Ricky McCormick /// The McCormick Code /// Part 2 | Forensic Files

[Music] thank you [Applause] foreign garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host
Nick and with me as always is a man that has 20 20 hearing he is the captain what
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double IPA super strong and hoppy and with an ABV of almost 10 percent I don't think you'll be breaking any codes but
you might be speaking in code and code breaker was brought to us by these Beautiful Minds first up we have Lisa in
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everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music]
[Music] breaking written codes is an art whose history dates back as long as people
could write and wanted to keep secrets in the age of computers and Advanced Technologies it's hard to imagine such
expertise is still needed the FBI would tell you differently because breaking codes is the FBI's
cryptanalysts and racketeering records units unique specialty [Music] despite the use of state-of-the-art
computer technology to gather intelligence examine evidence and help solve crimes
the need to manually break pen and paper codes remains a valuable and necessary weapon and the FBI's investigative
Arsenal according to the FBI criminals use of codes ciphers and concealed messages are abundant
arrest gang members inmates drug dealers violent loan offenders and organized crime groups use letters numbers symbols
and even invisible ink to encode messages an attempt to hide illegal activity 41 year old Ricky McCormick was murdered
in June of 1999. his body was discovered just days after he was last seen when police were called to the scene
they found Ricky's body lying face down in the grass in an area between a country road and a
cornfield homicide detectives searched the 41 year old victim's pockets for Clues regarding
the victim's identity and leads on where he could have been just before his murder
they found some things in the man's pockets one item was a ticket for an emergency
room where he had visited shortly before his death and they also found two pages of notes
on these Pages were lengthy messages these were written in some strange code the detectives passed these coded pages
to the FBI and after examining the documents the FBI concluded that these ciphers could say who killed Ricky
McCormick years passed and then one day everything changed when the FBI released the two
coded pages to the public and asked you to help solve an open murder case despite extensive work by the FBI the
meaning of those two coded notes remain a mystery to this day and Ricky McCormick's murderer Is Yet To Face
Justice [Music] in fact Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes are one of the crru's top unsolved
cases according to the FBI breaking the code could reveal the victim's whereabouts
before his death and could lead to the solution of a homicide this is the story of the McCormick code
[Music] [Music] in March of 2011 FBI officials made a rare and a remarkable revelation
this coming seemingly out of the blue Dan Olson he's the chief of the bureau's crypt analyst racketeering records unit
we'll call that the crru and Quantico Virginia he disclosed for the first time the
existence of two pages of handwritten encrypted notes found stuffed in the pockets of McCormick's genes
now unable to decipher the tangle of letters and numbers the FBI released copies of this to the public with a plea
for assistance to hardcore puzzle solvers and wannabe sleuths to help them solve this code
and maybe potentially solve the murder of Ricky McCormick and let's just get the you know the elephant in the room
Let's uh punch him in the face the elephant in the garage you're gonna you're gonna abuse the elephant that I
brought with me no I'm not go ahead I'm a bunch of pita people want to write me now
um no so I find the fact that they found these notes on Ricky and they were not reported to the family
immediately and they had to wait till 12 years later to discuss these with the family I feel that that's very
irresponsible okay so let's talk about his family a little bit because you know and I agree
with you let's let's say we can we can definitely say that they've never seen them the family never saw these
encrypted notes we'll call them right until 12 years later actually they said they didn't know anything about this
until they saw on their local news channel that these ciphers had been released to the public they had no
knowledge of this at all yeah it was not reported to the family everything that was found on him was reported to the
family except for these two notes yes so here's here's what I wonder about though
um we know that the police held these notes for two years before they gave them to
the FBI couple things I wonder if if the police that they held these items one because
they were just found on his body but two maybe they assumed they that they were either nothing or it was a clue that
they were working and when they questioned his family you know because we have his family
saying no he he didn't write in code Ricky didn't write and Cody barely read he barely could write right he couldn't
spell anything and so I'm wondering if police ask questions to the family and they say
yeah he never wrote anything in code he could barely write he could barely read that the police go well they don't know
anything about this this is something we're going to keep to ourselves yeah but we have a double-edged sword here
because we have some people in this family that say no he could he couldn't read or write the only thing he could
write was his name and then you have other people in his family that come out and said oh yeah he would uh jot down
these random things all the time and carry him around with him and it was just like his own language and I wonder
Captain if it was only after two years it looks to me you know people some people even debate whether this is a
homicide or not and we debated that certainly in the first episode but to me what I see
I see investigators treating this as a homicide investigation right I see them working this as a homicide investigation
