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[Music] thank you [Applause] foreign garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host
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Nick and with me as always is a man that has 20 20 hearing he is the captain what
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it's good to be seen and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend
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[Music] today we are drinking Code Breaker by the Beautiful Minds over at the Dayton
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Beer Company garage gray three and three quarter bottle caps out of five code breaker is a no funny business Imperial
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double IPA super strong and hoppy and with an ABV of almost 10 percent I don't think you'll be breaking any codes but
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you might be speaking in code and code breaker was brought to us by these Beautiful Minds first up we have Lisa in
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Los Angeles California I think it's pronounced Wooster a big shout out to Stephanie in Greenville South Carolina
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and a high five goes out to my man Richie in Meridian Idaho and a low five goes out to Claire in Littleton Colorado
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next up a long distance cheers to Trevor Indiana and Diamond Creek Australia and
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last but not least a Texas cheers to our friend Tina down in the Austin area and
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thanks to everybody for filling up the beer fridge this week if you'd like to donate to the Beer fun you can do so at
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truecrime garage.com click on the Donate banner and if you would like to support
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the show and tell your friends about the show you can do so by picking up one of
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shirts we have a bunch of logo shirts we have the douche canoe shirts got a lot of shirts going on over there and got a
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surprise shirt coming out pretty soon so look forward to that all right Captain that's enough of the shirt business
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everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music]
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[Music] breaking written codes is an art whose history dates back as long as people
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could write and wanted to keep secrets in the age of computers and Advanced Technologies it's hard to imagine such
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expertise is still needed the FBI would tell you differently because breaking codes is the FBI's
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cryptanalysts and racketeering records units unique specialty [Music] despite the use of state-of-the-art
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computer technology to gather intelligence examine evidence and help solve crimes
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the need to manually break pen and paper codes remains a valuable and necessary weapon and the FBI's investigative
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Arsenal according to the FBI criminals use of codes ciphers and concealed messages are abundant
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arrest gang members inmates drug dealers violent loan offenders and organized crime groups use letters numbers symbols
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and even invisible ink to encode messages an attempt to hide illegal activity 41 year old Ricky McCormick was murdered
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in June of 1999. his body was discovered just days after he was last seen when police were called to the scene
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they found Ricky's body lying face down in the grass in an area between a country road and a
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cornfield homicide detectives searched the 41 year old victim's pockets for Clues regarding
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the victim's identity and leads on where he could have been just before his murder
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they found some things in the man's pockets one item was a ticket for an emergency
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room where he had visited shortly before his death and they also found two pages of notes
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on these Pages were lengthy messages these were written in some strange code the detectives passed these coded pages
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to the FBI and after examining the documents the FBI concluded that these ciphers could say who killed Ricky
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McCormick years passed and then one day everything changed when the FBI released the two
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coded pages to the public and asked you to help solve an open murder case despite extensive work by the FBI the
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meaning of those two coded notes remain a mystery to this day and Ricky McCormick's murderer Is Yet To Face
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Justice [Music] in fact Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes are one of the crru's top unsolved
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cases according to the FBI breaking the code could reveal the victim's whereabouts
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before his death and could lead to the solution of a homicide this is the story of the McCormick code
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[Music] [Music] in March of 2011 FBI officials made a rare and a remarkable revelation
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this coming seemingly out of the blue Dan Olson he's the chief of the bureau's crypt analyst racketeering records unit
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we'll call that the crru and Quantico Virginia he disclosed for the first time the
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existence of two pages of handwritten encrypted notes found stuffed in the pockets of McCormick's genes
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now unable to decipher the tangle of letters and numbers the FBI released copies of this to the public with a plea
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for assistance to hardcore puzzle solvers and wannabe sleuths to help them solve this code
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and maybe potentially solve the murder of Ricky McCormick and let's just get the you know the elephant in the room
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Let's uh punch him in the face the elephant in the garage you're gonna you're gonna abuse the elephant that I
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brought with me no I'm not go ahead I'm a bunch of pita people want to write me now
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um no so I find the fact that they found these notes on Ricky and they were not reported to the family
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immediately and they had to wait till 12 years later to discuss these with the family I feel that that's very
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irresponsible okay so let's talk about his family a little bit because you know and I agree
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with you let's let's say we can we can definitely say that they've never seen them the family never saw these
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encrypted notes we'll call them right until 12 years later actually they said they didn't know anything about this
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until they saw on their local news channel that these ciphers had been released to the public they had no
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knowledge of this at all yeah it was not reported to the family everything that was found on him was reported to the
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family except for these two notes yes so here's here's what I wonder about though
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um we know that the police held these notes for two years before they gave them to
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the FBI couple things I wonder if if the police that they held these items one because
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they were just found on his body but two maybe they assumed they that they were either nothing or it was a clue that
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they were working and when they questioned his family you know because we have his family
