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Cellular when Freedom calls we're here to answer call us at 1 888 [Music] [Applause]
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freedom welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:46
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that knows that the zuder film was edited and it
00:01:52
turns out JFK shot first he is the captain thank you thank you thank you it's good to be seen and it's good to
00:01:58
see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a [Music] friend today we are drinking codebreaker
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Beautiful Minds first up we have Laura in Teddington New Zealand a big cheers mates to Brad and SE home Australia and
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everybody we're about 6 months behind maybe a year behind maybe three years behind we're not really for sure we're
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just really far behind on the beer shout outs so be patient all right Captain that's enough of the business everybody
00:03:09
gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime late June
00:03:19
1999 a woman finds a body near a cornfield off a rural road just about 20 M north of St
00:03:28
Louis investigators are quick to make an identification however the medical examiner is uncertain as to how the man
00:03:36
has died police have their theories and suspicions they believe the man had been
00:03:43
killed somewhere else and dumped in a spot between the road and [Music] cornfield the man was 41-year-old Ricky
00:03:52
McCormick a loner his friends called him a vampire because he would leave home after the sun went down and not return
00:04:00
until it was coming up again Ricky had a checkered past and a police record some suspect he may have
00:04:08
been dealing drugs Ricky was associated with some bad people is it possible that Ricky's past
00:04:16
or the circles that he may be running in led to his death Ricky was always a little odd but
00:04:24
leading up to his death he was behaving especially strange did Ricky know he was in trouble
00:04:32
and if so did he know who was after him why didn't Ricky seek the help of others
00:04:38
around him did Ricky fear that his loved ones would be in danger if they knew what he
00:04:44
knew after his death police discovered some strange Clues clues that suggest Ricky knew who was after him and
00:04:53
why this is the case of Ricky McCormick [Music] [Music] June 30th 1999 near West Alton Missouri
00:05:25
a woman is driving her car on a Road off of rout 67 there is a large cornfield that runs
00:05:33
along the side of this road well she spots something in the open part of the field the kind of find that is going to
00:05:40
ruin the rest of your day Captain it appears to be a dead human body police are called to the scene and they find
00:05:49
what most Reports say a body that was very badly decomposed later the authorities used
00:05:56
fingerprints to identify the body to be that of 40 1-year-old Ricky McCormick McCormick was a high school dropout who
00:06:04
had held multiple addresses in the Missouri Illinois regions of St Louis bellw and fair viiew Heights at the time
00:06:12
of his death Ricky worked and lived about 20 miles from where his body was found Ricky did not drive or own a
00:06:18
vehicle so finding his body there was strange in itself MH due to the decomposition of the body the medical
00:06:25
examiner could find no cause of death there was no indication that anyone would have a motive to kill Ricky
00:06:33
McCormick and no one had even reported him missing so the authorities at the time initially ruled out
00:06:40
homicide but keep in mind his body where I have an issue with this Captain is his
00:06:45
body is found almost 20 mil from where he lived and worked right what is the reason that he was miles away from his
00:06:52
current address and as we said he did not own a vehicle and the area that he was found in there is no public
00:06:59
transportation in that area he didn't take a bus to get there he wasn't reported missing which is strange as
00:07:06
well now Ricky McCormack he was last seen alive just 3 days earlier before his body was found the body was found on
00:07:13
June 30th so when the reports come out that his body was badly decomposed I'm thinking that they mean
00:07:21
in relation to either when Ricky was last seen or when they believe the time of death to be now both of these would
00:07:28
be on the 27th just 3 days earlier so was this a murder wasn't this area known to be a Dumping
00:07:37
Ground yeah yeah police would later say that this was a Dumping Ground for quote
00:07:42
known criminal activity MH but it was also very hot so the decomposition could have happened quicker because of the
00:07:50
temperatures and possibly yeah so let's go through this I actually looked up the
00:07:54
weather report for that week that he was missing so uh some reports state that he
00:08:00
went missing on the 25th we now know that not to be true there there are reports that would later come out that
00:08:05
he was seen on the 26th and then the 27th M so let's start with the 27th that was a Sunday and it's June it's the end
00:08:14
of June so you would expect a hot day 90° was the high captain and 69 de was the low so a pretty warm day on that day
00:08:24
now on Monday the 28th 86° was the high 71 was the low and then on Tuesday June 29th 75° and 62° so the 29th is not
00:08:36
particularly hot I would say 75 being the high 62 the low there was no rain uh on two of those days and a very light
00:08:44
rain on the Monday before he was found on that Wednesday June 30th here's the thing that that jumps off the page to me
00:08:53
is when we hear the description of this area of where his body was found now I know that that we said a country road
00:09:01
okay so probably not traveled often or you know you wouldn't expect a lot of traffic going through
00:09:07
there right however this body doesn't seem to be concealed in any manner there's a corn field near this road if
00:09:15
somebody wanted to conceal him you could have put him in the cornfield mhm however it looks to me like somebody
00:09:21
just pulled up and dumped him that that he would have been killed elsewhere and dumped in this area because it states
00:09:27
he's found in an area an open area in a grassy area between the country road and
00:09:33
the cornfield now keep in mind the person that found him first discovered this body she's not she's not looking
00:09:40
for anything she's not walking alongside the road when she spots this body she's
00:09:45