I wonder if after two years when they couldn't couldn't put a case together to put somebody in court right that at that
point they go well let's pass these notes along to somebody that can do something with them we've run out of
we've run out of ideas we're banging our head against the wall here let's give this to some some legit code crackers
right send it to the FBI the FBI they have it for the next 10 years before they release it to the public and
it's only after the FBI says look we've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours trying to crack this code
we can't crack it no and what the FBI would tell us is that we the FBI firmly believes it is some type of code but
what they can't tell us is how to solve it yeah and they're not even really giving us any clues or any leads of what
they believe and I think maybe that's just because they want to release the code and have whoever that possibly
could solve this just look at it with fresh eyes and so they're not going to say well we think this means this or
this means this um but they've done this in the past they with the Zodiac and in other cases where
they have released uh information to the public and the public has been able to solve something that they couldn't right
so do you do you want to describe give us a brief description of these uh codes let's call them the McCormick code is
what I've been calling it uh I I don't even know how to describe it but we'll put both of these up on all social media
platforms but also at www.truecrimegarage.com now let's talk about code breaking for a little bit
okay so the FBI code Breakers they say that they typically unlock the meanings of ciphers that they receive in a matter
of hours now the codes from Ricky McCormick the notes found on Ricky McCormick they they had these for over a
decade and they worked them they brought in other people um they did everything they could to try
to attempt to break these codes breaking them down manually with graph paper and
pencil at first uh Dan Olson himself he dissected the strings of letters and numbers on whiteboards uh he then
employed computers with state-of-the-art software to perform statistical analysis of these notes and they still
came up with nothing now what what the FBI would tell us is this that it doesn't happen very often
that they get an unsolved Cipher of this length is what they're stating this length I
think is key here now the FBI says that the characters are not random they firmly believe this is a code stating
things like there are many e's for an example the letter e that could be used as space as a spacer rather than an
actual meaning or a letter or number right meaning that there's sometimes it could be one number that is used as a
spacer one letter or a series of numbers or a series of letters that somebody could use as a Breaking Point right so
you could essentially say the captain writes a cipher and every time you see cap that that actually means space
yeah and they would go on to explain that there are many characteristics in these notes that suggest it could be
solved they State there are patterns that they see within these messages but obviously the problem is they just
don't know why it's not solvable right the FBI's website also it takes us through some of the workings on how to
crack codes um it's stating that cracking a code takes four steps first one must
determine the language used in this case it's English then the system that is used a cipher in which letters are
transposed or substituted for something else for example or code in in which a letter such as R
represents a person or a place or perhaps even some kind of secret language such as like a like a version
of pig Latin now after that one must reconstruct the key that explains how the code marker
changed the letters of the message such as shifting such as by shifting every character
three letters to the right in the alphabet is an example and finally one then can apply the key and then
transcribe the hidden message now the FBI says unfortunately with Ricky McCormick's notes that were found
in his pocket uh we can't get past step two there's three major styles of code so I could
write a code that I'm going to give to you that you could be able to figure out maybe if I give you a key
um or that I'm just going to give to somebody and they have to basically twist things around and kind of figure
out for themselves okay without a key and then the other one is that you would just write down stuffing code that only
you would understand now if that was the case in in Ricky's code it might be never solved because you would never
know what certain things meant because it only meant something to him well there's certainly No Lack of
theories here in this case as to what the codes could be or could mean right um you know when they release this to
the public it started off with with TV stations in Missouri and Illinois they start running with the update and then
next thing you know news organizations as far away as New Zealand we're broadcasting this information and then
the FBI ends up getting thousands and thousands of public comments and theories pouring in from all over this
becomes a hugely popular case on the internet because of the cipher and so let's talk about this too because you
know we've mentioned that there are some family members that state Ricky couldn't
read very well or couldn't read at all he couldn't write very well right um so this brings us to a popular Theory
and one of those is you know some have suggested these notes are just simply meaningless that they are the random
random scribblings of a man by by some accounts was functionally illiterate we don't have him being diagnosed with any
Mental Illness but again this could be writings in a manic state or this could be uh writings of somebody that has uh
untreated schizophrenia yeah and but the thing that I want to go back to when people suggest that these
could be meaningless messages or just random scribblings Dan Olson Dan Olson yes the the leader of of
the unit that cracks the codes they come out and they say look we believe this is real code and stating
to that fact saying that this means something these messages mean something that they look at a lot of things they
