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GameChanger [Music] [Applause] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:43
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that has 2020 hearing he is the captain what it's good
00:01:51
to be seen and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a [Music]
00:01:58
friend today we are drinking codebreaker by the Beautiful Minds over at the Dayton Beer
00:02:06
Company garage grade 3 and 3/4 bottle caps out of five codebreaker is a no funny business Imperial double IPA super
00:02:14
strong and hoppy and with an ABV of almost 10% I don't think you'll be breaking any codes but you might be
00:02:20
speaking in code and code breaker was brought to us by these Beautiful Minds first up we have Lisa in Los Angeles
00:02:26
California I think it's pronounced Wooster big shout out to Stephanie in Greenville South Carolina and a high
00:02:33
five goes out to my man Richie in Meridian Idaho and a low five goes out to Claire in Littleton Colorado next up
00:02:39
a longdistance cheers to Trevor and Deana in Diamond Creek Australia and last but not least a Texas cheers to our
00:02:47
friend Tina down in the Austin area and thanks to everybody for filling up the beer fridge this week if you'd like to
00:02:52
donate to the Beer fun you can do so at true Crim garage.com click on the Donate
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banner and if you would like to support the show and tell your friends about the
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show you can do so by picking up one of our cool t-shirts on the store Page at true Crim garage.com yeah we got team
00:03:07
Nick shirts we have team captain shirts we have a bunch of logo shirts we have the douche canoe shirts got a lot of
00:03:15
shirts going on over there and got a surprise shirt coming out pretty soon so look forward to that all right Captain
00:03:21
that's enough of the shirt business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:28
crime [Music] breaking written codes is an art whose history dates back as long as people
00:03:44
could write and wanted to keep secrets in the age of computers and Advanced Technologies it's hard to
00:03:51
imagine such expertise is still needed the FBI would tell you differently because breaking code C is
00:04:00
the FBI's Crypt analyst and racketeering records units unique specialty despite the use of
00:04:08
state-of-the-art computer technology to gather intelligence examine evidence and
00:04:13
help solve crimes the need to manually break pen and paper codes remains a valuable and necessary weapon in the
00:04:21
FBI's investigative Arsenal according to the FBI criminals use of codes ciphers and concealed
00:04:30
messages are abundant terrorist gang members inmates drug dealers violent loan offenders and
00:04:39
organized crime groups use letters numbers symbols and even invisible ink to encode messages and attempt to hide
00:04:48
illegal activity 41-year-old Ricky McCormack was murdered in June of 1999 his body was discovered just day
00:04:59
days after he was last seen when police were called to the scene they found Ricky's body lying face down in the
00:05:07
grass in an area between a country road and a cornfield homicide detectives searched
00:05:13
the 41-year-old victim's pockets for Clues regarding the victim's identity and leads on where he could have been
00:05:21
just before his murder they found some things in the man's Pockets one item was a ticket for
00:05:28
an emergency room where he had visited shortly before his death and they also found two pages of notes on these Pages
00:05:37
were lengthy messages these were written in some strange code the detectives passed these
00:05:43
coded pages to the FBI and after examining the documents the FBI concluded that these ciphers could say
00:05:52
who killed Ricky mccormic years passed and then one day everything changed when when the FBI
00:06:00
released the two coded pages to the public and asked you to help solve an open murder
00:06:07
case despite extensive work by the FBI the meaning of those two coded notes remain a mystery to this day and Ricky
00:06:16
McCormack's murderer Is Yet To Face Justice in fact Ricky McCormack's encrypted notes are one of the
00:06:24
crru top unsolved cases according to the FBI breaking the code could reveal the victim's whereabouts before his death
00:06:34
and could lead to the solution of a homicide this is the story of the McCormick [Music]
00:06:52
[Music] code in March of 2011 FBI officials made a rare and a remarkable Revelation this
00:07:12
coming seemingly out of the blue Dan Olen he's the chief of the bureau's cryptanalyst racketeering records unit
00:07:20
we'll call that the crru in Quantico Virginia he disclosed for the first time the existence of two
00:07:28
pages of handwritten encrypted notes found stuffed in the pockets of McCormick's
00:07:35
jeans now unable to decipher the tangle of letters and numbers the FBI released copies of this to the public with a plea
00:07:44
for assistance to hardcore puzzle solvers and wannabe sleuths to help them solve this code and maybe potentially
00:07:53
solved the murder of Ricky McCormack and let's just get the you know the elephant
00:07:57
in the room Let's uh punch him in the face the elephant in the garage you're going to you're going to abuse the
00:08:03
elephant that I brought with me no I'm not go ahead I'm bunch of PETA people are going to write me now um no so I
00:08:12
find the fact that they found these notes on Ricky and they were not reported to the family immediately mhm
00:08:21
and they had to wait till 12 years later to discuss these with the family I feel
00:08:27
that that's very irresponsible okay so let's talk about his family a little bit because and I agree with you
00:08:35
let's let's say we can we can definitely say that they've never seen them the family never saw these encrypted notes
00:08:42
we'll call them right until 12 years later actually they said they didn't know anything about this until they saw
00:08:49
on their local news channel that these ciphers had been released to the public they they had no knowledge of this at
00:08:55
all yeah it was not reported to the family everything that was was found on him was reported to the family except
00:09:01
for these two notes yes so here's here's what I wonder about though um we know that the police held these
00:09:11
notes for two years before they gave them to the FBI mhm couple things I wonder if if the police that they held
00:09:19
these items one because they were just found on his body but two maybe they assumed they that they were either
