The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History by James Higdon
Authors: James Higdon
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liquor-related charges against Marion County men began to be tried in federal court instead of state court. The government wanted to get convictions and send these men to prison. The stiff federal sentence hoped for by prosecutors: one year.
From then on, a steady stream of men left Marion County for a year's stay in the federal prison in Atlanta. 'heir wives told their children that their fathers had gone off to be in the army or to see a sick aunt, and some were told the truth-the whole family of eight or ten kids (with three in diapers) all piled into one car for the two-day trip to Atlanta to see Daddy in prison. And still the moonshine kept flowing-the landscape of Marion County still dotted by the telltale signs of plumes of white smoke drifting up from behind wooded knobs or from inside a creek bottom.
The one-year sentence in federal court was for a moonshiner's first offense only; harsher penalties applied to repeat offenders, but no one from Marion County ever served a longer sentence for a second offense-although several did serve the one-year sentence several different times. In an age when bureaucrats still kept government records by hand, the Marion County moonshiner became skilled at convincing a judge that he wasn't the same man who had gone to prison the year before. No, that was his uncle; or he spelled his last name with two Ls, not one; or that was someone else entirely. So, even when the federal government put its foot down in Marion County, its residents found the spaces between the toes.
As the Depression and Prohibition continued, Marion County moonshiners sold their ware farther afield and spent time in other states' prisons, as did Frank Whitehouse of Gravel Switch, who found himself locked up in Indiana.
Whitehouse grew up in the eastern end of Marion County-the Protestant part-where modest wood-frame churches for the Methodists and Baptists stood where the larger brick Catholic chapels would be in the communities of Lebanon and westward. Even though they weren't Catholic in Gravel Switch, there were still plenty of men who moonlighted as moonshiners, like Whitehouse, who got himself arrested in Indiana trying to bootleg a load of Gravel Switch'shine. Convicted, Frank Whitehouse was sent to Indiana's state prison in Michigan City, where he met a fellow inmate named John Dillinger.
An Indiana judge had sentenced Dillinger to ten to twenty years for a botched robbery of an Indianapolis grocery store. Dillinger had confessed to his involvement in the heist, expecting leniency for his cooperation. The severity of his sentence shocked him in the courtroom and made him bitter in prison. He had big plans for when he got out, and maybe he shared those plans with Frank Whitehouse, the Kentucky moonshiner.
If you need a good place to hide out, Frank told Dillinger, you couldn't find a better place than Gravel Switch, where the road crossed the Rolling Fork River seventeen times with no bridges. People didn't go there unless they lived there-and even they couldn't get in or out when the river swelled up.
The state of Indiana paroled John Dillinger after eight and a half years on May 10, 1933, four days after Broker's Tip beat Head Play by a nose in one of the most controversial Kentucky Derby finishes of all time. After he was free, Dillinger made his way down to Kentucky and found Frank Whitehouse in Lebanon, almost a year to the day after Al Capone's train ride through Marion County en route to the federal prison in Atlanta.
While Dillinger waited for a place to stay in Gravel Switch, he holed up in an upstairs room on Main Street. Bored there, he borrowed a gun from someone in town to shoot at the pigeons that congregated on the courthouse, some have said. After Frank Whitehouse made arrangements, he took his guest back to Gravel Switch, where John Dillinger stayed for the whole summer of 1933, locals and Dillinger scholars agree.
Frank Whitehouse arranged for his friend to stay on the farm of an
From then on, a steady stream of men left Marion County for a year's stay in the federal prison in Atlanta. 'heir wives told their children that their fathers had gone off to be in the army or to see a sick aunt, and some were told the truth-the whole family of eight or ten kids (with three in diapers) all piled into one car for the two-day trip to Atlanta to see Daddy in prison. And still the moonshine kept flowing-the landscape of Marion County still dotted by the telltale signs of plumes of white smoke drifting up from behind wooded knobs or from inside a creek bottom.
The one-year sentence in federal court was for a moonshiner's first offense only; harsher penalties applied to repeat offenders, but no one from Marion County ever served a longer sentence for a second offense-although several did serve the one-year sentence several different times. In an age when bureaucrats still kept government records by hand, the Marion County moonshiner became skilled at convincing a judge that he wasn't the same man who had gone to prison the year before. No, that was his uncle; or he spelled his last name with two Ls, not one; or that was someone else entirely. So, even when the federal government put its foot down in Marion County, its residents found the spaces between the toes.
As the Depression and Prohibition continued, Marion County moonshiners sold their ware farther afield and spent time in other states' prisons, as did Frank Whitehouse of Gravel Switch, who found himself locked up in Indiana.
Whitehouse grew up in the eastern end of Marion County-the Protestant part-where modest wood-frame churches for the Methodists and Baptists stood where the larger brick Catholic chapels would be in the communities of Lebanon and westward. Even though they weren't Catholic in Gravel Switch, there were still plenty of men who moonlighted as moonshiners, like Whitehouse, who got himself arrested in Indiana trying to bootleg a load of Gravel Switch'shine. Convicted, Frank Whitehouse was sent to Indiana's state prison in Michigan City, where he met a fellow inmate named John Dillinger.
An Indiana judge had sentenced Dillinger to ten to twenty years for a botched robbery of an Indianapolis grocery store. Dillinger had confessed to his involvement in the heist, expecting leniency for his cooperation. The severity of his sentence shocked him in the courtroom and made him bitter in prison. He had big plans for when he got out, and maybe he shared those plans with Frank Whitehouse, the Kentucky moonshiner.
If you need a good place to hide out, Frank told Dillinger, you couldn't find a better place than Gravel Switch, where the road crossed the Rolling Fork River seventeen times with no bridges. People didn't go there unless they lived there-and even they couldn't get in or out when the river swelled up.
The state of Indiana paroled John Dillinger after eight and a half years on May 10, 1933, four days after Broker's Tip beat Head Play by a nose in one of the most controversial Kentucky Derby finishes of all time. After he was free, Dillinger made his way down to Kentucky and found Frank Whitehouse in Lebanon, almost a year to the day after Al Capone's train ride through Marion County en route to the federal prison in Atlanta.
While Dillinger waited for a place to stay in Gravel Switch, he holed up in an upstairs room on Main Street. Bored there, he borrowed a gun from someone in town to shoot at the pigeons that congregated on the courthouse, some have said. After Frank Whitehouse made arrangements, he took his guest back to Gravel Switch, where John Dillinger stayed for the whole summer of 1933, locals and Dillinger scholars agree.
Frank Whitehouse arranged for his friend to stay on the farm of an
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