see a lot of things and investigate them that are gibberish that are arbitrary strikes on a keyboard they're stating
this is not the case with this you know they they examine hundreds of suspected codes each year and the first thing they
do in that process is weeding out those that are nonsense from the codes that the the bureau needs to crack and to
solve yeah I think he said something like we've seen a lot of gibberish yes and this is not it right but the other
thing he says is that we're really good at our job and part of me wants to say well
obviously not good enough well this one yeah um well we you know even Tom Brady loses
a Super Bowl every now and then boom but anyway so the the the c-r-r-u states that after they weed out
the ones that are gibberish that after that process only about one percent of the codes go unbroken we need them to be
more like Michael Jordan which doesn't lose championships right um but like I said I think the first
mistake they made is not going to the family members sooner because one do we even have a writing sample of Ricky to
know if this is his handwriting or not now they claim you know Dan Olsen claims that this they believe it was written by
Ricky again a guy that was not known to write things so do we have any samples of any writings and I think they could
have got that if they would have went to the family sooner yeah I think you're right um they may have checked for these
things at his apartment that he shared with his girlfriend but you just made me think about something there captain
and it's this you could have if for some reason you will when you're looking at a
piece of evidence such as this you don't really know what you have right so that would make you want to
keep it somewhat secret as well because you're not sure what you're looking at and what involvement it has in the case
that you're working right however you could you don't have to show your full hand right couldn't you take a
portion of that code or a portion of one of the messages and and show it to the family members
yeah I mean you don't have to say that there could have been a happy happy middle ground here right yeah I mean you
could have photocopied them uh and take just take a little section or rewrote the section yourself and to say look we
found this on a piece of paper um does it mean anything does this mean anything to you yeah or if you show the
handwriting does this mean anything to you and the mom that says that he didn't read or write might have said oh yeah
you know Ricky wrote stuff like that you know like he couldn't spell words but he knew
what letters were right but we don't even have any knowledge if he knew really what letters were and you're
right maybe at least just confirming the handwriting you know even if you could just get a few people by visual aid
saying visually looking at it and saying um I don't know why people say or why I
say visually looking at it how else are you going to look at it but um with your
ears your beard is on the face you have 20 20 hearing Captain yeah um so but yeah you
could at least show that to the family members or people close to him and say can you say in your opinion if this is
his Ricky's handwriting or not now tell me if I'm wrong but lie detectors not using core right right
handwriting analysis can be used in court um yes and I actually think that that varies by state okay because
um I think now somebody's gonna get mad at me about this I think I spoke about this before we're all mad at you because
I was looking at handwriting analysis quite a bit when we were talking about the Black Dahlia because there were some
messages that were sent to newspapers and I believe to the police as well at the time and some have suggested that
those are connected to the black dahlias case I believe that um I believe that it's only accepted in
certain States because I think that the as far as far as the law enforcement Community is concerned handwriting
analysis is not in an exact science right that it's more of somebody giving their quote-unquote expert opinion you
know just with the same with polygraph tests you know there are there are people that are really good at
administering and reading a polygraph test and there's other people that are poor
at it just like with any job you know there's there's good people and there's bad people yeah I mean some people host
a weekly True Crime podcast and they knock it out of the park and then then there's the colonel
[Laughter] I thought you were going to say you there's LeBron James and then there's
stinks Curry all right let's before we get too far off track here um let's continue to talk about these
notes and what the FBI suspects you had mentioned that the FBI not only suspects
that this is a real code but they suspect Ricky wrote this himself they would further go on to explain that the
messages in their opinion are done in more of a format of something written to oneself rather than
something written to someone else right like I said before the three different major kinds and the FBI when talking
about this this topic in this this specific point to their opinion is that they point out that there are circles
drawn around some of the segments within the code and they say this could be something as simple as
a sug a to-do list you know where where items are kind of marked as tasks that are completed you know once you finish
something you Circle it or you know while you're at the grocery store when you when you picked up the butter like
you put on your list you cross it out right um the other thing that's kind of chilling in a way
is that not only do they believe that Ricky McCormick wrote these notes himself the FBI also believes that he wrote them
within days of him being killed um and I think that's why I think that's why they keep going back to this and
they're stating you know if it doesn't say if the codes do not say who killed him or who he was who may
have been running from let's say that the code could be something as simple as what he was doing at the time
leading up to his death yeah his whereabouts or maybe who he was seeing or what you know whatever he was