00:09:25
nothing or it was a clue that they were working and when they question his family you know cuz we have his family
00:09:33
saying no he he didn't write in code Ricky didn't write in code he barely read he barely could write right he
00:09:39
couldn't spell anything and so I'm wondering if police ask questions to the family and they say yeah he never wrote
00:09:47
anything in code he he could barely write he could barely read MH that the police go well they don't know anything
00:09:53
about this this is something we're going to keep to ourselves yeah but we have a
00:09:57
double-edged sword here because we have some people in his family that say nope he could he couldn't read or write the
00:10:03
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
00:10:08
would uh jot down these random things all the time mhm and carry them around with him and it was just like his own
00:10:15
language and I wonder Captain if it was only after two years it looks to me you know people some people even debate
00:10:24
whether this is a homicide or not mhm and we debated that certainly in the first episode but to me what I
00:10:31
see I see investigators treating this as a homicide investigation right I see them working this as a homicide
00:10:39
investigation I wonder if after two years when they couldn't couldn't put a case together to put somebody in court
00:10:47
right that at that point they go well let's pass these notes along to somebody that can do something with them we've
00:10:54
run out of we've run out of ideas we're banging our head against the wall here here let's give this to some some legit
00:11:02
code crackers right send it to the FBI the FBI they have it for the next 10 years before they release it to the
00:11:11
public and it's only after the FBI says look we've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours trying to crack this
00:11:17
code we can't crack it yeah and what the FBI would tell us is that we the FBI firmly believes it is some type of code
00:11:28
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
00:11:35
of what they believe and I think maybe that's just cuz they want to release the code and have whoever that possibly
00:11:41
could solve this just look at it with fresh eyes MH and so they're not going to say well we think this means this or
00:11:47
this means this um but they've done this in the past they with the Zodiac and and
00:11:54
other cases where they have released uh information to the public and the public
00:11:59
has been able to solve something that they couldn't right so do you do you want to describe give us a brief
00:12:05
description of these uh codes let's call them the McCormick code is what I've been calling it I I don't even know how
00:12:12
to describe it but we'll put uh both of these up on all social media platforms but also at ww.com garage.com now let's
00:12:23
talk about code breaking for a little bit okay so the FBI code Breakers they say they typically unlock the meanings
00:12:30
of ciphers that they receive in a matter of hours mhm now the codes from Ricky McCormack the notes found on Ricky
00:12:39
McCormick they they had these for over a decade and they worked them they brought
00:12:45
in other people um they did everything they could to try to attempt to break these codes breaking them down manually
00:12:53
with graph paper and pencil at first uh Dan Olsen himself he dissected the strings of letters and numbers on
00:13:01
whiteboards uh he then employed computers with state-of-the-art software to perform statistical analysis of these
00:13:09
notes and they still came up with nothing now what what the FBI would tell us is
00:13:16
this that it doesn't happen very often that they get an unsolved Cipher of this length is what they're stating this
00:13:27
length I think is key here now the FBI says that the characters are not random they firmly believe this is a code
00:13:35
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
00:13:44
an actual meaning or a letter or number right meaning that there's sometimes it could be one number that is used as a
00:13:52
spacer one letter or a series of numbers or a series of letters that somebody could use as
00:13:59
a Breaking Point right so you could essentially say the captain writes a cipher and every time you see
00:14:08
capap that that actually means space MH yeah and they would go on to explain that there are many characteristics in
00:14:18
these notes that suggest it could be solved they State there are patterns that they see within these
00:14:24
messages but obviously the problem is they just don't know why it's not solved able right the FBI's website also it
00:14:32
takes us through some of the workings on how to crack codes um it stating that cracking a code takes four steps first
00:14:40
one must determine the language used in this case it's English then the system that is used a cipher in which letters
00:14:48
are transposed or substituted for something else for example or a code in in which a letter such as R represents a
00:14:57
person or a place M or perhaps even some kind of secret language such as like a like a version of pig ltin now after
00:15:06
that one must reconstruct the key that explains how the code marker changed the letters of the message such as
00:15:14
shifting such as by shifting every character three letters to the right in the alphabet m is an example and finally
00:15:23
one then can apply the key and then transcribe the hidden message now the FBI says unfortunately with Ricky
00:15:31
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
00:15:39
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
00:15:47
or that I'm just going to give to somebody and they have to basically twist things around and kind of figure
00:15:53
out for themselves okay without a key and then the other one is that you would just write down stuff in code that only
00:16:00
you would understand now if that was the case in in Ricky's code it might be never solved because you would never
00:16:09
know what certain things meant because it only meant something to him mhm well there's certainly No Lack of theories
00:16:17
here in this case as to what the codes could be or could mean right um you know when they released this to the public it
00:16:26
started off with with TV stations in Missi and Illinois they start running with the update and then next thing you
00:16:33
know news organizations as far away as New Zealand were broadcasting this information and then the FBI ends up
00:16:40
getting thousands and thousands of public comments and theories pouring in from all over this becomes a hugely