driving so it it to me seems like it's right out in the open where just about anybody if you were traveling during
00:09:53
daylight on that road that you would see his body it's never a mannequin right right right never well I was actually
00:10:01
very happy that when I found reports about this no one mentioned the word mannequin because they always do um the
00:10:09
thing though that gets me Captain is I think this has to be a murder and I tell you why because I think that if he would
00:10:16
have somehow died there mhm you know let's forget about how he would have got there let's say he manages to get there
00:10:23
or he's there for some reason and he dies there yeah okay let's just stay on that point real quick okay think it's
00:10:29
out of the realm of possibilities that this individual that does not have a car and probably has multiple times use his
00:10:37
feet as Transportation oh of course that that it's not out of the realm of possibilities that he would travel now
00:10:44
this is a far this would be a very long walk mhm um this would take several hours right well this was a man too that
00:10:52
was known to Hitch rides and I and I don't I I say hitch rides because that's how his family described
00:10:59
think ACH ask a ride right you know so he could have got a portion of the way without
00:11:09
even walking exactly so let's forget about how he could have got there because we we both agree he he could
00:11:17
have potentially got there right this is what I have a problem with if he would have somehow died of natural
00:11:25
causes at that spot on the TW he was last seen on the 27th mhm his body was badly decomposed and we're stating so
00:11:35
you can't say like all right he managed to get there and he didn't die until the
00:11:39
29th or the 30th he Pro most likely died on the 27th when they believe the time of death to
00:11:46
be if he died and fell in that spot I think he would have been found before the 30th you know we have two and a half
00:11:53
three days go by his body wasn't concealed in any manner at all somebody else would have spotted this body body
00:11:59
possibly but I I guarantee you there was people that drove by that body she wasn't the first person that drove by
00:12:05
the body and said oh my God it's a body so my other thought too m is regarding the badly decomposed body I I don't
00:12:15
think that we're seeing temperatures or the elements being harsh enough to expedite the decomposition to this point
00:12:25
I think I think what we're looking at is that he was killed where and he was kept
00:12:31
somewhere and probably dumped in off the side of the road in the middle of the night before she found him the next day
00:12:38
at daylight yeah the temperatures weren't that hot I also just question you know this Ricky seemed a little bit
00:12:45
of a loner and yeah they have eyewitness reports saying that they saw him 3 days
00:12:49
earlier but there's a lot of people that mistaken you know can be mistaken when they oh yeah I saw him on Thursday but
00:12:56
you actually didn't you saw him on Monday mhm so that is a possibility well and the thing I think here Captain this
00:13:04
is just my suspicion what would speed up the decomposition process if he was in somebody's trunk in the trunk of
00:13:11
somebody's car for for a couple days it would get it would get quite a bit hotter in that trunk uh in that vehicle
00:13:19
yeah and that could speed that up so I think that might be what we're looking at but what we do know we're looking at
00:13:24
here Captain is that they do eventually change this to a homicide investigation and I think what we have is you know
00:13:31
well let's let's talk about that for a little bit because initially the the coroner couldn't really figure out the
00:13:38
time of death mhm um cuz the autopsy I don't think was done correctly they also didn't state it was a homicide at the
00:13:47
initial um autopsy right they just said he died how we don't know well they they
00:13:57
were actively investigating a homicide in this situation and what I okay but why though because your coiner comes out
00:14:06
and says we don't know how he died right right and then so they're actively pursuing it as a murder investigation
00:14:14
but why we have no cause of death well because they did change it to possible homicide right this is where the case to
00:14:21
me just starts getting weird right right from the get-go well is is that you have
00:14:27
one person saying we don't know how he died and then later on we have the FBI coming out saying he died by a
00:14:33
gunshot so how was that gunshot not found in the first autopsy we have the I we do have the FBI stating that I found
00:14:41
one local report of the police a police officer stating that the man appeared to
00:14:47
have suffered a head injury now they don't go into specifics on the head injury what my guess is Captain is that
00:14:54
either a you're right and this this examination was not done properly or B it was conducted properly that they
00:15:05
don't come up with a cause of death MH and so what happens in a lot of these cases and we've seen it in other cases I
00:15:12
believe it was the bill coin's case as well where if they're not certain as to the cause of death you got to keep in
00:15:20
mind they're making that recommendation based off of the evidence that's in front of them off of the information
00:15:26
that they have at the time so if they examine the body and they say well we can't determine that this was a homicide
00:15:32
it's an unknown cause of death well then the investigators the detectives that that responded to finding this body come
00:15:40
to the medical examiner and say look from our trained eye from our years of expertise in this area we feel we
00:15:48
have a homicide here and why because we suspect this this this and this that's why I think in that first report we see
00:15:56
where it says he it wasn't known you know he didn't seem to have any known enemies or they couldn't find any known
00:16:03
motive for somebody to want to kill him so I think what we have here though is I
00:16:09
think we have the police and the investigators going back to the medical examiner and saying a couple things one
00:16:15
we think he was killed elsewhere why do we think that my guess is that they they
00:16:19
share my thought that his body probably would have been found earlier had he had
00:16:25
he remained there for days the other too is the speeding up of the decomposition to the body you know
00:16:32
that didn't just happen on its own and if you can if you can prove or if you can say that you know what the the
00:16:39
natural elements the elements in the weather at that time in that place did not speed up this process at all then he
