Prologue: Prayer

Danville, Kentucky, 1964: When Juanita Chester was 16 years old, her oldest brother Charles was murdered by a local man. Juanita’s family never stopped grieving, but eventually people around town stopped talking about Charles’ death. So, decades later, Juanita was surprised to see her brother’s name in a new book. It was about a group of local outlaws called the Cornbread Mafia. As Juanita learned more about this book, she only got more confused. The Cornbread Mafia seemed to be active in the ’70s and ’80s,well after Charles had died. And their crime was growing acres of marijuana in secret. What did the Cornbread Mafia have to do with Charles’ death?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is a story about Marion County, Kentucky, a place with farming, moonshine, and pride in its bloodline. It’s a place that laid the foundation for a network of marijuana-growing outlaws called the Cornbread Mafia. Into this world walked a man named Johnny Boone, who set out to grow and harvest one of the greatest outdoor marijuana crops in modern times. But his timing was all wrong, and soon Marion County found itself at the national center of the War on Drugs. In their effort to take Johnny Boone and his syndicate down, law enforcement officials arrested 70 people...all from this pocket of Kentucky. It was the biggest marijuana bust in American history, and no one ever said a word. On Cornbread Mafia, we’re going to Marion County and finding out how a turning point in federal drug policy reshaped the story of a local community and had consequences that lasted for generations.