00:16:47
popular case on the internet because of the cipher mhm and so let's talk about this too because you know we've
00:16:55
mentioned that there are some family members that that state Ricky couldn't read very well or couldn't read at all
00:17:03
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
00:17:11
suggested these notes are just simply meaningless that they are the random random scribblings of a man by by some
00:17:20
accounts was functionally illiterate we don't have him being diagnosed with any Mental Illness but again this could be
00:17:28
writings in a manic state or this could be uh writings of somebody that has uh untreated
00:17:35
schizophrenia yeah and but the thing that I want to go back to when people suggest that these could be
00:17:42
meaningless messages or just random scribblings Dan Olsen Dan Olsen yes the the leader of of the unit that cracks
00:17:51
the codes they come out and they say look we believe this is real code and stating to that fact saying that this
00:18:00
means something these messages mean something that they look at a lot of things they see a lot of things and
00:18:06
investigate them that are gibberish that are arbitrary strikes on a keyboard mhm
00:18:12
they're stating this is not the case with this you know they they examine hundreds of suspected codes each year
00:18:19
and the first thing they do in that process is weeding out those that are nonsense from the codes that the the
00:18:25
bureau needs to crack and to solve I think he said something like we've seen a lot of gibberish yes and this is not
00:18:32
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
00:18:40
obviously not good enough well you solve this one yeah um well we you know even Tom Brady loses a Super Bowl every now
00:18:50
and then boom but anyway so the the such a douche the the crru St stes that after they weed out
00:19:00
the ones that are gibberish that after that process only about 1% of the codes go unbroken we need them to be more like
00:19:11
Michael Jordan which doesn't lose championships right um but like I said I think the first mistake they made is not
00:19:17
going to the family members sooner because one do we even have a writing sample of Ricky to know if this is his
00:19:25
handwriting or not now they claim you know Dan Olson claims that this they believe it was written by Ricky mhm
00:19:33
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
00:19:41
that if they would have went to the family sooner yeah I think you're right um they may have checked for these
00:19:46
things at his apartment that he shared with his girlfriend but you just made me think about something there Captain mhm
00:19:54
and it's this you could have if if for some reason you will when you're looking at a piece of evidence such as this you
00:20:01
don't really know what you have right so that would make you want to keep it somewhat secret as well because you're
00:20:09
not sure what you're looking at and what involvement it has in the case that you're working right however you could
00:20:16
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
00:20:23
messages and and show it to the family members yeah I mean you don't have to there could have been a happy a happy
00:20:30
middle ground here right yeah I mean you could have photocopied them uh and take
00:20:35
just take a little section or rewrote the section yourself and just say look we found this on a piece of paper uh
00:20:42
does does it mean anything to does this mean anything to you yeah or if you show
00:20:45
the handwriting does this mean anything to you and the mom that says that he didn't read or write might have said oh
00:20:51
yeah you know Ricky wrote stuff like that you know like he couldn't spell words but he knew what letters were
00:20:58
right but we don't even have any knowledge if he knew really what letters were and you're right maybe at least
00:21:03
just confirming the handwriting you know even if you could just get a few people
00:21:07
by visual aid saying visually looking at it and saying um I don't know why people
00:21:12
say or why I say visually looking at it how else are you going to look at it but
00:21:17
um with your ears you know a beard is on a face you have 2020 hearing Captain yeah um so but yeah you could at least
00:21:25
show that to the family members or people close to him and say can you say in your opinion if if this is his
00:21:32
Ricky's handwriting or not now tell me if I'm wrong but Li detectors not used in court right right handwriting
00:21:40
analysis can be used in court um yes and I actually think that that varies by state okay because um I think now
00:21:51
somebody's going to get mad at me about this I think I spoke about this before we're all mad at you because I was
00:21:56
looking at handwriting analysis quite a bit when we were talking about the Black
00:22:00
Dalia because there were some messages that were sent to newspapers and I believe to the police as well at the
00:22:06
time and some have suggested that those are connected to the Black Dalia case I believe that um I believe that
00:22:18
it's only accepted in certain States because I think that the as far as far as the law enforcement Community is
00:22:25
concerned handwriting analysis is not an an exact science right that it's more of
00:22:32
somebody giving their quote unquote expert opinion you know just with same with polygraph tests you know there are
00:22:38
there are people that are really good at administering and reading a polygraph test and there's other people that are
00:22:46
poor at it just like with any job you know there's good there's there's good people and there's bad people yeah I
00:22:51
mean some people host a weekly True Crime podcast and they knock it out of the park and then then there's the
00:22:57
colonel I'm joking I thought you were going to say you there's LeBron James and then
00:23:04
there's stinks Curry all right let's before we get too far off track here um let's continue to
00:23:11
talk about these notes and what the FBI suspects you had mentioned that the FBI not only suspects that this is a real
00:23:18
code but they suspect Ricky wrote this himself they would further go on to explain that the messages in their
00:23:26
opinion are done in more of a format of something written to oneself rather than something written to
00:23:34
someone else right like I said before the three different major kinds and the FBI when talking about this this topic
00:23:43
and this this specific point to their opinion is that they point out that there are circles drawn around some of
00:23:51
