Historic $208K pot bust

OREGON - Christmas came early for drug investigators sniffing around a family-owned tree farm in southern Ogle County, where they found more marijuana plants than blue spruce saplings. Illinois State Police on Tuesday seized 208 marijuana plants growing amid the Christmas trees on Lighthouse Road, between Daysville and Lowden Roads. A pound of processed marijuana found on the 17-acre farm was among the seized drugs, which have a street value of $208,000, making this one of the biggest marijuana raids in Sauk Valley history, police said. William L. Marshall, 61, of Yorkville, and Brian W. Marshall, 31, of Montgomery, were in Ogle County Jail today on $200,000 bond and could face 2 to 24 years in prison if convicted of growing or conspiring to grow marijuana. The father-son pair bought the farm in 2007, investigators said. "This is a big one for us," said Master Sgt. John Biffany, commander of the Blackhawk Area Task Force, the Illinois State Police's regional drug unit. "We're very happy to have found this early." Evidence suggests the enterprising horticulturists were starting marijuana from seed in Brian Marshall's Montgomery home, then transplanting the narcotic cultivars to rural Oregon, where they figured they could grow in relative anonymity, investigators said. "It was obvious to investigators that the plants had been started elsewhere and transplanted to the tree farm," Biffany said. The 208 seized plants shadow by a factor of four the size of any other marijuana bust he's seen during his 4-year tenure, Ogle County State's Attorney Ben Roe said. "Since I've been state's attorney, we've never had anything even close to this," Roe said. Also seized during the raid was one pound of processed marijuana, tools for the grow operation, a 2004 Chevrolet pickup and the farm itself, Biffany said. The investigation is ongoing in Ogle and Kane counties, where the two men keep their far-western suburban Chicago homes. Illinois State Police also confiscated a locked safe from Brian Marshall's home. As of Thursday evening, investigators were working with a lock smith to crack it.The house also had more tools necessary to maintain the budding operation. So far, investigators have no information on where the drugs might have been headed or where the seeds were coming from, Biffany said.