doing but page one is a lot different than page two now there's groups of letters that go with page one and page
two they would make you believe they're written by the same person the handwriting looks
the same but in page one there's a lot of parentheses around things and in page two you have these big circles around
sections so you can visually see them that they're different but you can visually
see they're written by the same person and you're describing these as page one and page two based off of uh what what
the FBI is classified as page one and page two now one thing that's very curious to me and
this is something simple that that I would like to know who your father is is what they're referring to as page one
actually has what appears to be a the letter P with the number one next to it or a letter I next to it at the top of
the page encircled right almost like somebody's marking this as page one I would love to know you know I hate when
I hate when they release these things and then they they just tell you like uh we believe it's a code we believe that
Ricky wrote it himself and we believe that he wrote it within days of his death go for it try to figure it out
we're not telling you anything else because that P1 at the top of what is referred to as page one was that already
on the note when they got it when they received it or did or did somewhere in the code breaking process did the FBI
determine this is page one this is Page One let's get back to the cipher right after this quick beer break
foreign [Music] we're back cheers me mateys so one one of the things that I found really
interesting about Ricky's case was you know obviously these ciphers but when you look at these ciphers I mean I've
looked at the Zodiac ciphers a bunch I used to have them on my desk at work right which always weird people out
they'd be like what is what on these symbols I had it blown up really big and then my boss told me I had to put it
away but this reminds me a little bit like Brandon Lawson where when you hear the Brandon Lawson
9-1-1 you know call you start thinking well fill people in for those that don't know
okay so Brandon Lawson was this guy that disappeared he went missing in uh Texas
right and he calls 9-1-1 from his cell phone uh apparently he's on the side of the road his truck broke down now he's
talking very fast and he's almost inaudible at times right but when you hear it you start thinking if I could
slow this down or if I could go piece by piece I could figure this out I could figure out what he's saying and then
maybe figure out what happened to this poor guy right and so this code is released and and you know we're diving
into the case so at some point you gotta go let me look at this code and I was expecting to look at something and think
I can't you know I'm I'm just uh I'm just a dumb Captain that sails the high seas what am I going to know about this
code but you start looking at it you start finding things you don't know what they mean but you're
finding them right and and then you know I was telling you before you got here I
just kept last night I think I would look at it for about 10 minutes and I'd pass out at my desk and then I'd wake up
and go oh no I can still I can I can solve this um and I I got nowhere closer but it's
one of those things you're going to look at this code and and check it out it's going to be on the website it's going to
be on social media check it out you're going to start seeing patterns but you're not going to know what those
mean obviously well and that's what I that's why I think the FBI is so firm in their stance that this is sometime some
type of encrypted message because it it's even obvious I dude I look I would love to be some guy that could solve
codes and puzzles I wish you were too I'm not good at it because maybe you could go do that so so I look at
something like this with no expectation that I'm going to be able to offer anything at all but even to my eye
immediately as you said there's patterns within these messages right that you see
that that leads you to go wait I think I'm on to something here right yeah it's it's like it's a deceptive uh Cipher so
you have like uh I'll just give a couple quick examples we're not going to go through the whole notes here but
um one thing you see from time to time is p what appears to be p-r-s-e yes the letters p-r-s-e uh repeated in that same
sequence often throughout these mess messages you also see what most people refer to as W I'm sorry as ncbe right
and you see that a lot a ton and and actually on several occasions you see numbers what appear to be numbers before
in CBE so like it looks like 74 ncbe and then later 71 ncbe and 75 ncbe now you and I had a had a garage discussion
um you know before we turned on the mics here and you and I both questioned if if it it's if it's intended to be ncbe
you know you said well what if that's a u and I said well what if it's a w when we were both referring to the N right
because there's there's one portion in the in the message where it almost looks like he and I say he like we know that
he wrote it we don't know for certain but it looks like he wrote wcbe and then the lines underneath of
that then appear to be ncbe right which could just be you know the The Lazy hand
or or the the slant getting getting more um exaggerated as the the author continued
on well like you said you know all joking aside I mean neither one of us believe that we're code Breakers or even
capable of breaking codes like this is just not our Forte right um but what are some theories that the internet has come
up with since the release of these ciphers well like I said earlier there's no shortage of theories out there but uh
so I'll kind of start with the more popular ones we've already mentioned that one one very popular theory is that
it's not a code at all and we've already kind of talked through that um then there's the theory that it is a
code but it wasn't written by Ricky that this was written by somebody else which
is possible because he was at the gas station he could have just picked up something that somebody else wrote also
he was at two hospitals and look if this guy has some issues mentally which I believe there's evidence of that