the segments within the code and they say this could be something as simple as a s a to-do list you know where where
00:24:01
items are kind of marked as task that are completed you know once you finish something you Circle it or you know
00:24:08
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
00:24:12
right um the other thing that's kind of chilling in a way is that not only do they believe that Ricky McCormick wrote
00:24:21
these notes himself the FBI also believes that he wrote them within days of him being killed mhm um and I think
00:24:31
that's why I think that's why they're they keep going back to this and they're stating you know if it doesn't say if
00:24:38
the codes do not say who killed him or who he was may have been running from let's say that the code could be
00:24:47
something as simple as what he was doing at the time leading up to his death yeah
00:24:55
his whereabouts or maybe who he was seeing or what you know whatever he was doing but page one is a lot different
00:25:01
than page two now there's groups of letters that go with page one and page two they they would make you believe
00:25:09
they're written by the same person the handwriting looks the same but in page one there's a lot of parentheses around
00:25:14
things and in page two you have these big circles around sections mhm um so you can visually see them that they're
00:25:23
different but you can visually see they're written by the same person and you're describing these as page one and
00:25:28
page two based off of uh what what the FBI has classified as page one and page two now one thing that's very curious to
00:25:36
me and this is something simple that that I would like to know who your father is is what they're referring to
00:25:43
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
00:25:52
the top of the page and circled right almost like somebody's marking this as page one and I would love to know you
00:25:59
know I hate when I hate when they release these things and then they they just say like uh we believe it's a code
00:26:05
we believe that Ricky wrote it himself and we believe that he wrote it within days of his death go for it try to
00:26:10
figure it out we're not telling you anything else cuz that P1 at the top of what is referred to as page one was that
00:26:17
already on the note when they got it when they received it or did or did somewhere in the code breaking process
00:26:24
did the FBI determine this is page one this is Page one let's get back to the cipher right after this quick beer
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00:28:37
one one of the things I found really interesting about Ricky's case was you know obviously these ciphers M but when
00:28:43
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
00:28:50
right which are always weird people out they'd be like what is what are all these symbols I had it blown up really
00:28:56
big mhm and then my boss told me I had to put it away but this reminds me a little bit like Brandon
00:29:06
Lawson where when you hear the Brandon Lawson 911 you know call you start thinking well fill people in for those
00:29:13
that don't know okay so Brandon Lawson was this guy that disappeared he went missing in uh Texas right and he calls
00:29:21
911 from his cell phone apparently he's on the side of the road his truck broke down now he's talking very fast and he's
00:29:29
almost inaudible at times right but when you hear it you start thinking if I could slow this down or if I could go
00:29:37
piece by piece I could figure this out I could figure out what he's saying and then maybe figure out what happened to
00:29:43
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 got
00:29:49
to go let me look at this code and I was expecting to look at something and think
00:29:55
I can't you know I'm I'm just a I'm just a dumb Captain that sails the high seas what am I going to know about
00:30:02
this code but you start looking at it you start finding things you don't know what they mean but
00:30:08
you're finding them right and and then you know I was telling you before you got here I just kept last night I I
00:30:17
think I would look at it for about 10 minutes and I'd pass out at my desk and then I wake up and go oh no I can still
00:30:23
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
00:30:30
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
00:30:34
seeing patterns but you're going not going to know what those mean obviously well and that's what I that's why I
00:30:40
think the FBI is so firm in their stance that this is sometime some type of encrypted message because it it's even
00:30:49
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
00:30:55
at it cuz maybe you could go do that so so I look at something like this with no
00:31:00
expectation that I'm going to be able to offer anything at all but even to my eye
00:31:06
immediately as you said there's patterns within these messages that you see that
00:31:12
that lead 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
00:31:20
have like a I'll just give a couple quick examples we're not going to go through the whole notes here but um one
00:31:26
thing you see from from time to time is p what appears to be P RS e yes the letters P RS e uh repeated in that same
00:31:34
sequence often throughout these messages you also see what most people refer to as W I'm sorry as
00:31:42
ncbe right and you see that a lot a ton and and actually on several occasions you see numbers what appear to be
00:31:50
numbers before ncbe so like it looks like 74 ncbe and then later 7 1 ncbe and 75 ncbe now you and I had a had a garage
00:32:04
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
00:32:11
intended to be in CBE 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
00:32:19
referring to the N right because there's there's one portion in the in the message where it almost looks like he
00:32:28
and I say he like we know that he wrote it we don't know for certain but it looks like he wrote
00:32:34
wcbe and then the lines underneath of that then appear to be ncbe right which could just be you know
00:32:43
the The Lazy hand or or the the slant getting getting more um exaggerated as the the author continued on well like
00:32:54
you said you know all joking aside I mean neither one of us believe that we're code Breakers or even capable of
00:33:01
breaking codes like this it's just not our Forte right um but what are some theories that the internet has come up
00:33:07
with since the release of these ciphers well like I said earlier there's no shortage of theories out there but uh so
00:33:15
