Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes

The partially-decomposed body of Ricky McCormick was discovered in a field in St. Charles County, Missouri on June 30, 1999. Sheriffs found two garbled hand-written notes – apparently written in secret code – in the victim's pockets, and these were handed over to the FBI for further investigation. Attempts by the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU) and the American Cryptogram Association failed to decipher the meanings of those two coded notes, which are listed as one of the CRRU's top unsolved cases.[1] On March 29, 2011, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation issued an appeal for help from the public in obtaining the meaning of the messages. A few days later, they updated their website to note the "outpouring of responses", and established a separate page[2] where the public can offer comments and theories.[3][4]

Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes
Found with body of McCormick in St. Charles County, Missouri
DateJune 30, 1999
Language(s)Unknown cipher
Author(s)Assumed to be McCormick
DiscoveredJune 30, 1999

Murder

Victim
Ricky McCormick
Born
Ricky C. McCormick

June 14, 1958
Diedc. June 25–28, 1999 (aged 41)
Missouri
Known forVictim of unsolved homicide
Children4

Ricky McCormick was a high school dropout who had held multiple addresses in the Greater St. Louis area,[5] living intermittently with his elderly mother.[6] According to a 1999 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, McCormick suffered from chronic heart and lung problems. He was not married, but had fathered at least four children. He had a criminal record, and had previously served 11 months of a three-year sentence for statutory rape. At the time of his death, he was 41 years old, unemployed, and receiving disability welfare payments.[7]

Discovery of body

McCormick's body was found on June 30, 1999, in a cornfield near West Alton, Missouri by a woman driving along a field road near Route 367.[6][5] The reason he was 15 miles (24 km) away from his then-current address is another mystery, as he did not own a car and the area was not served by public transportation.[8] Though the body had already somewhat decomposed, authorities used fingerprints to identify McCormick. There was no indication that anyone had a motive to kill McCormick and no one had reported him missing. As such, the authorities initially ruled out homicide; however, no cause of death was officially determined at the time. McCormick was last seen alive five days earlier, on June 25, 1999, getting a checkup at St. Louis's now-defunct Forest Park Hospital.[6]

Description

The two notes found in McCormick's pockets are written in an unknown code consisting of "a jumble of letters and numbers occasionally set off with parentheses" and are believed by the FBI to possibly lead to those responsible for the killing. Dan Olson, chief of the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit, said, illustrating the significance of the notes, "Breaking the code could reveal the victim's whereabouts before his death and could lead to the solution of a homicide."[3][6] Attempts by both the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU) and the American Cryptogram Association failed to decipher their meaning, and Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes are currently listed as one of CRRU's top unsolved cases, with McCormick's killer yet to be identified.[1] According to members of McCormick's family, Ricky had used encrypted notes as a boy, but none of them knew how to read the code.[3]

The Ricky McCormick Notes
Note 1
Note 1
Note 2
Note 2

The FBI has had so many responses with suggestions for the cipher that they later requested helpers to not call by phone nor use email.[9] An FBI news release has stated, "This story has generated an outpouring of responses. To accommodate the continuing interest in this case, we have established a page[10] where the public can offer their comments and theories about the coded messages."[11]

Criticism

In a 2012 interview with the Riverfront Times, McCormick's family members said, "they never knew of Ricky to write in code. They say they only told investigators he sometimes jotted down nonsense he called writing, and they seriously question McCormick's capacity to craft the notes found in his pockets."[12] His mother, Frankie Sparks, said "The only thing he could write was his name. He didn't write in no code."[12] His cousin, Charles McCormick, said Ricky "couldn't spell anything, just scribble."[12]

Moreover, when McCormick died, officials told his family about the other contents of the victim's pockets, but the family only found out about the notes twelve years later when informed by a local news broadcast.[12]

See also

References
  1. "FBI can't crack the code in this murder case — can you?". KMBC-TV, MSNBC. March 30, 2011. Archived from the original on September 28, 2012. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
  2. FBI — Cryptanalysts: Help Break the Code
  3. "Cryptanalysts, Part 2: Help Solve an Open Murder Case". Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Federal Government, U.S. Department of Justice. March 29, 2011. Archived from the original on 15 December 2014. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
  4. Martinez, Edecio (March 30, 2011). "FBI seeks public's help cracking cryptic notes in 1999 murder victim's pocket". Crimesider, CBS News. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
  5. Anthony, Shane (July 2, 1999). "Body found in field puzzles police". St. Louis Post Dispatch. Retrieved April 1, 2011.
  6. Williams, Timothy (March 31, 2011). "F.B.I. Seeks Help Cracking Code in Victim's Notes". The New York Times. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
  7. Staff (July 6, 1999). "Major Case Squad finds no evidence of a crime". St. Louis Post Dispatch. Retrieved April 1, 2011.
  8. Tweedie, Neil (April 7, 2011). "Calling all codebreakers..." Daily Telegraph. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
  9. Joshua Rhett Mille (March 31, 2011). "FBI Flooded With Tips on Encrypted Notes From 1999 Murder Mystery". foxnews.com.
  10. "Available Forms".
  11. "Stories: Update". FBI. March 29, 2011. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
  12. Tritto, Christopher (June 14, 2012). "Code Dead: Do the encrypted writings of Ricky McCormick hold the key to his mysterious death?". Riverfront Times. Vol. 36, no. 24. St. Louis. pp. 8–15. Archived from the original on March 7, 2018.
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