um was he even changing his clothes has he has he been wearing these jeans for a
long time could he got one of these notes from you know he went to two different hospitals he could got those
notes from those hospitals [Music] um here's a theory that that there are VIN numbers on these in these messages that
they're driving directions okay the other thought is that it has to do with drug dealing with dealing drugs right
that these were some kind of codes to indicate who he was selling to or who he was making deliveries to and
how much he was to give them how much money he was to collect things of that nature yeah a lot of people also think
that this might be his own personal like medical journal like what medicines he was taking what the dosage was and those
all seem to be the most popular theories that are presented uh by people out there after seeing these codes and these
messages however there are some that are a little more outside of the box thinking let's say right yeah
um and these theories are not as popular I've seen I've seen some crazy theories
out there captain and let's say one of them is that Ricky was killed by the um Hospital the the last hospital that
he was at because he saw something that they they are doing some kind of illegal activity
there he was a witness to it and that he made notes about that um you know inside these messages okay
uh the uh there's another theory that there's some kind of illegal dumping going on in the area of like uh
hazardous chemicals and that he may have been witness to that and he was keeping some kind of log
about that and that these are hazardous chemicals that are polluting the not only polluting the environment but
probably uh shortening people's lives uh that live in the area right there's another theory and I think it
may have to do with the hospital as well I I got to be honest when I got to this
one Captain I read like the first two lines that I'm like okay I'm spending my time elsewhere it was that I so some
kind of um child molestation ring Theory that he had some kind of information about that and and was going to tell
people or well that makes a lot more sense actually and based off his history I mean I think he was 40 what 40 some
years old when he was having sex with a 14 year old yeah I started having sex with her well she was
11. he was 34 when he got caught and and so he's 34. yeah so he was 14 at that 20
years older than her when that was going down that's called pedophilia right so I
didn't think about it from that angle well because he got lucky to be charged with statutory rape and I mean again you
all want a victim you bash right right but the fact of the matter is that's horrible right and and I believe
ah I'm going to just say this and I hope I don't get much hate mail I I really believe that he had something going on
mentally I feel bad for him and that doesn't make his actions right at all right but I think he was operating on a
much more um you think that he and the 11 year old girl may be operating on the same he had
probably more in common with her mentally okay yeah and again I don't know I don't know him and there's not a
lot of reports about his family members I mean look this guy is buried no no Mark grave right there's unmarked grave
you cannot go visit his grave nobody's visiting his grave right and I and I do believe that he had some mental illness
that wasn't diagnosed and I don't think his family really gave a [ __ ] well one
thing you know in in before anybody decides to type something up and send it to you or to I we're both
stating it doesn't make it right anything that he did what he did was wrong okay no matter what that at the
end of the day that's wrong right however but one thing that's been obvious to me for most of my adult life
is one thing that this country does not do very well is address mental health issues we're not good we're good at a
lot of things this country is good at a lot of things but that is not one of them and you're you're very right it
could have been some kind of undiagnosed mental illness or issue that he had um and and therefore I mean who knows well
and here's the thing if you have a guy that is known to do odd jobs you know oh hey if I have this package of drugs I
can give it to you and you can go deliver it to this guy but look I mean is it is it possible
that uh some guy approaches him because he he knows that um you know Ricky's a little off and
look somebody you know people write us and say don't say he's a little off that's well look if he's not diagnosed
with anything and he is a little off I don't know what else you call it right right and and like I said I wish he
would have been able to get help I wish he would have been able to get diagnosed
I wish he was not dead right but the fact of the matter was he was a little off so is it possible that some
sicko knows that Ricky was with an underage woman at some point some sicko that he meets in prison and says hey
maybe you can help me I could give you a little bit of money that's not that far-fetched I would just think that the
family members or any of his friends would have mentioned this at some point yeah so
let's let's toss out I would prefer to kind of toss out the more wild theories though the ones that I deemed outside of
the box thinking because if we talk if we discuss every Theory that's out there regarding these messages
um we could do a whole a whole year of this so let's start with the popular ones right Captain yeah so some of my
issues when people talk about this is possibly driving directions do you have this uh sequence that at some point
where it's basically the same words over and over but they're not really words it's the same set of letters and then
you get the 71 74 and the 75. now to me with the driving directions that doesn't
make a lot of sense because normally you don't drive up 71 and then hit 74 and then hit 75 you know what I mean right
like you do on occasion but yeah it usually doesn't follow in that I was on 60 then I got on 61 then 62 then 63 made
a left at 64. right on 65. and it seems like most of the time when there are numbers in this Cipher that they're
close in relationship at one point there's a 36 and then the next line there's a 35.