I'll kind of start with the more popular ones um we've already mentioned that one
00:33:20
one very popular theory is that it's not a code at all and we've already kind of
00:33:24
talked through that um then there's the theory that it is a code but it wasn't written by Ricky that that this was
00:33:32
written by somebody else which is possible because he was at the gas station he could have just picked up
00:33:38
something that somebody else wrote also he was at two hospitals and look if this
00:33:43
guy has some issues mentally which I believe there's evidence of that um was he even changing his clothes has has he
00:33:52
been wearing these jeans for a long time could he got one of these notes from you
00:33:57
know he went to two different hospitals he could got those notes from those hospitals mhm um here's a theory that
00:34:04
that there are VIN numbers on these in these messages that they're driving directions okay the other thought is
00:34:12
that it has to do with drug dealing with dealing drugs right that these were some
00:34:17
kind of codes to indicate who he was selling to or who he was making deliveries to and how much he was to
00:34:26
give them how much money he was to collect things of that nature yeah a lot of people also think that this might be
00:34:33
his own personal like medical journal like what medicines he was taken what the dosage was and those all seem to be
00:34:41
the most popular theories that are presented uh by people out there after seeing these codes and these messages
00:34:47
however there are some that are a little more outside of the box thinking let's say right yeah um and these theories are
00:34:54
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
00:35:02
killed by the um Hospital the the last hospital that he was at because he saw something that they they were doing some
00:35:12
kind of illegal activity there he was a witness to it and that he made notes about that um you know inside these
00:35:21
messages okay uh the there's another theory that there's some kind of illegal dumping going on in the area of like uh
00:35:28
hazardous chemicals MH and that he may have been witness to that and he was keeping some kind of log about that and
00:35:36
that these are hazardous chemicals that are polluting the not only polluting the
00:35:40
environment but probably uh shortening people's lives uh that live in the area right there's another theory and I think
00:35:48
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
00:35:56
two lines that I'm like okay I'm spending my time elsewhere it was that I some kind of um child
00:36:03
molestation ring theory that he had some kind of information about that and and was going to tell people or well that
00:36:13
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
00:36:21
was having sex with a 14-year-old and he started having sex with her when she was
00:36:26
11 he was 34 when he got caught and so he's 34 she was 14 at that time he 20 years older than her when that was going
00:36:35
down that's that's called pedophilia right so I didn't think about it from that angle well because he got lucky to
00:36:42
be charged with statutory rape and I mean again you don't want a victim you bash right right but the fact of the
00:36:48
matter is that's horrible right and and I believe uh I'm going to just say this and I hope I don't get much hate m i I
00:36:58
really believe that he had something going on mentally and I feel bad for him and that doesn't make his actions right
00:37:04
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
00:37:14
operating on the same he had probably more in common with her mentally okay and again I don't I don't know him and
00:37:21
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
00:37:30
unmarked grave you cannot go visit his grave nobody's visiting his grave right and I and I do believe that he had some
00:37:38
mental illness that wasn't diagnosed and I don't think his family really gave a [ __ ] well one thing you know and and and
00:37:47
before anybody decides to type something up and send it to you or to I we're we're both stating it doesn't make it
00:37:53
right anything that he did what he did was wrong okay no matter what that at the end of
00:37:59
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
00:38:06
this country does not do very well is address mental health issues no we're we're not good we're good at a lot of
00:38:14
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
00:38:20
been some kind of undiagnosed mental illness or issue that he had um and and therefore I mean who
00:38:29
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
00:38:36
of drugs I can give it to you and you can go deliver it to this guy but look I mean is is it possible that um some guy
00:38:45
approaches him cuz he he knows that um you know Rick's a little off and look somebody you know people write us and
00:38:53
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
00:39:00
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
00:39:06
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
00:39:13
it possible that some sicko knows that Ricky was with an underage woman at some point some sicko that he meets in prison
00:39:22
and says hey maybe you can help me MH I can give you a little bit of money that's not that farfetched I would just
00:39:29
think that the family members or any of his friends would have mentioned this at
00:39:33
some point yeah so let's let's toss out I would prefer to kind of toss out the more wild theories the the ones that I
00:39:44
deemed outside of the box thinking because if we talk if we discuss every Theory that's out there regarding these
00:39:50
messages um we could do a whole a whole year of this okay well let's so let's start with the popular ones right
00:39:58
Captain yeah so some of my issues when people talk about this is possibly driving directions is you have this uh
00:40:05
sequence that at some point where it's basically the same words over and over um but they're not really words it's the
00:40:13
same set of letters and then you get the 71 74 and a 75 now to me with the driving directions that doesn't make a
00:40:21
lot of sense because normally you don't drive up 71 and then hit 74 and then hit
00:40:27
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
00:40:34
I got on 61 then 62 then 63 made a left at 64 hopped on 65 and it seems like most of the time when there are numbers
00:40:42
in this Cipher that they're close in relationship at one point there's a 36 and then the next line there's a
00:40:50
35 so that's weird and then there's a group uh in the second page where it's 99.
