Ricky McCormicm and the Unsolved Code that Mocked the FBI

He Died Alone. His Pockets Didn’t.

In the summer of 1999, a man’s body was found rotting in a Missouri cornfield. No one saw him go in. No one knew why he’d be there. His name was Ricky McCormick—and even in death, he carried a mystery that refuses to die.

In his pants pockets, police found two crumpled pages filled with what looked like nonsense. But this wasn’t just bad handwriting. The pages were covered in a code. Letters, numbers, parentheses, dashes. No words. No pattern. Just line after line of something no one could read.

The FBI has never cracked it. And they’ve never told us how he got there, why he died, or what they really think those notes mean.
It’s been over two decades. And the case? Still officially open. Still unsolved. Still ignored.

Who Was Ricky McCormick?

Ricky wasn’t anyone you’d write history books about—at least not back then.

He was 41. Lived in the city of St. Louis. Dropped out of school young, had health issues, lived on disability. No one called him brilliant. He had a few petty crimes under his belt—nothing major, mostly just surviving. But he was known for one weird habit: scribbling strange notes. Everywhere.

Some said it was just something he did to keep his mind occupied. Others called it “Ricky’s language.” Something he never explained. And maybe couldn’t.

So when his body turned up in that field, far from where he lived—and even farther from anything that made sense—those coded notes became more than just a curiosity. They were a clue. The only one anyone had.

Found Dead in a Field He Shouldn’t Have Been In

On June 30, 1999, a farmer near West Alton, Missouri noticed a foul smell coming from the edge of his land. It wasn’t roadkill.

It was Ricky. His body was already decomposing. The position he was found in wasn’t publicly released. Nor was the cause of death. In fact, the police said they couldn’t tell. The official term? “Undetermined.” Not natural. Not ruled a homicide. Just… unexplained.

He hadn’t been reported missing. No one was looking for him.

And here’s the part no one can explain: Ricky didn’t drive. There was no public transport to where he was found. His home was 15 miles away. He had a weak heart and chronic breathing issues. Even walking a few blocks wore him out.

So how did he end up in that cornfield?

The Notes

Tucked in his jeans were two pieces of paper. Handwritten, front and back. Covered in code.

Like this:

To most people, it looked like gibberish. But to the FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit, it was enough to sound the alarm.

They kept it secret for 12 years. Then in 2011, something unusual happened. The FBI went public. They released the cipher to the world and basically said: “We give up. Can you solve this?”

That’s not normal procedure.

FBI, Meet the Internet

When the FBI uploaded the notes to their website, they claimed McCormick had written them himself. They said he had a habit of encoding his thoughts. They insisted the cipher was “not random”—but couldn’t explain why it couldn’t be cracked.

They posted a plea to amateur sleuths: if anyone could make sense of it, come forward.

And they did. Cryptographers. Redditors. Puzzle freaks. Linguists. Codebreakers. Everyone had a theory.

Some said it was a simple substitution cipher. Others guessed it was shorthand—an internal language, never meant to be read by anyone but Ricky. Some even said it was gibberish, written under stress or psychosis. None of it held up.

The notes remain unbroken. To this day, no one—not the NSA, not the CIA, not even the best civilian codebreakers in the world—has come close to solving them.

The Family Calls BS

Now here’s where the story starts to rot.

Ricky’s family says he couldn’t have written those notes. Not because he wouldn’t—but because he couldn’t. His mother told reporters, “The only thing he could write was his name.” She said he could barely spell, let alone build a complex cipher. They were baffled the FBI would even suggest it.

His cousin added, “He didn’t know how to write code.”

So who wrote them? And how did they get into his pocket?

Even more suspicious: the family says the FBI never told them about the notes. Not during the autopsy. Not during questioning. Not even when they asked directly what was found on his body. They only learned about it when the rest of the world did—in 2011, a full twelve years after Ricky’s death.

Why would the FBI keep that from them?

Who Benefited from His Death?

Ricky wasn’t rich. He didn’t have enemies that we know of. But just days before his death, he’d been at a hospital with chest pains. After that, he was seen at a gas station in a rough part of town, talking to people the FBI still hasn’t identified. And then—nothing.

His body turns up in a place he shouldn’t be. With notes that no one understands. And a federal agency that looks more confused than interested.

The Case Went Cold. The Notes Stayed Warm.

You’d think that finding coded notes on a dead man would trigger a serious investigation.
Not here.

