On June 15, 1989, John Bramel got an unexpected phone call. It was the US Attorney’s Office in Louisville, Kentucky, inviting him to a press conference the next day. This press conference was going to be massive, they said, and they really wanted him, the managing editor of the Lebanon Enterprise, to be there. At this press conference, John Bramel heard the term “Cornbread Mafia” for the first time. To outsiders, this story was sensational. Who on earth were these Cornbread Mafia guys? And how did they coordinate a giant network of marijuana farms all in secret? But John Bramel wasn’t an outsider. He was from the place where the Cornbread Mafia planted its seeds: Marion County, Kentucky. So he had a different set of questions. Questions where the answer depended on who you asked.

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