00:41:03
84.5 right two and that could be a z or it could be a two so 99.8 9.52 so I don't know what these I have
00:41:16
no clue what these numbers mean but when I think when people start saying that they're directions I just have a problem
00:41:23
with that because the numbers don't seem to add up all the time now again there's
00:41:29
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
00:41:40
175 right so there's a couple spots where you go well maybe this part's directions again you start wondering
00:41:49
well if that's directions this middle section is that just directions that he could read and that's just how he wrote
00:41:56
you know what 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
00:42:02
for him to remember what it is so there's a few issues I have with it being driving directions first of off
00:42:10
the obvious that the man didn't own a vehicle nor did he have a driver's license right that doesn't mean that he
00:42:17
wouldn't have driving directions on his person I just think it makes it much more less likely that he would have them
00:42:25
right and second of all um the other thing the the thought that's there's kind of two thoughts when you mention
00:42:32
driving directions there's also the possibility that they're not really directions directing you from point A to
00:42:39
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
00:42:48
list of locations right now the issue with that and with the driving direction issue is that you know we're not given a
00:42:57
lot of information from the FBI regarding this but one thing that Dan Olsen did say from the FBI said we
00:43:03
worked that angle we worked that angle big time that was something that we considered early on after receiving this
00:43:11
these messages and we we tried comparing things within these messages to you know
00:43:19
uh the state of Missouri and the surrounding states and nothing nothing lined up to work out
00:43:26
yeah nothing lined up to work that out yeah so they work that angle big time um well you while you we were talking about
00:43:34
numbers maybe we should mention the the you know VIN number vehicle identification number that that's one
00:43:41
Theory that's presented time and time again the problem I have with that theory is VIN numbers are typically 17
00:43:47
digits right and in a VIN number is just that you know the VIN number describes it very good because when you look at a
00:43:56
VIN number it's mostly numbers and not letters if it were mostly letters they would call it Vin letters right and
00:44:03
these are mostly letters when you look at this message it's a it's a lot of letters and very few numbers hey I got
00:44:09
this great idea we should do a whole podcast about a letter that you can't see this will be super entertaining for
00:44:17
the listeners no but check it out you know yeah I don't see it being a vid number because most of the time there's
00:44:25
more letters uh or more numbers within a VIN right than what are on these these papers now okay so medical journal we
00:44:36
said it could be possibly a record of medications that Ricky was taking uh the time and dates that he was taking them
00:44:45
the dosage and I could be wrong and our our amazing uh nurse nurses will call me
00:44:51
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
00:45:03
milligrams right right or like 29 milligram this kind of weird number they're normally like
00:45:11
15 you know 20 you know what I mean like it seems like these would be weird numbers for dosage well and the other
00:45:19
thing though Captain with even with his reported health problems with the chest pains with the breathing issues
00:45:26
even with those known health problems it it it's not known that he was on any prescriptions right because
00:45:34
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
00:45:42
he were he'd have to be on a lot of them for these notes to be required would be
00:45:47
my guess right um I mean there there's these are lengthy messages is what I mean by that yeah now drugs so
00:45:56
going from uh um legal drugs to illegal drugs the thought that these have something to do with his drug runs or
00:46:05
with dealing drugs the the problem I have with that is the numbers okay the numbers that are
00:46:13
listed on these messages don't make any sense to me in that manner right but they don't have to
00:46:22
make sense to you they have to make sense to him that's true and what's interesting here is one of the best
00:46:27
movies of all time Rocky one okay I thought you were going to say a beautiful mind because we're on this
00:46:34
code breaking thing that's why in the beer description I said the Beautiful Minds over at the Dayton Beer Company um
00:46:39
no that's a great movie too but in Rocky Wan he is a debt collector mhm and he you know you got to break their thumbs
00:46:49
right mhm uh just do what I'm telling you rock but what did he do guy couldn't read or write really and he took down
00:46:56
notes yeah every time that his boss told him to go collect from somebody and so uh when you see something like that and
00:47:06
you know I mean look I know it's a fictitious character but is it very possible that that Ricky would write
00:47:12
down little messages for himself to remember on these runs I don't think that's unlikely I think that's a good
00:47:21
plausible thing but I also think if he's writing down these notes for him to remember
00:47:27
that we're never going to solve this right these were just things that were in his head that made sense to to him
00:47:34
now the big one which you see all the time is that ncbe right so a lot of people that think
00:47:41
that means no cash being exchanged meaning I'm going to drop these drugs off and this guy doesn't
00:47:49
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
00:47:55