After the FBI released the cipher in 2011, the agency admitted something unusual: even their top cryptographers had failed. They couldn’t determine the language. They couldn’t trace it to any known system. It didn’t match military codes, gang symbols, or anything in law enforcement databases.

And yet—despite labeling the notes as “potentially critical evidence”—they did not launch a full-scale investigation into Ricky’s final movements. No new suspects. No forensic reevaluation. Just two old sheets of paper, handed off to the public like a riddle in a cereal box.

How the Investigation Fell Apart

Let’s rewind. When Ricky’s body was found, police treated the death as suspicious—but never confirmed it was murder. There was no sign of trauma. But the decomposition was so advanced, the coroner couldn’t be sure.

So what did investigators do?

They didn’t explain how he got to the field.
They didn’t release the last people to see him alive.
They didn’t mention the notes to the family—or the press—for over a decade.

Even after the FBI published the cipher, the case didn’t receive significant attention. No task force. No media campaign. Just a few articles, mostly regurgitating the same press release: “Help us decode this mystery.”

It was a PR move—not a manhunt.

Is the Cipher Even a Cipher?

One possibility no one in law enforcement wants to entertain: what if the notes don’t matter?

What if they were a red herring? A personal tic? Or worse—a meaningless distraction planted to throw the case off?

Some amateur codebreakers have floated the theory that the notes are a private shorthand. Think phonetic English, misspelled to the point of abstraction. A kind of mental diary, never meant to be cracked.

Others believe it’s a substitution cipher—where each letter or character stands for something else—but with no known key, and possibly inconsistent rules.

A few even suggest it was written under duress, or altered post-mortem by someone else.

But here’s the thing: we still don’t know if the message was meant for Ricky, or written by him.
And that’s the question that should haunt this case.

So Many Red Flags, So Little Follow-Up

Let’s go over what doesn’t add up:

Location. Ricky couldn’t physically get to that field on his own. No one has explained how he got there.
Cause of death. “Undetermined.” No toxins released. No public record of how they ruled things out.
The notes. The only thing tying him to any possible motive or foul play—and the agency handling them shrugs.
No timeline. No police release ever confirmed the last person to see him, where he was between June 25–30, or who he called.
No suspects. Not one name. Not one person of interest.
Delayed disclosure. Twelve years. That’s how long the FBI waited to go public with the notes. If they thought the case was urgent, that decision makes no sense.

And finally—no resolution. The case remains open. Technically. But there’s been no meaningful progress in over 20 years.

Public Obsession, Private Silence

Once the cipher was posted online, the internet lit up.
Reddit threads. YouTube explainers. Amateur sleuth forums.

A guy even started a YouTube channel just to try cracking it, line by line. Dozens of people tried mapping it onto typewriter layouts, musical notes, even biblical codes.

Meanwhile, the FBI fell silent. No updates. No interviews. No indication that anyone’s working the case.

McCormick became a trivia item. A puzzle.

Not a person.

What the Cipher Might Be Saying

Some independent codebreakers believe there are patterns in the notes.

Take this one, for example:

“NCBE” appears multiple times.

What if it means “Not to be…”? Or something else entirely?
Others pointed out the use of time-related references—like “12:00” appearing on one line—suggesting it might be a rough itinerary or sequence.

But all of this is speculative. There’s no Rosetta Stone.
No known cipher from Ricky’s past. No writings to compare. No handwriting analysis released.

And that’s the strangest part: for something the FBI labeled “important evidence,” it’s been treated like a curiosity. Not a clue.

What If It Was a Clue?

Let’s play it straight.
What if the cipher was the key to solving Ricky’s death?

It could point to:

A meeting place (where he was supposed to go)
A contact name (who he was dealing with)
A reason for his death (something he wrote but couldn’t say out loud)

In that case, failing to solve it isn’t just a mystery.
It’s a failure of justice.

And the lack of urgency from law enforcement would be negligence—plain and simple.

Ricky Deserved Better

He wasn’t a famous man. He didn’t have power. But he had a life. A family. A brain that thought in unusual ways. That doesn’t make him disposable. That makes him interesting.

His death wasn’t natural. The notes weren’t ordinary.
And the silence surrounding both is louder than any code.

The Coldest Cipher

We may never know who Ricky McCormick really was—or what those notes meant.

But this much is clear:
The story didn’t end when his body was found in a cornfield.
It ended when people in charge stopped asking questions.

And until someone cracks that code—or breaks that silence—this case remains what it’s always been:

A murder without a motive.
A message no one can read.
And a mystery the system gave up on too soon.