The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History (57 page)

One member of the task force wisely stakes out St. Dominic Cemetery in Springfield, where Jeff Boone is buried. It's a grave that Johnny is known to visit often, because the headstone is covered with small cow bones, seashells, bird feathers, dream catchers and other totems of the Native American shamanism that Johnny acquired in federal prison sweat lodges. Sure enough, the cop's hunch is correct: As a fugitive running for his life from the law, Johnny Boone visits his son's grave, perhaps for the last time, and the cop radios it in.

But as the squad car arriving as backup comes toward the cemetery, Johnny Boone is on his way out. For some reason, perhaps a miscommunication between the units, Johnny Boone gets away-again. With the DEA-led task force unable to apprehend its suspect in the case of the 2,421 flowerpots, the US Marshals Service steps up to the plate.

"Most of those deputies in the Louisville office aren't from Kentucky; being a federal agency, they come from all over," says Rick McCubbin, former US marshal in Louisville under George W. Bush and currently a captain with the Bardstown Police Department. "In fact, I remember the deputy that got the case and said, `Man, who's this? You ever heard of Johnny Boone?'

"And I said, `Well, heck yeah! Who hasn't?'

"But again, I'm from Kentucky, and he wasn't. That was ... after the DEA did their investigation on him. When they can't apprehend [their suspect], it's turned over to the US marshals. DEA handed over the indictment and told us, `We want this guy.'

"We adopted the case. It rotated through. Deputy came to me and said:

"`I just picked up this case, marshal. You're a Kentucky boy. Who is this guy?'

"I said, `Well, I've never met him. Don't know a whole lot about him.' But I said, `He's just synonymous with, you know, marijuana, Springfield, Washington County, Marion County, Kentucky.'

"And I said, `I've never dealt with him in Louisville-up north, if you will. But you just knew the name, you know. And you probably heard good and bad, and I did.'

"Always heard good and bad about Johnny Boone, you know. The one always washed the other. I would call him old-school, uh, you know, involved in drugs-I don't want to call him a drug dealer, but you know. He was just old-school. You know? You got the old-school cops and you got the old-school..."

"Outlaws?" I suggest.

"Yeah, basically. That's Johnny Boone. The deputy, I remember the first thing he said was:

"`My God! He looks like Santa Claus."'

But Boone's good looks wouldn't save him this time. The marshals don't care who Boone resembles or if the law they are enforcing is wrong or immoral, as illustrated by this famous exchange from The Fugitive:

"I didn't kill my wife," says the convicted wife-killer played by Harrison Ford.

"I don't care," replies the US marshal played by Tommy Lee Jones, who won an Oscar for the role.

In the US Marshals Service office in Louisville, a framed movie poster from U.S. Marshals, the sequel to The Fugitive, hangs on the wall. The US marshals don't care how they find Johnny Boone; their job is to find him. So, when they search Boone's farm and house and find photographs of Boone in a tropical location taken by me in 2007, the marshals collect them as evidence.

"US marshals can be relentless on their fugitive," says Rick McCubbin. "As corny as it is, just like the movies, we're just there to get the guy. We don't know anything about the case, and it's true. We just got a warrant. Again, going back to that corny movie ...

"Basically what we would do, like any fugitive ... Just like a police department, but the benefit of the marshals: They're not tied to the radio. So, we can dedicate 100 percent of our time looking for the fugitive.... So, obviously you go to point A: What's his address?

"You start there and spoke out: You go everywhere. So, we hit known associates, family, places he frequents-and I'm saying this overall, as any fugitive-places of employment, any investigative tool we need we can use within the legality end of it, and look for this person.

"So, that's when we hit the Springfield area, his home, and we started from there.... We can do things like we did in Marion County that night.... We knew the area that he frequented, and everyone around there knew him. So, we had an idea, we said, `Well, let's set up a roadblock' and just put out his picture. Not that we needed to; everybody knew Johnny Boone. But we wanted everybody to know that we were serious.