so that's weird and then there's a group uh in the second page where it's 99.84.5
right two and that could be a z or it could be a two so 99.89.52 so I don't know what these I have no
clue what these numbers mean but when I think when people start saying that their directions
I just have a problem with that because the numbers don't seem to add up all the
time now again there's this one section where it's 36 74. 29 and maybe some other numbers in there
that aren't legible maybe a 75 there or 175 right so there's a couple spots where you go well maybe this part's
directions again you start wondering well if that's directions this middle section
is that just directions that he could read and that's just how he wrote you know I mean like he doesn't know how to
write a word but he can he kind of sounds it out and it's enough for him to remember what it is
so there's a few issues I have with it being driving directions first of all the obvious that he the man didn't own a
vehicle nor did he have a driver's license right that doesn't mean that he wouldn't have driving directions on his
person I just think it makes it much more less likely that he would have them right and second of all
um the other thing the the thought that's there's kind of two thoughts when you mention driving directions there's
also the possibility that they're not really directions directing you from point A to point B and then then on from
there that they're just each line might be some type of location right and it's just a list of locations right now the
issue with that and with the driving direction issue is that you know we're not given a lot of
information from the FBI regarding this but one thing that Dan Olson did say from the FBI said we worked that angle
we worked that angle big time that was something that we considered early on after receiving this these messages and
we we tried comparing things within these messages to you know uh the state of Missouri and the surrounding states
and nothing nothing lined up to work out yeah nothing lined up to work that out yeah so they worked that angle big time
um well you while you're we're talking about numbers maybe we should mention the the you know the VIN number vehicle
identification number that that's one Theory that's presented time and time again the problem I have with that
theory is VIN numbers are typically 17 digits right and and a VIN number is just that you know the VIN number
describes it very good because when you look at a VIN number it's mostly numbers
and not letters if it were mostly letters they would call it Vin letters right and these are mostly letters when
you look at this message it's a it's a lot of letters in very few numbers hey I got this great idea we should do a whole
podcast about a letter that you can't see this will be super entertaining for the
listeners no but check it out you know yeah I don't see it being a VIN number because most of the time there's more
letters uh or more numbers within a VIN right then what are on these these papers now okay so medical journal we
said it could be possibly a record of medications that Ricky was taking uh the time and dates that he was taking them
the dosage and I could be wrong and are are amazing uh nurse nurses will call me
out if I'm wrong but you know I've been on and off medication for a long time and you normally wouldn't see like
um 36 milligrams right right or like 29 milligram this is kind of weird number they're normally
like 15 you know 20 I mean like it seems like these would be weird numbers for dosage well and the other
thing though Captain with even with his reported health problems with the chest pains with the breathing issues
even with those known health problems it it's not known that he was on any prescriptions right because he didn't
have much money right so how would he be paying for these you know prescriptions well and and if it
were if he were he'd have to be on a lot of them for these notes to be required would be
my guess right um I mean there there's these are lengthy messages is what I mean by that yeah now drugs
so going from uh uh legal drugs to illegal drugs the thought that these have something to
do with his drug runs or with dealing drugs the problem I have with that is the numbers okay the numbers that are listed
on these messages don't make any sense to me in that manner right but they don't have
to make sense to you they have to make sense to him that's true and what's interesting here is one of the best
movies of all time Rocky one okay I thought you're gonna say a beautiful mind because we're on
this oh code breaking thing that's why in the beer description I said the Beautiful Minds over at the Dayton Beer
Company um no that's a great movie too but in Rocky one he is a debt collector and he
you know he got to break their thumbs right uh just do what I'm telling you rock but what do you do guy couldn't
read or write really and he took down notes yeah every time that his boss told him to go collect
from somebody and so uh when you see something like that and you know I mean look I know it's a
fictitious character but is it very possible that that Ricky would write down little messages for himself to
remember on these runs I don't think that's unlikely I think that's a good plausible thing but I also think if he's
writing down these notes for him to remember that we're never going to solve this
right these were just things that weren't in his head that made sense to to him now the big one which you see all
the time is that ncbe right so a lot of people that think that means no cash being exchanged
meaning I'm going to drop these drugs off and this guy doesn't need to pay me it's
simply a delivery it's not a sell it's you know I'm not showing up and selling you the drugs I'm just giving them to
you which does make some sense because it's at the end of each you know it's normally found at the end
of of the sentence if you want to call it a sentence ah yeah that's that's clever because then it could be a
description of what he's supposed to give to them followed by no cash being exchanged yeah
yeah so you're not gonna have to make change for anything you're not to exp accept or to you're not to expect cash
from whoever this is yeah uh that way things don't get tricky so I mentioned outside of the box
thinking Captain this is the time in the garage show where I give you my weird brain on a platter and you go and
everybody can laugh at me all right very easy yeah so here I just want to go through my thoughts as we're wrapping
this up hey no you have good thoughts you're an intelligent guy all right well you should say that after you hear this
okay but I did you know I I sometimes pick on you and I think sometimes people think that you know I don't appreciate
your thoughts I sit here and listen to you every week I think you're a smart guy that's true and at one time you were