00:16:48
has to have been Elsewhere for a portion of his death well didn't Ricky wasn't he
00:16:53
known to have some health issues yes he did have some health issues and I think that's what led to some of this
00:16:59
confusion you know he had um some asthma issues and he had some heart issues as well M well I'll tell you what let's
00:17:07
let's go through his background let's go through uh the timeline leading up to what I'm going to go ahead and call a
00:17:14
murder well you have every right to do that I mean that's what the FBI calls it okay well Ricky was born June 14th
00:17:22
1958 uh he grew up living in the St Louis area and he lived there throughout different times of his adult life in
00:17:29
fact his address at the time of his death was a St Louis address his mother Frankie Sparks describes her son as
00:17:38
challenged now I have some questions about the relationship that he had with his mother his Frankie his mom is she's
00:17:47
a straight to Theo kind of blunt speaking person right mm uh she uses some negative terminology when she
00:17:55
speaks about her son but then on the other hand Ricky lived with his mother as an adult
00:18:01
not all the time but on and off right so where one gives the appearance of a poor
00:18:06
relationship between the two the other may suggest otherwise Ricky's cousin this is Charles McCormick these two guys
00:18:15
they were tight they had a relationship that was much more like two brothers uh for most of their lives Charles says
00:18:23
Ricky would often talk like he was in another world mhm and he suspects Ricky might have suffered from maybe
00:18:32
schizophrenia okay yeah or bipolar disorder yeah didn't his like doctor when he was a kid uh see the mom called
00:18:39
him slow right this is what the mom called him not what we're calling him but she called him slow and then the
00:18:46
doctors were saying cuz he was he wasn't he was never diagnosed with anything right but didn't one of the doctors say
00:18:54
something about that he had a brick in his a brick wall yeah in his mind well and like you said you know even though
00:19:01
his cousin suspected these possible disorders nothing was officially diagnosed of course MH so some people
00:19:09
close to Ricky suggested that um but but his cousin would possibly be right on the bipolar or uh schizophrenia if if he
00:19:19
was talking in such a way there are some people that go into a manic State and they kind of talk in a way that almost
00:19:26
makes sense but almost seems from another world and speaking of people that Ricky was close with he was also
00:19:32
close with his Aunt Gloria McCormack the family calls her cookie hey cookie it's
00:19:38
unclear if Ricky ever received any formal treatment for any type of Mental Illness but his family members recall
00:19:45
Ricky's displays of what they call unusual behavior and they also stated that uh he was known for concocting and
00:19:54
telling Tall Tales now teachers when he was in school teachers kind of just shuffled him along from grade to grade
00:20:02
but it's believed that he could hardly read or write uh as a youngster yeah for I think his mom said he couldn't read or
00:20:10
write the only thing he could actually write was his name he did eventually drop out of school he dropped out of
00:20:17
high school Ricky McCormick usually relied on occasional odd jobs to help support his income uh he did things like
00:20:25
mopping floors washing dishes busting tables service station attendant um he did receive disability checks due to uh
00:20:34
those health problems that you had mentioned earlier he had a a chronic heart problem uh and he had you know so
00:20:41
he was these health issues probably limited the amount of work or the types of work that he could perform Ricky
00:20:49
preferred the night shift when he did work he did uh he developed a reputation as a night owl he worked at night and he
00:20:56
did his thing at night often he would be leaving his place of residence when the
00:21:02
sun was going down and returning home when the sun was coming up as a teenager and later as an adult he was known to
00:21:11
frequently hitch rides or take the bus to distance himself this is his family saying this to distance himself from the
00:21:18
street toughs who were dealing drugs and picking fights on the street just to be
00:21:24
you know just to be safer now s St Louis is a tough City there are some very rough parts of Old St Louie Ricky did
00:21:32
have a police record he was arrested when he was 34 years old this was in November of
00:21:39
1992 um in St Louis for statutory rape yeah he had some kind of ongoing relationship with this girl that was far
00:21:49
too young to even know or understand being in a relationship with a an adult Ricky fathered two children with this
00:21:57
girl uh they were together I believe for like 3 years in this quote unquote relationship mhm he had been sleeping
00:22:05
with the girl since she was 11 according to the court files um which the court files protect the girl's identity so we
00:22:14
do not know the name of this uh person now while awaiting trial on the first-degree sexual abuse charge Ricky
00:22:21
was represented by a public defender his Council noted that there was reasonable
00:22:26
cause to believe Rick was suffering from some mental disease or defect mhm and his Council requested that the judge
00:22:35
order a mental health exam now this was granted by the court however the court certified Ricky McCormick as fit for
00:22:44
Trial 6 weeks later on September 1st of 1993 Ricky pled guilty to the crime at that moment Ricky became Missouri State
00:22:52
inmate number behind bars in the Farmington correctional center before being sent
00:23:01
home a year later now let's fast forward to June of 1999 so just days before The
00:23:10
Disappearance and murder of 41-year-old Ricky mccormic MH now we said that Ricky
00:23:16
often worked odd jobs well 1999 was no exception for that he was employed uh working at a gas station I believe uh
00:23:25
part-time hours so in June of 1999 actually Captain I I'm wrong we need to go back a little earlier than that we
00:23:33
need to go back to uh the early morning of Tuesday June 15th 1999 so this is two
00:23:40
weeks about two weeks before his death all right Ricky McCormick walked up to the counter at a Greyhound bus terminal
00:23:48
in downtown St Louis and he purchased a one-way ticket to Orlando Florida this was not the first time making such a
00:23:56
trip and traveling by himself it would turn out to be the last of at least two brief trips to Florida that he had made
00:24:05
that year right on this trip once he got there he checked into and stayed at The