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
00:48:03
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
00:48:10
description of what he's supposed to give to them followed by no cash being exchanged yeah yeah so you're not going
00:48:17
to have to make change for anything you're not to accept or to you're not to expect cash from whoever this is yeah uh
00:48:26
that way things don't get tricky so I mentioned outside of the box thinking Captain this is the time in the garage
00:48:33
show where I give you my weird brain on a platter and you go and everybody can laugh at me clar yeah so here I just
00:48:42
want to go through my thoughts as we're wrapping this up hey no you have good thoughts you're an intelligent guy all
00:48:48
right well you should say that after you hear this okay but I did you know I sometimes pick on you and I think
00:48:54
sometimes people think think that you know I don't appreciate your thoughts I I sit here and listen to you every week
00:49:01
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
00:49:07
still the only I'm still the only one here with us so here here's what my thoughts are um and I want to kind of go
00:49:15
back to the beginning so was oh God was was Ricky murdered is a big major question here yeah I see I see
00:49:25
detectives spending a good deal of time treating this like a homicide I see detectives telling the medical examiner
00:49:33
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
00:49:41
easy here okay okay I think that there was something that they know or something that indicated to them that
00:49:47
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
00:49:56
it mean something again I'm going to go to The Experts we had the FBI stating this is a code this means something we
00:50:03
don't know how valuable it is to the case or not but if we could crack this we could either rule it out or rule it
00:50:09
in so I'm again going to Def to defer to The Experts to people that are smarter than I in this specific area all right
00:50:18
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
00:50:24
murder or maybe that it could even help solve the case right and so you're going
00:50:30
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
00:50:38
if it could tell us the last place he was right that could point us into to a suspect that we would need evidence
00:50:45
otherwise to convict the person obviously you can't hold these notes up in court and go see see see
00:50:52
ncbe OJ Simpson did it it's right there there ncbe so and here's my thought though and
00:51:00
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
00:51:07
on this one and this is where my suspicion lies okay I I heard his family and what they
00:51:13
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
00:51:21
here's one thing that that I kind of kind of went back to several times at when looking at this case and I've heard
00:51:27
several old old I've heard I've heard several older inmates in prisons say this to
00:51:36
incoming inmates did they whisper it in your ear um no they no one said this specifically to me okay I've heard this
00:51:43
is passed on okay the secondhand knowledge is what they say so um I've heard that sometimes
00:51:52
the older inmates tell the incoming inmates you you know do you read or write well if you don't you're going to
00:51:59
do some hard time because reading and writing is a way of passing the time making the time go faster for you
00:52:06
something constructive you can do as you wait to serve your sentence because that's really all you're doing in a
00:52:12
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 and
00:52:20
think about prison one of the worst parts of being sentenced and punished in that manner
00:52:25
is that you have little to none privacy little to no privacy at all that's one of the biggest parts of that punishment
00:52:33
and I think that possibly whether he could read or write or or none of the above that I think that maybe at some
00:52:41
point he developed some kind of system something that he could he could write whether it was jotting down notes
00:52:49
whether it was keeping some kind of personal Daily Journal lots of inmates will write down personal daily
00:52:56
activities to give themselves something to write and they'll write things that are so monotonous things that are like
00:53:02
today had fish sticks for lunch right with applesauce and the broccoli was terrible and I took a walk for an hour
00:53:11
in the yard and then I read a book then received letters then for dinner I had this this
00:53:18
and this you know just really boring stuff that they're keeping track of and I wonder I wonder if maybe he developed
00:53:24
some kind of system either to pass the time or if he coded his little journal to himself to have some form of privacy
00:53:33
so that he could keep these thoughts and keep these records of things without other people being able to read them and
00:53:39
invade his privacy more and I'm wondering that it let's say he did use some type kind of code like that
00:53:49
right he could have used this for running drugs or for just daily activities once he got out of prison
00:53:56
that could be a combination of both the other thing that I wonder too is that that we have the FBI stating that we
00:54:03
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
00:54:10
heard from people that yeah he he checked into the hospital at 5 they checked him out at 550 less than an hour
00:54:17
later but I heard from people he stayed in the hospital all night long in the waiting room I wonder if he was jotting
00:54:25
writing these things down there you know that would give him ample time to sit down have you ever tried to sleep in one
00:54:31
of those Hospital waiting rooms you're not getting no sleep so I wonder if if that's what it is now and I want to
00:54:37
