Death; Johnny Boone Farmer Obituary, Kentucky’s ‘Cornbread Mafia’ leader And Marijuana Syndicate Has Passed Away At 80: Johnny Boone, the ‘Cornbread Mafia’s’ leader, has passed away. Author Jim Higdon reports that John Robert Boone passed away at an assisted living facility on Friday night. In 2018, he entered a guilty plea to a single charge of conspiring to grow and distribute over 1,000 marijuana plants in an operation close to Springfield, Kentucky, and was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.
Boone, who is sometimes called the “Godfather of Grass,” was charged in Kentucky in 2008 and fled to Canada. He lived there for eight years until being apprehended in 2016. Despite receiving an early release date of 2020, he was given a sentence of over five years in 2018. Elmer George, Boone’s lawyer, stated in earlier WDRB reporting, “I really felt like he shouldn’t have served any time at all.” “It was something that at his age, and the fact it’s [marijuana] being legalized.”
Prosecutors referred to Boone’s group of men as the “largest domestic marijuana syndicate in American history.”In 2008, Higdon met Boone while researching and writing a book about the Cornbread Mafia. Higdon remarked, “It’s really the end of an era.” “American icon Johnny Boone stands in for this historical era when marijuana use and production were severely stigmatized. And he established himself, surpassing the odds and the prevailing belief that he was exceptionally skilled at what he did at the time.” Boone passed away at the age of 80.
