robert-boone

A man, John Robert Boone, who escaped from US federal agents about a decade ago, has been deported from Canada to face marijuana charges in the United States.

According to John Curtis, a US marshal, Boone, regarded as the “godfather of grass”, is being held in a Vermont prison pending his return to Kentucky after being turned in by Canadian authorities at the Highgate Springs port of entry.

Convicted in the 1980s, the 73-year-old Boone, described as a “tattooed Santa Claus”, has spent 10 years in jail for what prosecutors described as the “largest domestic marijuana syndicate in American history”.

During his 1988 federal court sentencing hearing, an emotional Boone blamed the hardship experienced in south-east Louisville, Kentucky where residents where alleged to have grown 165 tonnes of the weed, for the massive cultivation of marijuana.

“With the poverty at home, marijuana is sometimes one of the things that puts bread on the table,” Boone said