00:24:12
aono Lodge Motel in Orlando uh he was in room number 280 phone records show that either Ricky
00:24:20
or his girlfriend this is sandre Jones they made a lot of calls to several different people in Central Florida just
00:24:28
a couple of weeks before Ricky traveled to Orlando and the reason why we say either Ricky or his girlfriend was he
00:24:36
was living with his girlfriend at the time yeah we talked about how he did odd jobs sometimes to make extra money MH
00:24:43
one of the things that he would do is you know if you have something that you need to give to somebody well I can take
00:24:48
it there you I can hitch a ride mhm and so there was a lot of speculation that he was running some drugs for some
00:24:55
people that's possibly what he was doing doing down in Orlando well while he was
00:25:01
there Ricky and his girlfriend exchanged many short phone calls during the two days that Ricky had stayed in Orlando
00:25:08
and he made at least one call to the St Louis gas station where he worked those part-time hours Ricky's girlfriend
00:25:16
sandre told police after his death that she suspected Ricky was running drugs that he went to Florida to pick up some
00:25:23
marijuana according to the Sheriff's Department uh their invest ative report the girlfriend's explanation went
00:25:30
something like this Ricky would like you said would accept offers to pick up and
00:25:35
deliver packages for money mhm and he made trips to Florida before and on several occasions when he came back he
00:25:43
brought marijuana into their apartment where the two lived in this poor area this uh poor area south of downtown St
00:25:52
Louis right the drugs would usually be sealed in ziplock bags rolled together into bundles she told the police Ricky
00:26:01
told his girlfriend that he was holding the stashes of weed for a guy named Baja
00:26:07
hamdalah okay all right the police report Baha hamdalah yeah the police report States this you can't make this
00:26:14
stuff up Baja hamdalah um everyone called this dude Bob thank God for me because I I'm I'm
00:26:22
probably not saying his name correctly it's Wooster so Bob and Rick I not only you know Ricky not only held weed for
00:26:31
Bob but he also worked for him at the gas station MH Ricky didn't tell sandre much about these trips to Orlando he
00:26:41
actually told her very little about these trips she didn't know who he met with while he was there or even you know
00:26:49
by name who he might have been going to Orlando to see but his girlfriend sandre
00:26:55
said that the last trip had been very different from the other trips because when Ricky got back from Orlando she
00:27:03
said Ricky was different he was very [Music] scared this show is sponsored by better
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00:29:13
1999 so just about about eight days before Ricky's body was found now on the afternoon of June 22nd at 3:00 in the
00:29:24
afternoon Ricky McCormick walked into the Barnes Jewish hospital uh into the emergency room mhm he's complaining of
00:29:32
chest pains in shortness of breath he was by himself when he checked into the hospital now Ricky as we had stated he
00:29:39
had suffered from both asthma and chest pain since childhood yeah he told his doctors that
00:29:46
he did not abuse drugs or alcohol and now this is a statement that friends and family would later back up as well Ricky
00:29:54
did however and this is not good if you have have asthma and chest pains well not good anyway uh he did smoke at least
00:30:02
a pack of cigarettes a day since his childhood uh and he drank a lot of coffee practically all day long by his
00:30:10
own estimate by Ricky's own estimate he told his doctors that he drank on average more than 20 caffeinated
00:30:18
beverages a day that's a lot that's a lot and I like my coffee but that's a lot that's a lot of coffee well doctors
00:30:26
ruled out a heart attack uh but they decided to keep Ricky there for observation for two days so Ricky didn't
00:30:34
leave the hospital until June 24th uh he was scheduled to return for a follow-up visit uh this was scheduled
00:30:41
for the following week but of course he never made it to the follow-up visit now
00:30:46
Ricky uses public transportation uh he took the bus to get to his aunt cookie house uh to her apartment and once he
00:30:56
arrived there she said that he only stayed for about an hour uh she told police that he would visit her often he
00:31:04
was extremely close to her he was actually by her account closer to her than his own mother MH and that's cuz
00:31:12
your own mom thinks you're slow so yeah maybe that's has a reason why you're not
00:31:16
visiting her all the time and like we said she has some negative things to say about her son right and here's one thing
00:31:24
that proves that he's closer to his aunt than he is to his mother mother his mother lived right around the corner
00:31:29
from Cookie's apartment yet he would often go and visit Cookie's house without ever going over to his mother's
00:31:36
MH so she said that Ricky would go over there and talk with her sometimes for hours uh but as mentioned on this
00:31:45
occasion he only stayed for about one hour and she said that he seemed less chatty on this visit than
00:31:53
typical she said that she thinks he had something on his mind something intense let's say um she said that she
00:32:01
offered him a ride uh but he insisted that he not take the ride and he left her house on foot yeah maybe something
00:32:10
intense on his mind or maybe the fact that he was in the hospital for two days with with chest pains and possibly but
00:32:17
but cookie looking back what she she says something like he appeared to be mindfully watching his words when he was
00:32:26
speaking with her she thinks that he was worried that he was going to say something he didn't want to tell
00:32:32
her or you know that he that he didn't want to reveal too much to her when he was there visiting with her MH now
00:32:39
Cookie's last image of Ricky is of him walking down her street around 5:00 p.m. the next day on June 25th Ricky once
00:32:49
again was in the emergency room but this time he went to Forest Park hospital this is less than 2 miles from Barnes
00:32:56
Jew Jewish hospital where he had been just days before mhm this time he complained that he was having trouble
00:33:03
breathing following an afternoon of mowing grass doctors diagnosed his wheezing as an asthma attack he was not
00:33:12
admitted to the emergency room however he was officially released at 5:50 p.m. so less than an hour after arriving
00:33:21
there now it's not clear what time he actually left the hospital because cookie says his says that she heard from
