The Encrypted Notes of Ricky McCormick

On June 30, 1999, the partially decomposed body of 41-year-old Ricky McCormick was discovered in a corn field in St. Charles County, Missouri. At first glance, the case appeared to be a grim but unremarkable homicide mystery: a man with health problems and a troubled background found dead far from home, with no obvious explanation for how he had arrived there.

The sheets

Yet investigators soon stumbled upon a detail that transformed the case into a cryptologic mystery. Hidden in McCormick’s trouser pockets were two handwritten sheets filled with strings of letters, numbers, dashes, and parentheses – notes that remain undeciphered to this day.

The discovery raised immediate questions. Were the notes encrypted messages? A personal shorthand? Random scribbles? Or perhaps instructions connected to a criminal activity? The text showed recurring combinations of capital letters, irregular formatting, and symbols that resisted conventional interpretation.

Ricky McCormick

McCormick himself added another layer of mystery. He had dropped out of school, reportedly struggled with literacy, and lived a precarious life in the St. Louis area. Family members later stated that he often wrote down strange-looking notes, although they strongly disputed the idea that he was capable of producing an elaborate secret code. His mother claimed that “the only thing he could write was his name,” while relatives suggested that his scribbles were closer to incomprehensible shorthand than deliberate encryption. The FBI, however, believed the notes could still contain meaningful information and treated them as potentially significant evidence.

The circumstances surrounding McCormick’s death only deepened the intrigue. He was last seen alive several days before his body was found, after visiting a hospital for ongoing respiratory problems. Investigators could not explain why he ended up in a rural area roughly fifteen miles from his residence, especially since he neither drove nor had easy access to transport to that location. Authorities were allegedly unable to determine a clear cause of death. As a result, both the homicide and the mysterious notes remained unresolved.

Publication

For more than a decade, the coded pages sat inside FBI files. Then, in March 2011, the agency made an unusual move: it released high-resolution images of the notes to the public and appealed for help. The FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU), assisted by outside experts including members of the American Cryptogram Association, had failed to crack the writing. Public codebreakers, amateur sleuths, and cryptography enthusiasts were invited to try their luck. The Bureau openly acknowledged that deciphering the text might reveal McCormick’s whereabouts shortly before his death – and perhaps even point toward a killer.

The response was immediate. Internet forums, cryptography communities, and amateur investigators proposed countless theories. Some interpreted the notes as geographic directions or drug-related instructions; others argued that the text represented a phonetic shorthand intelligible only to McCormick himself. Online discussions frequently return to one central question: was this actually a cipher at all? On forums devoted to mysteries and cryptanalysis, many commentators speculate that the writings may simply reflect an idiosyncratic personal notation rather than a deliberately concealed message.

Analysis

Here is a transcription of the first note:

(P1)
(MNDMUNEMRSE-N-STA-UNARE)  (AESM)
FRNENP?NSENPBSERCBBNSENPRSEINC
PRSE NMRSE OPREHLDULDNCBE(TFXLC TCXL NCBE)
AL-PRPPIT XLYPPIY NCBE MEKSEINCDRCBRNSEPRSE
WLD RCCBRNSE NT SSNENTXSE-CRSLE-CLTRSE WLD NCBE
ALWCP NCBETSMELRSERLSEURGLSNEASNWLDNCBE
(NOPFSE NLSRE NCBE) NTEGDDMNSENCURERCBRNE
(TENE TFRNE NCBRTSENCBE INC)
(FLRSE PQSE ONDE 71 NCBE)
(CDNSE PQSE ONSDE 74 NCBE)
(PRTSE PRSE ONREDE 75 NCBE)
(TF NBCMSPSOLEMRDELUSE TOTE WLDN WLDNCBE)
(194 WLD’S NCBE)(TRFXL)

This is the second note transcribed:

ALPNTE GLSE – SE RTE
VLSE MTSE-CTSE-WSE-FRTSE
PURTRSEONDRSEWLD NCBE
NWLDLRCMSP NEWLD STS MEXL
DULMT 6 TUNSE NCBEXE
(MUNSAISTEN MU NARSE)
KLSE-LRSTE-TRSE-TRSE-MKSEN-MRSE
(SAESNSE SE N MRSE)

NMNRCBRNSEPTE2PTEWSRCBKNSE
26 MLSE 74 SPRKSE 29KCNOB,OLE 175 RTRSE
35 GLE CLGSE UUNUTKEBKRSE PSESHLE
651 MTCSE HTLSE NCUTC TRQ NMRE
99.84.52 UNEPLSEUCRSEAOLTSENSKSENRSE
NSREONSE PUTSEWLD NCBE (3 XORL)

DNMSE NRSE 1N2 NTRLERC BANSENTSECRSNE
LSPNSENGSPSEMKSERBSGNCBENUXLR
MH CRE NMRE NCBE  1/2 MUNDDLSE
D-W-M-4 MPL XDRLX

The letters E, N, and S appear unusually often, while K, Q, X, and Z occur only rarely. This distribution appears broadly consistent with ordinary English. Such a pattern is consistent with a transposition cipher. Certain letter combinations recur with notable frequency: SE appears particularly often, while sequences such as WLD and NCBE are also repeated. No conventional cipher model has yet provided a satisfactory explanation.

Despite years of speculation, no consensus has emerged. The notes remain officially undeciphered, and McCormick’s death unsolved. Unlike many famous cryptograms, the puzzle offers no obvious key, no confirmed plaintext, and not even certainty that encryption is involved. More than twenty-five years after a dead man was found carrying two sheets of cryptic symbols, investigators and codebreakers alike still face the same unsettling possibility: the meaning may be hidden in plain sight – or perhaps lost forever.

Literature

Craig Bauer: Unsolved! The History and Mystery of the World’s Greatest Ciphers. Princeton University Press 2017

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