"He's a fugitive wanted by the DEA, and our job is to catch him. So that's why we set up the roadblock [in Loretto] that weekend. It was the weekend of the September 11th anniversary...

"Right in front of Hawks [Place] and Cozy [Corner], where it all comes together. People kept telling us-they wouldn't tell us much!-but when they told us they would say, `Oh, he hangs over here or hangs over there.'...

"So, we knew that was a regular spot that he frequented. So, we thought we'd just let everybody know, `We're here. We know you don't want us here, but we're here....'

"In most cases that works, across the country: roadblocks, you saturate an area, and you just wear people down:

"`Look, we're sick of you. What do you want?'

"`We want him.'

"`There's where he's at. Just go get him and leave us alone. Take your fugitive and please leave.'

"Always works. Always works. This was just one of those times when it didn't work. It wasn't gonna work! But we wanted to be consistent.

"But we got some people to talk to us. Some were like, `Yeah, I know him.' A few that didn't like him, some that loved him. Some said, `Good luck,' and some said, `You ain't never going to find him. You're wasting your time,'which we kinda knew going in.

"This is Johnny Boone. He's a well-respected man, believe it or not. And that's probably the hardest thing for some of these deputies who couldn't comprehend, not being from here:

"`But this guy's a fugitive!' [his deputies said]

"And I tried to explain, `But this is Kentucky. This is central Kentucky. This is just, to some, an accepted way of life. Yeah, on the books it's against the law, but it's an accepted way of life.'

"And most people are like, `You don't bother me, and I won't bother you,' even ones who don't like it. Most people will tell you, `I don't like it. I hope you arrest them, but you don't bother me, and I don't bother you.'

"So, that was kind of a learning experience for our deputies."

At another roadblock, this one in Raywick in front of Blandford's Store, the US marshals stop a carload of young Marion County menincluding Paul Miles, the same guy who saw Jimmy Bickett's lion as a boy. The marshals hand each member of the car a "wanted poster" of Johnny Boone.

"Oh, I know this guy," the driver says. "That's the motherfucker we got in the trunk!"

The marshals do not ask to look in the trunk.

That summer of 2008, the US marshals respond to all the actionable intelligence they have: When they get a tip that Johnny Boone is at the Lebanon Wal-Mart, they arrive on the scene in force and find FedEx Chuck instead.

Charles Price, a stocky, white-bearded man from Cynthiana, Kentucky, is known around Lebanon as FedEx Chuck because he has driven the FedEx route for fifteen years, from Lexington to Lebanon and then "out to Raywick and back through."

"Every day I go to Wal-Mart delivering," Price says, "and after I do my delivering, I get something to eat and use the bathroom. I noticed a bunch of cop cars around there-state police and sheriff and everything out there.

"So, I come out, as I was walking out, I think it was Carroll [Kirkland, the sheriff] said, `That ain't him.'

"I didn't pay no attention to it, though. I walked on and went back to my truck. Just a couple of days later, I found out when I was delivering to the courthouse that they were laughing about it, but I don't know if he was out there, really out there, or not. But somebody did call in and say that Johnny Boone was at Wal-Mart.

"So, I don't know if he was really down at Wal-Mart or if someone thought I was him out there.... I was wearing my uniform, my FedEx uniform.... I don't even know what he looks like."

He looks like Chuck Price.

"That's what I've been told," Price says.

When Johnny Boone's daughter has her wedding, the US marshals arrive in force, with a helicopter and spotters writing down license plate numbers.

Just down the road from the wedding reception, a man with a white beard sets up a watermelon stand on his property. Upon closer inspection, the marshals discover the bearded man has a handgun strapped to his hip. When he goes into his house to get something, an unmarked black SUV barrels into his driveway, pulls into his front yard, parks in the grass, and a female US marshal hops out with her gun drawn as the white-bearded man steps outside. She demands his identification, which he reluctantly provides.