00:33:28
some people that Ricky actually spent the night at the hospital but he stayed the night in the waiting room before
00:33:35
leaving the next morning and that's going to bring us to June 26th which is 4 days before Ricky you's body would be
00:33:42
found mhm now on that day uh Ricky's girlfriend told police that she spoke with Ricky on the phone around 11:30
00:33:51
a.m. on the 26th right she said that he told her he was out of the hospital and he was on his way to the amicos gas
00:34:00
station to get a bite to eat yeah at least go ahead okay so Amo is that's a gas station right so you're smoking more
00:34:10
than a pack a day right you're drinking 20 some 20 some caffeinated 20 some or more caffeinated beverages day
00:34:20
and you're eating at gas stations yeah well we got to keep in mind Ricky didn't have a lot of money no I know that I'm
00:34:27
just I you know I'm just putting out there that that's another source of not living healthy right you're smoking a
00:34:35
bunch of cigarettes you're drinking a bunch of coffee all the nutritious food served at the uh Amo station yeah and
00:34:41
look trust me you just put Amo out of business no no no no cuz 3:00 in the morning when I'd be driving home from
00:34:47
gigs I mean I tried some weird [ __ ] you know you know like you're you're driving
00:34:53
and you're just hungry and there's some hot dogs and you you don't know how long
00:34:57
they've been there mhm I I'll try them you know 3:00 in the morning roller food is what we call that the food that's
00:35:05
cooked on the rollers that's when you know you're desperate for for food but I want but I should have been a little
00:35:10
more clear because this Amo gas station that's the same one that he works at part-time where he says he's going to
00:35:16
get a bite to eat okay Sobe there could be more involved in this trip to the gas
00:35:21
station possibly or the fact that you know he could go get a couple hot dogs for free there right I used to I worked
00:35:28
at a BP gas station briefly and there were a lot of free meals from from the roller food section at the BP anyway so
00:35:39
he go he tells his girlfriend that he's going to go to this Amo gas station to get a bite to eat he also works at the
00:35:45
Amo gas station now one thing here that I would love to know and I couldn't figure this out because it's not stated
00:35:51
anywhere the person's name but what is stated is at least one gas station employee who remains nameless for some
00:35:59
reason told the police that he saw Ricky there that day at the Amico station but
00:36:06
this employee also says that he saw Ricky at the gas station the next day on June 27th right now medical examiners
00:36:17
while not having determined an exact cause of death they managed to determine that they believe that Ricky had died on
00:36:24
this day so sometime after leaving the Amo station on the 27th Ricky in my opinion was killed by somebody right so
00:36:33
let's go through some of the statements that Ricky's Aunt Cookie uh that she has
00:36:37
stated when she looks back to the last time that she had saw him in regards to the last week that Ricky was alive she
00:36:45
says that she suspects Ricky's hospital visits could have been attempts to find a Hideout you know a place where he
00:36:53
could lay low that maybe he was hiding from somebody right and she saide maybe he knew he had got into something that
00:37:01
put his life on the line and that he knew he could have stayed here uh she says meaning at her home but maybe he
00:37:10
didn't want to put her life on the line as well so following our timeline captain that brings us back to the day
00:37:17
when Ricky McCormick's remains were found badly decomposed in an open field he was lying face down Ricky was wearing
00:37:26
a filthy uh pair of Lee brand blue jeans and he had a stained white T-shirt now Ricky was only 5' 6 in tall and his
00:37:37
badly decomposed body um it only weighed 72 lb when they examined it at the autopsy Advanced decomposition made the
00:37:47
autopsy very difficult the pathologist with the St Charles County Medical Examiner office ultimately ruled Ricky's
00:37:55
cause of death undet determined but the police this is where the police come in and they're talking to the medical
00:38:01
examiner and they say we suspect Foul Play Okay so let's chat about a few things here shall we right time of death
00:38:10
how if they don't know how he died you know bullet wounds no stab wounds possible head injury uh time of
00:38:19
death how do they come up with this answer if they don't know how he died my guess would be stomach contents right we
00:38:28
we know that he tells his girlfriend that he's he's going to this place to get something to eat we know that police
00:38:34
spoke with someone at that gas station who confirmed that he he had seen Ricky on that day and the next day as well
00:38:43
yeah that's so weird cuz you got to place in twice you know and then we also said that he whoever he worked for he
00:38:50
was also known to you know transfer some drugs for that individual as well right
00:38:55
right so so was that the guy or was it another coworker right it does not give the name all we know is that it's a man
00:39:04
that that saw him because the police in in their report it says he right he states that he saw Ricky on this day and
00:39:12
that day now the Curious Thing to me too Captain is I don't know the the situation with him and his girlfriend I
00:39:19
actually I'm guessing and I have little to go off of here but I'm guessing that they weren't super tight because you
00:39:26
know I've been in relationships and and think about this he goes down to Orlando
00:39:32
and then basically tells her nothing of this trip MH I don't know about how relationships work for other people out
00:39:38
there but relationships I've been in you better tell the woman why you're going to Orlando and what you were doing when
00:39:44
you were there you can't just go to Orlando and come back and be like not going to talk about it yeah none your
00:39:51
business the weather was nice but here's here's the weird thing though we have the gas station person stating that they
00:39:59
saw Ricky on two days leading the two days the day before his death and the day that the medical examiner determined
00:40:07
he died MH we have his girlfriend saying that I last spoke to him on the phone the day before the medical examiner says
00:40:15
that Ricky died right right the gas station is blocks it's it's literally a couple
00:40:22
street blocks from where Ricky was living at the time so for him to be at that gas station on two different days
