |publisher=AMW |accessdate=2012-07-09 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120813150806/http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=59229&refresh=1 |archivedate=2012-08-13 }}{{cite web |url=http://www.wkyt.com/news/headlines/63351932.html |title=Kentucky man to be featured on "America's Most Wanted" |publisher=Wkyt.com |accessdate=2012-07-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120225110110/http://www.wkyt.com/news/headlines/63351932.html |archive-date=2012-02-25 |url-status=dead }}

On Dec. 22, 2016, after eight years on the run, Johnny Boone was arrested in a small town outside Montreal, where he had been tracked by the U.S. Marshals Service. He was brought to the United States in April 2017. On December 19, 2017, Boone pled guilty to one count of a superseding information.{{cite web|title=Cornbread Mafia leader Johnny Boone pleads guilty in federal court|url=https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/crime/2017/12/20/cornbread-mafia-johnny-boone-pleads-guilty-federal-court/970117001/|website=The Courier Journal|accessdate=24 December 2017}} Boone was represented by attorneys C. Thomas Hectus, Henry Stephens and Elmer J. George. Author, Joe Keith Bickett was employed as law clerk/paralegal for Mr. George and worked as a legal aide for the attorneys on the Johnny Boone case. Contrary to the life sentences he was facing, Boone was sentenced to 57 months by Chief District Court Judge Charles Simpson III, the same judge who sentenced the Bickett brothers, Jimmy and Joe Keith, in 1990.The Lebanon Enterprise, Johnny Boone is Sentenced, March 21, 2018 www.lebanonenterprise.com

Boone was sentenced to serve his time at FCI Elkton, a low security federal prison in Ohio. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Elkton prison became notorious for being overrun with the disease. Due to health risks, Boone's attorneys requested in May 2020 he be released; which was granted on June 3.Andrew Wolfson, Courier-Journal [https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2020/05/21/cornbread-mafia-leader-seeks-prison-release-after-9-coronavirus-deaths/5236630002/ 'Godfather of Grass' begs for release from prison where 9 men have died from COVID-19] May 21, 2020. Boone died on June 14, 2024, at the age of 80.https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article289304390.html {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2024}}

Obama clemency

President Barack Obama granted clemency to three men from Marion County, Kentucky; all were either directly or indirectly connected to the Cornbread Mafia.

In November 2011, President Obama granted a pardon to Les Berry, an original member of the alleged "Cornbread Mafia," who was caught in Wisconsin driving a get-away car with six other Kentucky men fleeing a marijuana farm in Minnesota in late October 1987.James Higdon [http://archives.wfpl.org/2011/12/04/james-higdon-explains-presidential-pardons-for-cornbread-mafia-member-state-of-the-news/ Interview with James Higdon], WFPL News, December 4, 2011

In March 2015, President Obama commuted the prison sentences of 22 drug offenders, including Francis Darrell Hayden, a Marion County native. Hayden had been serving a life prison sentence for marijuana cultivation because he was convicted three times for illegal cultivation, triggering the Three-strikes law. His last bust was in Michigan in 1998 for growing nearly 19,000 marijuana plants, after similar busts in 1980 and 1990.David Downs [https://www.eastbayexpress.com/LegalizationNation/archives/2015/04/01/obama-commutes-sentence-of-prisoner-serving-life-for-pot Obama Commutes Sentence of Prisoner Serving Life for Pot] East Bay Express, April 1, 2015

In December 2016, President Obama granted clemency to an additional 231 incarcerated people, including another man from Marion County: Aaron Glasscock. Glasscock was arrested as a college student in the late 1990s as part of a drug trafficking ring operated by his father. In 2000, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, just two months shy of his pre-med degree. Glasscock's commutation was announced just a few days before Johnny Boone was captured in Canada.James Higdon [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/obama-jeff-sessions-and-the-godfather-of-grass-214599 The Big Statement Obama Could Make on Legalizing Pot] POLITICO Magazine, January 5, 2017

In January 2017, Higdon reported on these Obama clemencies of Cornbread men for Politico, suggesting that Obama could pardon Johnny Boone before he left office in "The Big Statement Obama Could Make on Legalizing Pot."