"Do you have a license for that firearm?" she demands.

"Yes, I do," he responds. "And you're trespassing on my property."

"Well," she tells him. "If we had had a shoot-on-sight order, you'd be dead right now."

"Ma'am, if we was in Vietnam," he shoots back, "you'd already be dead."

When the bridal party realizes a week or so later that the official wedding photographs are ruined, the Boone family's attorney asks the US marshals if they have any photos of the bride and groom they can have. The marshals are amused but say no.

With the ground offensive going nowhere, the US marshals turn to the air war, launching a media campaign on the airwaves against Johnny Boone by sharing the photos of Boone in a tropical location with local media outlets and America's Most Wanted, which tries to portray Johnny Boone as equal to the cop-killers, child molesters and other scumbags usually showcased on that program.

On its website, AMW posts a story about Boone rife with factual errors and a negative bias. I appeal to Justin Lenart, producer at AMW, to change the story to at least conform to the facts. The first draft of Lenart's AMWpost says that Boone's house is currently guarded by dogs without vocal cords, which is a classic mistake of confusing the Boone of today with the legendary Boone from 1987 Minnesota. His current dogs, I assure Justin Lenart, are barkers. Lenart invites me to Washington, D.C., for an on-camera interview about Johnny Boone, and I accept.

I travel by Amtrak to D.C. on Monday, October 13, 2008, and go on camera for AMW the next day. The show records me for about an hour, and I remind the producers that they are violating my copyright by using my photographs of Johnny Boone without permission. On January 5j ustin Lenart ofAMWe-mails me again to dispute my copyright claims, so I pick up the phone and call the US Marshals Service in Louisville to nip this thing in the bud.

I talk with the man in charge, Rick McCubbin, appointed by George W. Bush as chief US marshal for the Western District of Kentucky, and I ask him to stop distributing my photographs of Boone to the media. McCubbin asks me if I might know Johnny Boone's whereabouts.

"Even if I knew where Johnny Boone was, I wouldn't tell you," I say, which upsets McCubbin.

"What do you mean?" he asks aggressively. "Are you saying you're obstructing an investigation?"

"I knew what you were saying," McCubbin tells me two years later when we meet in his office at the Bardstown Police Department. "But you weren't saying anything any different than anyone else was telling us, and they told us straight up, `If I knew where he was at, I wouldn't tell you."'

"How many times did you hear that?" I ask.

"Oh, countless," McCubbin says. "Most people we spoke with said that. Every now and then, you'd get that one person, or two people in a row who said, `Well, I hope you get him. I don't like him. I think it's wrong.' But say if you encountered ten people, eight of those ten would tell you, `I wouldn't tell you where he was at if I knew.'

"You, in other words, were following a pattern that we had already heard, and were going to hear, for the next several months. You were right in the parade. You didn't tell us anything that shocked us. It made us mad, but it didn't shock us."

So, on Friday, January 16, 2009, the last business day of the George W. Bush administration, the clerk of the US District Courthouse in Louisville signs a subpoena with my name on it. Four days later, the chief justice of the US Supreme Court swears in Barack Obama as the fortyfourth president.

One week after the inauguration, on Tuesday morning, January 27, as I am in my third-floor apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, about to leave for work, the doorbell rings. Jehovah's Witnesses, I figure. Despite the cold, I open the window, lean out, look down and see a white-haired man in a black leather jacket.

"Hello?"

He looks up, revealing a white goatee to match his hair.

"James Higdon?"

"Who's asking?"

"US marshals."

"I'll be right down."

They couldn't call first?

I dash down two flights of stairs and open the door. The whitegoateed marshal eyes me up. He's about five-foot-ten; I'm half a foot taller. With his eyes to mine, he flips out his badge, a silver five-pointed star enclosed in a slim silver circle in a black leather case. I look down at it and nod.