the only one sitting here listening to me every week still though I'm still the only one here with us so here's what my
thoughts are um and I want to kind of go back to the beginning so was oh God was was Ricky
murdered it is a big major question here yeah I see I see detectives spending a good deal of time treating this like a
homicide I see detectives telling the medical examiner we suspect Foul Play here I'm going to go off of their expert
opinion and just agree with them to make this nice and easy here okay okay I think that there was something that they
know or something that indicated to them that this was a murder so I'm going to just agree with them on that now as far
as the code is this a real code or not does it mean something again I'm going to go to The Experts we
have the FBI stating this is a code this means something we don't know how valuable it is to the case or not but if
we could crack this we could either roll it out or rule it in so I'm again going to to defer to The
Experts to people that are smarter than I in this specific area all right so I think he was murdered I
think this was a code I don't know that it necessarily has anything to do with his murder or maybe
that it could even help solve the case right and so you're going to go against the experts on that one
um well here's the thing they may just be saying we think it could solve the case if it could tell us the last place
he was right that could point us in to a suspect that we would need evidence otherwise to convict the person
obviously you can't hold these notes up in court and go see see n c b e O.J Simpson did it it's right
there ncbe so and here's my thought though and as far as did Ricky write this code I think he did I think he did
and and I'm not just going to defer to the experts on this one and this is where my suspicion lies okay
I I heard his family and what they have to say and I believe them maybe to their
knowledge he didn't read or write very well or maybe not at all right but here's one thing that that I kind of
kind of went back to several times when looking at this case heard several old I've heard I've heard several older
inmates and prisons say this to incoming inmates did they whisper in your ear um no then no one said this specifically
to me okay I've heard this is passed on okay the second hand knowledge is what they
say so um I've heard that sometimes the older inmates tell the incoming inmates you
know do you read or write well if you don't you're going to do some hard time because reading and
writing is a way of passing the time making the time go faster for you something constructive you can do as you
wait to serve your sentence because that's really all you're doing in a prison sentence is you're just waiting
it out so I wonder we know Ricky was in prison for 13 months right I and and think
about prison one of the worst parts of being sentenced and punished in that manner is that you have little to none
privacy little to no privacy at all that's one of the biggest parts of that punishment
and I think that possibly whether he could read or write or or none of the above
that I think that maybe at some point he developed some kind of system that he could he could write whether it
was jotting down notes whether it was keeping some kind of personal Daily Journal lots of inmates will write down
personal daily activities to give themselves something to write and they'll write things that are so
monotonous things that are like today had fish sticks for lunch right with applesauce and the broccoli was terrible
and I took a walk for an hour in the yard and then I read a book then received letters
then for dinner I had this this and this you know just really boring stuff that they're keeping track of
and I wonder I wonder if maybe he developed some kind of system either to pass the time or if he coded
his little journal to himself to have some form of privacy so that he could keep these thoughts and keep these
records of things without other people being able to read them and invade his privacy more
and I'm wondering that it let's say he did use some type of kind of code like that right
he could have used this for running drugs or for just daily activities once he got out of prison that could be a
combination of both the other thing that I wonder too is that we have the FBI stating that we think he wrote this
within days of him being killed and I part of me wonders I go back to cookie saying you know I heard from
people that yeah he he checked into the hospital at five they checked him out at
5 50 less than an hour later but I heard from people he stayed in the hospital all night long in the waiting
room I wonder if he was jotting writing these things down there you know that would give him ample time
to sit down have you ever tried to sleep in one of those Hospital waiting rooms you're not getting no sleep so I wonder
if that's what it is now and I want to point out another code that I think could help understand my reasoning here
okay and I'll read it to you best I can it's it's scribbled on my page here ebcmw
no spelled n-o-l-t-o pep spelled p-e-p then we have the next line which is M Works spelled
w-o-r-k-s mwff plus symbol s s i t mlt20 the number two zero Twenty One slash two this is I'm sorry this is the
next line one slash two third spelled three R D Dash add add c-h-i-x H the number two in the letter o
okay that is a code that's that's a code that I wanted to point out here what is
that code that I just read to you my code that I came up with myself many years ago when I used to when I
used to bartend and wait tables I had chicken scratch I came up with my own code for when you when you would read
off your order what you wanted to me that I would write it down that fast because I knew that one thing I learned
very odd that my income was based off of how friendly accurate and fast I was so
if I can make myself faster and more accurate not get your stuff wrong then I would more likely get a bigger
tip from you so what that is is you just [ __ ] you just heard a party of three and one person ordered a six ounce bacon
and cheddar burger medium well minus lettuce tomato onion with french fries and a Pepsi to drink the next person
ordered a 10 ounce Worx Burger medium well with everything french fries plus a side salad with Italian dressing a
breadstick and a Miller Lite 20 ounce draft and the final person ordered a half a salad with Third Street dressing
and grilled chicken and a breadstick with water to drink so yeah this sounds delicious anyway
especially that Miller Lite 20 ounce draft but what I'm getting at is that the key the key to solving this code
could be in Ricky's brain it could be in his mind and without him these will never be solved it'd never mean anything
to anybody like my my little code there that I came up with yeah would make sense to zero even the people that