Cornbread Mafia in media and popular culture

For much of the 1980s, the Cornbread Mafia was reported upon by photojournalist Steve Lowery{{cite web|url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=LH&s_site=kentucky&p_multi=LH&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=118EB783436EA1B0&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM|title=Lexington Herald Leader: Search Results|publisher=}} of the Lebanon Enterprise, many of whose photographs are in Higdon's book.James Higdon, [https://books.google.com/books?id=8-WGDwAAQBAJ&q=lowery The Cornbread Mafia], Lyons Press, 2012, p. 110

By 2007, the term "Cornbread Mafia" had come to mean general Southern-style corruption.{{cite web |url=http://www.arkansasleader.com/2007/03/top-story-sherwood-showdown.html |title=TOP STORY >>Sherwood showdown |publisher=The Arkansas Leader |date=2007-03-07 |accessdate=2012-07-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120225045534/http://www.arkansasleader.com/2007/03/top-story-sherwood-showdown.html |archive-date=2012-02-25 |url-status=dead }} There is also a song by Molly Hatchet called Cornbread Mafia (on the Kingdom of XII album), and a now-defunct band that called itself Cornbread Mafia.{{cite web|author=Text by Tim RobertsPhotos by James Moses |url=http://www.louisvillemusicnews.net/webmanager/index.php?WEB_CAT_ID=49&storyid=3819 |title=Cornbread Mafia |publisher=Louisvillemusicnews.net |date= |accessdate=2012-07-09}}

In a 2015 interview with Terry Gross, Graham Yost, the creator and show runner of the FX series Justified, said, "Honestly, we didn't know a lot about the Dixie Mafia. It also goes by the name The Cornbread Mafia. But we, you know, started poking around. Frankly, probably, we started with reading Wikipedia like anyone else..."Terry Gross interview with Graham Yost [https://www.npr.org/transcripts/395534419 Fresh Air], NPR, March 26, 2015

A series of unsolved murders in Bardstown, Kentucky have been incorrectly attributed to the Cornbread Mafia.Benjamin H. Smith [https://www.oxygen.com/crime-time/multiple-unsolved-murders-kentucky-somehow-connected Are Multiple Unsolved Murders In This Kentucky Small Town Somehow Connected?] Oxygen Crime News, July 19, 2018

In 2016 Texas singer/songwriter Cody Jinks produced and released his album "Black Sheep" which featured a song about Johnny Boone simply titled "Johnny".

In April 2018, Nashville recording artist Sweepy Walker, the grandson of beloved Grand Ole Opry legend Billy Walker, released "Cornbread Mafia" - a feel-good, good-time bar song about local legends John Boone "them Bickett boys, and too many more to mention.Lebanon Enterprise, April 25, 2018, Nashville recording artist sings about Cornbread Mafia and Kentucky Girl

In June 2018, singer/songwriter Tyler Childers held a benefit concert for Johnny Boone at Gravely Brewery in Louisville, telling an interviewer from the Louisville Eccentric Observer: "I read the book [‘Cornbread Mafia’] that Jim Higdon came out with, and I got some friends from over my way that were friends with Johnny — people that I hold in high regard, and people that hold him in high regard. I figured that I would try to help in some way.”Scott Recker [https://www.leoweekly.com/2018/12/old-kentucky-home-tyler-childers-talks-reflective-album-purgatory/ Tyler Childers Interview] LEO Weekly, December 19, 2018

In November 2023, country music star Sticktight Akins released a music video for his hit song "Cornbread Mafia" on YouTube.

Mary Kutter, a country singer from Bardstown, Kentucky, teased a song clip about the Cornbread Mafia in early 2024.