00:40:29
but not have stayed at his apartment that night is very strange to me as well I'm assuming he didn't stay there
00:40:35
because we have sandre the girlfriend saying the last time she saw him was the day before they said that he was dead
00:40:42
yeah or maybe she was staying somewhere else that night right or she wasn't there which a possibility I mean he get
00:40:47
the guy goes to the hospital you know twice in two weeks mhm and she doesn't go visit him once at the hospital so I
00:40:55
mean what kind of relationship is that now the the the uh death was ultimately changed to a suspicious death mhm um not
00:41:05
quite a homicide but I think this is what we talked about earlier where we have the medical examiner saying I don't
00:41:11
know and then we have the police saying we suspect Foul Play so yeah what I stated earlier was that the FBI then
00:41:18
comes out years later and says that he died from a gunshot wound that's actually not factual uh we can't find
00:41:26
the cause of death and it's reported in multiple sources that possibly there's a
00:41:31
gunshot uh wound or possibly a stab wound or possibly um head injury head injury mhm so it's not clear either way
00:41:42
yeah I to me though like I said I think that because it took so long for his body to be found I don't think he was in
00:41:50
that field the entire time from the from the time of his death to when he was discovered was almost three days mhm and
00:41:58
I just feel like that to me and I think that's probably what the police were working off of is we suspect fou Foul
00:42:05
Play because a dead body just doesn't transport itself 20 miles away and put itself in a
00:42:11
field yeah but there's also other reports I mean this is what drives me nuts about the news is you know there's
00:42:18
a report that he's found by this lady right she's driving along the freeway she founds there's other reports that it
00:42:24
was found by a farmer so she could have been a farmer well possibly or he could have been not as
00:42:31
close to the road and back a little bit further and was found by a farmer mhm I mean that's possible too that's all I'm
00:42:39
saying so is it you know could he have been there for 3 Days very possible you know depending on where he was found in
00:42:48
what location and by whom right so if he's is he if he's found by the side of the road by this lady then probably not
00:42:58
likely that he was there for 3 Days right but if his body was further back he found by a farmer it's very possible
00:43:05
that he could have been there for three days could have been there for weeks and
00:43:08
nobody found him well he couldn't have been there for weeks well no but what I'm saying you know what I'm saying
00:43:14
something could have been there for weeks but the the thing here is though the the local reports that I found
00:43:20
multiple reports state that he was found by a woman and I I think at one point I
00:43:25
even had her name didn't see a point in including it here in my notes but um I have multiple reports saying she's found
00:43:33
by a woman but all the reports stating it was an open area that it's an open grass area that it wasn't concealed in
00:43:40
any manner right um that it was just laying out in the open now one thing you mentioned earlier is that this was a
00:43:49
quote unquote Dumping Ground right uh the strip of land where he was found has been quoted as criminal Dumping Ground
00:43:58
for years this is what the police say uh and to back that up we have in 1995 authorities discovered the bullet ridden
00:44:08
body of a woman in an abandoned house along the same stretch of US Route 67 and then two years after Ricky's death
00:44:18
state road crews mowing grass some 300 yards approximately 300 yards away from where they found Ricky they found the
00:44:26
nude bodies of two more women so yes this appears to be an area that for some reason dead bodies keep turning up here
00:44:37
okay so Ricky is unemployed and he gets disability mhm so he to supplement his income he he runs
00:44:45
some drugs so there's this guy at the gas station that he works part-time at the gas station but also possibly runs
00:44:52
some marijuana for this individual mhm mhm and then we have his girlfriend saying that well he went to Orlando and
00:45:00
that was possibly cuz he has been there before to get marijuana so then he goes possibly gets marijuana possibly
00:45:09
doesn't get marijuana but when he comes back he's noticeably different almost like he's scared that is what the
00:45:15
girlfriend says right then we have a noticeable difference reported by his aunt right and then we have these things
00:45:27
where he's checking into the hospital but she says that's a way to um get away from somebody and then he's last seen at
00:45:37
this gas station which would be the place that he was employed at the gas station but also to possibly run uh
00:45:45
marijuana for this individual for Bob and then he's right for Bob and then he's found dumped in this area that's
00:45:52
known as kind of a Dumping Ground M so if you follow that that trail then your number one suspect is Bob oh yeah
00:46:01
and and so why are they not saying who saw U Ricky last is that to protect them from Bob I would guess I
00:46:13
would guess that it's one of two things it's either Bob himself or it's somebody that they want
00:46:22
to protect from Bob let's let's get into cuz you're you're you're circling around
00:46:27
something very important here is that when he was discovered dead when Ricky was discovered dead when they when the
00:46:36
police started interviewing Ricky's relatives his friends his girlfriend people that knew him this is one thing
00:46:43
that stood out when his girlfriend was asked was there anyone that may have wanted to hurt Ricky or kill Ricky she
00:46:50
told the detectives that Bob she suspected Bob would want to hurt or kill Ricky the man that Ricky worked for at
00:46:58
the Amico station yeah why and that that she said she suspected he was the same guy that was sending Ricky on these drug
00:47:07
runs to Orlando mhm now so so here's the thing let's go through this Amo gas station because this is where I think
00:47:16
this is the last known sighting of him and there's some bad people that are involved with this gas station so the
00:47:25
original owner of the business listen to what's going on here at the the gas station with the different owners over
00:47:30
the years so this guy the original owner he killed his neighbor with a butcher knife during a front yard argument this
00:47:38
was in May of 1994 that's how I settle all neighborhood arguments MH oh really you
00:47:46