worked at that restaurant they might be able to pick out some things but not all
and what what I mean by that referencing the letter c okay in my little code I use the letter c for multiple things
sometimes it's to tell me if cheddar is on a burger or if somebody ordered a chicken sandwich I'll use the C for both
but depending on where it appears in what order I know when I look at the page if it means cheese or chicken right
so so like you said I mean he wrote so he was murdered he wrote this it could just be a journal it could have been
directions it could have been multiple things yeah but all the codes are in Ricky's head so
you're not gonna probably get the answers right and I hope that I'm wrong I hope that somebody comes out with
something because the FBI says you know we release this to the public hoping I I
think that not only that somebody could solve it obviously but maybe somebody could come forward with some type of
information that would help them to solve it right meaning you know they were stating if we had a third page here
we think we could solve this we just don't have enough to look at or nothing to compare it to
to double check our work well right and that's the big problem with them not going to the family sooner they might
they're able to get something there you were right about that Captain so yeah my
thought is you know he was in the hospital was was he in pain uh he had all these
illnesses right uh I think he had severe mental illness um which was die wasn't diagnosed or if it
was at some point you know the it happens a lot they can't afford their medicine
they can't afford their medicine then they can't get their their brain straight um and we and that's a horrible issue in
this country I don't know if he was murdered you know we have this individual that
walked would take um public transportation but also which would hitch rides from people is it
possible that he was at the gas station and hitched a ride for somebody and then
he started walking and on a hot day he was dehydrated yeah as a bad ticker and look the
autopsy doesn't make any sense at all no so I can't trust that at all and we don't
even know what the cause of death is now if the FBI did come out and say hey well
look he was shot we know that okay well then look at the people that ran the gas station look at people that he
ran drugs for right and those are your suspects but I don't know if there's even
evidence that he's that he was murdered and the sad thing about it is like I said he's he's in an unmarked grave yeah
there is no headstone that identifies Ricky McCormick's final resting place uh he is buried at Laurel Hill Memorial
Gardens and if it were not for an entry in the cemetery's log book no one would ever know that he was buried there
and like I said I do believe he was dealing with mental illness and when when his friends and and people
that actually did like Ricky say well sometimes he talked like he was from another world well anybody that has
dealt with mental illness knows that there's times in your um illness that you might feel like you're in a
different world and you might be talking as if you might be writing as if so maybe he wrote these
um it's more likely to me that he did write these but I think it's on some level
it's um it's almost like coherent gibberish and like yes maybe if he wrote these these
mean something to him um that nobody ever is ever going to figure out and it so it's just weird
because there's you know I we wouldn't be talking about this case um you know some mentally ill guy
um with a checkered pass is found dead on the side of the road no evidence of being murdered we want to
be talking about if it wasn't for these ciphers but I don't know if these ciphers are going to get
us any closer to the truth well what we would like for everybody to do out there as the captain said we will
post both of the notes and messages ciphers codes whatever you want to call them on our website at truecrime
garage.com we want to know take a look at them we want to know what you think uh what's your theories what are your
thoughts uh if you see anything within these messages let us know please post that on our blog at truecrimegarage.com
[Music] hey Colonel yo you feeling for me I'm feeling for me my friend hey good news
we got filling family t-shirts that are available on the website so check those out I just printed a limited number so
once they're gone I'm probably not gonna order them again but uh check those out
filling for me I'll get your T-shirt today until next time thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend be
good be kind and don't litter [Music] [Applause] thank you

Ricky McCormick /// The McCormick Code /// Part 2

Part 2 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

Episode 188 - Late June, 1999 a woman finds a body near a cornfield off a rural road just about 20 miles north of St. Louis. Investigators are quick to make an identification however the Medical Examiner is uncertain as to how the man has died. Police have their theories and suspicions. They believe the man had been killed somewhere else and dumped in a spot between the road and cornfield. The man was 41 year old Ricky McCormick, a loner. His friends called him a vampire because he would leave home after the sun went down and not return until it was coming up again. Ricky had a checkered past and he ran in some circles that likely could have led to his death. When searching the dead man’s pockets police discovered a strange clue. Two pieces of paper and on each of them long messages written in code. The FBI has released these codes to the public with their own message that these notes could tell us who killed Ricky McCormick. Beer of the Week - Codebreaker by the Dayton Beer CompanyGarage Grade - 3 and 3 quarter bottle caps

Beer Fund: https://truecrimegarage.com/home

Brief Summary

Ricky McCormick's unsolved murder centers on mysterious coded notes found with his body, raising questions about their meaning and origin.

Key points

The McCormick Code. Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes are one of the FBI's top unsolved cases.
FBI's Plea for Help. In 2011, the FBI released McCormick's notes to the public for assistance in solving the case.
The Mysterious Notes. Ricky McCormick's notes could reveal crucial details about his final days.
Theories on the Code. Various theories emerge about the meaning behind Ricky's coded messages.
Mental Health Discussion. A deep dive into the mental health issues surrounding Ricky's life and actions.
The Mystery of Ricky's Notes. Exploring whether Ricky wrote a code that could lead to answers about his death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The meaning of those two coded notes remain a mystery to this day.

Discussion of the McCormick case

5:12WatchNov 26, 2022

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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