point out another code that I think could help understand my reasoning here okay and I'll read it to you best I can
00:54:45
it's it's scribbled on my page here ebcm W no spelled n o l t o pep spelled p then we have the next line which is M
00:54:58
Works spelled w r KS MW FF plus symbol SS i t MLT 20 the number 20 20 mhm 1 SL2 this is I'm sorry this is the next line
00:55:15
1 SL2 third spelled 3 R D- add add c h iix h the number two and the letter O M okay
00:55:29
that is a code that's that's a code that I wanted to point out here what is that
00:55:32
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
00:55:41
bartend and wait tables I had chicken scratch I came up with my own code for when you when you would read off your
00:55:48
order what you wanted to me that I would write it down that fast because I knew that one thing I learned very on that my
00:55:55
income was based off of how friendly accurate and fast I was so if I can make myself faster and more accurate not get
00:56:02
your stuff wrong then I would more likely get a bigger tip from you mhm so what that is is you just you just heard
00:56:10
a party of three and one person ordered a 6 o bacon and cheddar burger medium well minus lettuce tomato onion with
00:56:18
french fries and a Pepsi to drink the next person ordered a 10 oz Works Burger medium well with everything french fries
00:56:26
plus a side salad with Italian dressing a bread stick and a Miller Light 20 o draft and the final person ordered a
00:56:32
half a salad with Third Street dressing and grilled chicken and a bread stick with water to
00:56:40
drink hungry now yeah this sounds delicious anyway especially that Miller Light 20 o draft but what I'm getting at
00:56:47
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
00:56:58
these will never be solved it never mean anything to anybody like my my little code there that I came up with yeah
00:57:05
would make sense to zero even the people that worked at that restaurant they might be able to pick out some things
00:57:11
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
00:57:18
multiple things sometimes it's to tell me if cheddar is on a burger or if somebody ordered a chicken sandwich I'll
00:57:27
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
00:57:34
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
00:57:45
it could have been directions it could have been multiple things yeah but all the codes are in Ricky's head so you're
00:57:53
not going to probably get the answer answers right and I hope that I'm wrong I hope that somebody comes out with
00:57:58
something because the FBI says you know we release this to the public hoping I I
00:58:03
think that not only that somebody could solve it obviously but maybe somebody could come forward with some type of
00:58:09
information that would help them to solve it meaning you know they were stating if we had a third page here we
00:58:16
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
00:58:24
let's right that's the big problem with them not going to the family sooner they
00:58:28
might have been able to get something there you were right about that Captain so yeah my thought is you know he was in
00:58:34
the hospital was was he in pain uh he had all these illnesses right mhm uh I think he
00:58:44
had severe mental illness um which was di wasn't diagnosed or if it was at some point you know it happens a lot they
00:58:55
can't afford their medicine if they can't afford their medicine then they can't get their their brains straight um
00:59:02
and we and that's a horrible issue in this country I don't know if he was murdered
00:59:10
you know we have this individual that walked would take um public transportation but also would would
00:59:17
hitch rides from people is it possible that he was at the gas station and hitched ride for somebody and then he
00:59:23
started walking and on a hot day he was dehydrated yeah has a bad ticker and look the autopsy doesn't make any sense
00:59:35
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
00:59:43
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
00:59:51
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
01:00:00
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
01:00:09
identifies Ricky McCormick's final resting place uh he is buried at Laurel Hill Memorial Gardens and if it were not
01:00:18
for an entry in the cemetery's log book no one would ever know that he was buried there
01:00:25
and like I said I I do believe he was dealing with mental illness and when when his friends and and people that
01:00:31
actually did like Ricky say well sometimes he talked like he was from another world well anybody that has
01:00:38
dealt with mental illness knows that there's times in your um illness that you might feel like you're in a
01:00:45
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
01:00:54
to me that he did write these but I think it's on some level it's um it's almost like cerent gibberish and
01:01:04
like yes maybe if he wrote these these mean something to him um that nobody ever is ever going to figure out and so
01:01:13
it's just weird because there's you know we wouldn't be talking about this case um you know some mentally ill
01:01:23
guy um with a checkered pass is found dead mhm on the side of the road no evidence of being murdered we
01:01:34
wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't for these ciphers but I don't know if these ciphers are going to
01:01:38
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
01:01:46
both of the notes and messages ciphers codes whatever you want to call them on our website at true Crim
01:01:52
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
01:01:58
thoughts uh if you see anything within these messages let us know please post that on our blog at truecrime
01:02:08
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