don't want to cut down that tree let me go get my butcher knife mhm yeah and he ended up he ended up serving um he was
00:47:54
later he him self was later killed in prison while serving a life sentence for that second degree murder charge karma's
00:48:01
a [ __ ] yeah so now we have a um another guy um he's a u it's another hamdalah okay his first name is somebody who's
00:48:11
going to have to tell me how to say this ju ma hamdullah he's a Palestinian immigrant who until 2002 he used the
00:48:21
name David rigan mhm he then became the president of the business after this other guy went to prison for killing his
00:48:29
his neighbor right yeah well he hires his brother Bob hamdalah okay now these two brothers they have a very rocky
00:48:39
relationship to say the least in August of 1999 less than two months after Ricky's death police from Maryland
00:48:48
Heights investigated an incident in which David allegedly Shot Bob Bob survived the shooting but filed no
00:48:57
charges against his brother according to police reports detectives looking into the shooting gathered information
00:49:05
linking Bob to a gang in St Louis so these were they also linked Bob to narcotics yeah Bob is reported to be
00:49:16
a violent man and in possession of several weapons including handguns police reports and witness
00:49:24
statements spanning several years illustrate repeated episodes of Violence by this man right shortly after moving
00:49:31
to St Louis in 1997 from Cleveland Ohio Bob who was then 22 years old he was cruising the streets of St Louis in a
00:49:41
blue Mazda Protege when a police detective saw him pull up alongside a man named Terrence Clark and they saw
00:49:50
Bob lean out of his car window and fire a shot at this man with a 38 caliber revolver according to the police report
00:49:59
of the incident in a w in witness statements well these are Bad Dudes it's the dicknose Brigade well not only Bad
00:50:07
Dudes Captain uh this Bob guy apparently he's a bad shot as well because he pulls
00:50:12
up next to this guy leans out his car fires at the guy the guy is unharmed he's like you know like the Matrix he he
00:50:20
doesn't get hit by a single bullet now you know Witnesses saw this we have a police officer that sees this go down
00:50:29
they end up arresting Bob for this but he ends up never being prosecuted about 9 months later in March
00:50:37
of 1998 Bob was visiting one of his older brothers at his brother's job his brother worked at a like a Family Market
00:50:46
a small grocery store or something and Bob goes there to visit his brother at some point they get in some kind of
00:50:54
argument and uh then Bob allegedly grabs a gun and he goes across the street and he starts
00:51:02
firing from the other side of the street at his brother these guys are big [ __ ] what they so several shots were
00:51:08
fired and he ended up actually hitting his brother uh with one of those shots so he he was shot uh okay so his brother
00:51:16
shot him at some point and then a different brother different brother yeah it's a violent family no but just
00:51:25
love it too though it's like you know Ju Just Be A Man if you really want to fight him but do a little fist of cuffs
00:51:31
right stop put Toe to Toe right yeah get your get your fist out do a little fist
00:51:37
of cuffs well he Bob took off after shooting his brother he but then he six days later he ended up turning himself
00:51:44
in um and yeah and they was me they charged him with it now uh then his brother comes forward and tells police
00:51:54
that he doesn't want them to prosecute his brother for this right so later that same month while working at the family's
00:52:02
Amo station Bob was arrested again this time on a felony charge of SE second degree assault for allegedly beating a
00:52:10
man with a Rusty Hammer MH so Bob allegedly threatened to kill this man uh that was described by his family and
00:52:19
acquaintances as a sometimes homeless drug addict now Bob beat the man because according to Bob he wanted the man to
00:52:28
get off of the property and according to the incident report Bob told the police I just
00:52:35
figured I'd take care of this myself yeah on August dick dick knows look he he's probably one of these guys
00:52:44
I'd love if there was a picture of this guy but he's probably one of these guys he all big and tough and he goes out
00:52:50
there and there's this homeless guy that you know is bothering him right and B bothering the customer so he has to go
00:52:57
out there you know somebody goes well just call the cops no I'm just going to go beat him up yeah loser well the
00:53:07
here's another strange incident and this could just be a coincidence could be a coincidence I don't know but on August
00:53:13
7th of that same year this is just two weeks before that was that case was scheduled
00:53:19
to go to court for Bob beating this guy with the Rusty Hammer the man the victim
00:53:24
that the guy that he beat he's gunned down just blocks from the Amo station on a residential street oh really yeah in a
00:53:33
neighboring housing project so the pending charges went away and the man's murder remains unsolved to this day mhm
00:53:42
now confidential informants have told the police that this man was killed because Bob either a paid for the man to
00:53:50
be killed or that he ordered it to be done according to St Louis police reports well he probably ordered it or
00:53:58
paid it because we know that his shot is so bad mhm that you know he had H somebody he probably couldn't even you
00:54:05
know hit a sleeping homeless man here's the thing though um by the end of 1999 it was learned that the St
00:54:14
Louis police department they were investigating a man named Gregory Lamar Knox mhm now Knox was a major drug
00:54:23
dealer who operated at in and around a housing complex where Ricky McCormick had lived M Knox was also a suspect in
00:54:33
several homicides including at least two murder For Hire schemes and according to
00:54:40
police records a confidential informant also told police that Knox was responsible for the murder of a black
00:54:46
man who worked at a gas station whose body was was dumped near West Alton sounds to like they're
00:54:55
describing Ricky McCormack without saying his name yeah yeah so St Louis Police Captain they they've also linked
00:55:04
uh the Bob guy and his alleged family to criminal activity and and a possible connection with this Gregory
00:55:13
Knox okay just a lot to uh unwrap here MH okay so first of all if he was murdered quote unquote
00:55:25
most likely he's working for Bob Bob's a piece of [ __ ] right Bob you's a piece of
00:55:33
[ __ ] probably Bob right right if he's going to if he's going to die I'm guessing
