Ricky McCormick was found dead in a remote field just outside West Alton in St. Charles County. A man no one seemed to care about as his body decomposed for three days. A high school dropout who never married but had four children. A felon who was rarely employed and on disability. A man who couldn’t read or write and didn’t own a car..
Nobody reported him missing. There was no indication of foul play. No evidence of enemies. Police had no reason to suspect homicide. Still, the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis was activated. Twenty-five investigators worked round the clock on the case without success.
And there the story appeared to end, just another statistic of a forgotten man.
But then an amazing thing happened. Twelve years after his death, the FBI revealed that cryptic notes were found in McCormick’s blue jeans. Cryptic notes that the FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU) could not solve, quite a statement since they cracked the codes of Nazi spies during World War II, and successfully solve more than 99 percent of such cases. The FBI was now certain McCormick had indeed been murdered, and they believed the notes in his pockets were written within days of his death.
For twelve years, the CRRU worked the case out of their Quantico, Virginia headquarters. And for twelve years, the FBI was stumped. The cryptic notes in McCormick’s pockets were such a mind-boggling challenge, they ranked third on the FBI’s toughest list to crack, right behind the famed Zodiac killer from 1969. The FBI examines hundreds of cryptic codes each year. They are usually able to crack codes in a matter of hours, not decades. For the McCormick notes, they used computers and state of the art software to look for patterns. Some 15 to 20 experts were brought in to try and crack the code.The FBI was not giving up. They made a rare appeal to the public, releasing the notes on a web page, pleading for help.
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Tom Box investigating Cold Cases & Unresolved Mysteries 
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