Kentucky's 'Cornbread Mafia' leader Johnny Boone dies 4 years after release from Ohio prison

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Johnny Boone -- the leader of the 'Cornbread Mafia' -- has died.

According to author Jim Higdon, John Robert Boone died Friday night at an assisted care facility. He had been sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 after he pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiring to grow and distribute more than 1,000 marijuana plants at an operation near Springfield, Ky.

Sometimes referred to as the "Godfather of Grass," Boone fled to Canada after he was indicted in 2008 in Kentucky, and spent eight years on the run until his capture in 2016.

He was sentenced to nearly five years in 2018, but was granted early release in 2020.

"I really felt like he shouldn't have served any time at all," said Elmer George, Boone's attorney, said in previous WDRB reporting. "It was something that at his age, and the fact it's [marijuana] being legalized."

Boone was part of a group of men who ran what prosecutors called the "largest domestic marijuana syndicate in American history."

Higdon got to know Boone while writing a book on the Cornbread Mafia in 2008.

"It's really the end of an era," Higdon said. "Johnny Boone was an American legend and represents this period in our past when cannabis and cannabis cultivation was really demonized. And he made a name for himself, defying the odds and defying the conventional wisdom at the time to be amazing at what he did."

Boone was 80 years old when he died.

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