00:55:41
by uh gunshot mhm but we have no evidence of a bullet hole right right so then I'm guessing no
00:55:51
gunshot guy says that he saw him at the gas station the day before they think he
00:55:57
died and the day of and the day of so and the cops think that uh the body was moved
00:56:06
yeah you killed him at the gas station then you moved the body yeah and here's the thing Ricky would have gone
00:56:14
to that gas station it would have been his natural habit to probably go to that gas station multiple times a day within
00:56:20
the same day right but he he we have no report of him going there you know recently right
00:56:29
so all I'm saying is no report of him going there recently what do you mean just go down this rabbit hole with me
00:56:34
for a second okay so he gets back from Florida we have no report of him going to the gas station that he works at that
00:56:43
he possibly runs some drugs here and there for Bob I think we could we should assume that he had visited the gas
00:56:50
station at some point between returning from Florida and going going into the hospital maybe but he goes to the
00:56:56
hospital twice but at some point he gets out of the hospital the second time and
00:57:00
he tells his girlfriend I'm going to go there to get something to eat and maybe he was going to do that but also maybe
00:57:06
he was going to try to set something right I need to go talk to Bob I need to go apologize for whatever or I just need
00:57:13
to see if he needs any work done whatever so last place scene a a bunch of you know criminals
00:57:23
working there running in the place um possibly murderers guy ends up dead if he was
00:57:31
murdered that's that's the place you look the second one where he lived in this uh Community where it was run by a
00:57:39
drug dealer mhm is it possible that um Ricky ran some drugs for him that's very possible too but because the cops
00:57:49
believe the body was moved I'd say it's more likely Bob and in the gas station yeah and well what's what is Bob's
00:57:59
relationship with this Gregory Knox because you have okay here's the the word on the street is this right that
00:58:07
there the police are being told by people on the street that this Gregory Knox is rumored to have killed a black
00:58:13
man that worked at a gas station and his body was dumped near West Alton that 100% describes our victim Ricky
00:58:20
McCormack right okay and then there's other people stating that you know this guy was a big-time drug dealer in
00:58:27
Ricky's neighborhood the problem with that though is we have the gas station which is essentially in the same
00:58:32
neighborhood right so you have two things either did did Ricky do something to piss somebody off enough to want to
00:58:41
kill him like his girlfriend told the police you know look at Bob MH or was he competing with this drug dealer and lost
00:58:50
some kind of turf war that that that Knox killed him to win some kind of turf war yeah over Bob not over Ricky well
00:58:58
after the police find out about all this information all the things that they're
00:59:02
hearing from these people on the streets they decide that you know within weeks they start conducting stakeouts of the
00:59:09
gas station and of several homes of the owners and the employees of this gas station now this doesn't turn into any
00:59:18
arrest it doesn't lead to any arrest despite their ongoing suspicions and investigation the detectives they could
00:59:25
never substantiate claims from the informant suggest suggesting a connection between Bob and his family
00:59:33
and Knox to prove that one or either you know that one or both of them were responsible for Ricky McCormack's
00:59:42
death but both of these men Bob and Knox they both they still ended up going to prison Knox was arrested in July of 2000
00:59:51
he plad guilty to charges of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine and carrying a firearm during a drug
01:00:00
trafficking crime a March 2001 report to Congress noted Knox was a suspect in at least
01:00:09
four homicides that occurred in 1998 and 1999 in the St Louis area he was also the number one supplier of Narcotics to
01:00:20
lale park Holmes area in South St Louis on October 13 2000 your boy Bob uh he was not my boy his dick NOS he was now
01:00:32
managing another store at the time this is called Charlie's Food Market in Madison Illinois where he got into an
01:00:40
argument with a customer different versions of this event uh would be later presented in court but ultimately a jury
01:00:47
convicted Bob of first-degree murder after he shot the man in the face with a 9mm Glock outside of the
01:00:56
store yeah this guy's a real piece of work in September of 2002 a judge sentenced Bob to 38 years in prison for
01:01:04
the killing however later Bob when he's going through the appeals process he caught a break in which later the courts
01:01:11
decided that the gun went off while Bob and the man were struggling for control of the gun mhm so on May 15th 2008 Bob
01:01:21
walked out of court a free man and he has married and relocated to Cleveland Ohio
01:01:29
son of a [ __ ] yes he's he's starting over in good old Cleveland Ohio and as for Knox I think he was don't quote me
01:01:37
on this but I think he was released from prison in 2013 or 14 great great so we we have some bad criminal elements that
01:01:46
are very close to Ricky McCormack all right so if he was murdered if Ricky was murdered then
01:01:55
it's one it's by one of these guys right I think so yeah I pretty simple it seems
01:02:01
like that to me now now something that we purposely have not mentioned yet uh this is because it was not publicly
01:02:08
known until 12 years after Ricky McCormick was murdered MH that when they found Ricky's body homicide detectives
01:02:16
they searched the 41 year-olds victim's pockets for Clues regarding his identity
01:02:22
and possible leads as to who could have killed this guy yeah and they found several things in his pockets now one of
01:02:29
them was a ticket for an emergency room visit we knew he had those two visits uh
01:02:34
shortly before his death but they also found two pages of notes these were written in some strange kind of code the
01:02:41
detectives eventually passed these coded pages on to the FBI and after examining
01:02:47
the documents the FBI concluded that these ciphers could tell us who killed Ricky McCormack
01:03:01
[Music] all right thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend we'll see you guys
01:03:07
tomorrow as we dive into the cipher and until then everybody be good be kind and
01:03:12
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