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saying no he he didn't write in code Ricky didn't write and Cody barely read he barely could write right he couldn't
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spell anything and so I'm wondering if police ask questions to the family and they say
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yeah he never wrote anything in code he could barely write he could barely read that the police go well they don't know
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anything about this this is something we're going to keep to ourselves yeah but we have a double-edged sword here
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because we have some people in this family that say no he could he couldn't read or write the only thing he could
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write was his name and then you have other people in his family that come out and said oh yeah he would uh jot down
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these random things all the time and carry him around with him and it was just like his own language and I wonder
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Captain if it was only after two years it looks to me you know people some people even debate whether this is a
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homicide or not and we debated that certainly in the first episode but to me what I see
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I see investigators treating this as a homicide investigation right I see them working this as a homicide investigation
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I wonder if after two years when they couldn't couldn't put a case together to put somebody in court right that at that
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point they go well let's pass these notes along to somebody that can do something with them we've run out of
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we've run out of ideas we're banging our head against the wall here let's give this to some some legit code crackers
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right send it to the FBI the FBI they have it for the next 10 years before they release it to the public and
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it's only after the FBI says look we've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours trying to crack this code
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we can't crack it no and what the FBI would tell us is that we the FBI firmly believes it is some type of code but
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what they can't tell us is how to solve it yeah and they're not even really giving us any clues or any leads of what
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they believe and I think maybe that's just because they want to release the code and have whoever that possibly
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could solve this just look at it with fresh eyes and so they're not going to say well we think this means this or
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this means this um but they've done this in the past they with the Zodiac and in other cases where
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they have released uh information to the public and the public has been able to solve something that they couldn't right
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so do you do you want to describe give us a brief description of these uh codes let's call them the McCormick code is
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what I've been calling it uh I I don't even know how to describe it but we'll put both of these up on all social media
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platforms but also at www.truecrimegarage.com now let's talk about code breaking for a little bit
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okay so the FBI code Breakers they say that they typically unlock the meanings of ciphers that they receive in a matter
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of hours now the codes from Ricky McCormick the notes found on Ricky McCormick they they had these for over a
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decade and they worked them they brought in other people um they did everything they could to try
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to attempt to break these codes breaking them down manually with graph paper and
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pencil at first uh Dan Olson himself he dissected the strings of letters and numbers on whiteboards uh he then
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employed computers with state-of-the-art software to perform statistical analysis of these notes and they still
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came up with nothing now what what the FBI would tell us is this that it doesn't happen very often
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that they get an unsolved Cipher of this length is what they're stating this length I
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think is key here now the FBI says that the characters are not random they firmly believe this is a code stating
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things like there are many e's for an example the letter e that could be used as space as a spacer rather than an
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actual meaning or a letter or number right meaning that there's sometimes it could be one number that is used as a
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spacer one letter or a series of numbers or a series of letters that somebody could use as a Breaking Point right so
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you could essentially say the captain writes a cipher and every time you see cap that that actually means space
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yeah and they would go on to explain that there are many characteristics in these notes that suggest it could be
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solved they State there are patterns that they see within these messages but obviously the problem is they just
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don't know why it's not solvable right the FBI's website also it takes us through some of the workings on how to
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crack codes um it's stating that cracking a code takes four steps first one must
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determine the language used in this case it's English then the system that is used a cipher in which letters are
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transposed or substituted for something else for example or code in in which a letter such as R
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represents a person or a place or perhaps even some kind of secret language such as like a like a version
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of pig Latin now after that one must reconstruct the key that explains how the code marker
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changed the letters of the message such as shifting such as by shifting every character
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three letters to the right in the alphabet is an example and finally one then can apply the key and then
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transcribe the hidden message now the FBI says unfortunately with Ricky McCormick's notes that were found
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in his pocket uh we can't get past step two there's three major styles of code so I could
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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
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um or that I'm just going to give to somebody and they have to basically twist things around and kind of figure
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out for themselves okay without a key and then the other one is that you would just write down stuffing code that only
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you would understand now if that was the case in in Ricky's code it might be never solved because you would never
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know what certain things meant because it only meant something to him well there's certainly No Lack of
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theories here in this case as to what the codes could be or could mean right um you know when they release this to
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the public it started off with with TV stations in Missouri and Illinois they start running with the update and then
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next thing you know news organizations as far away as New Zealand we're broadcasting this information and then
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the FBI ends up getting thousands and thousands of public comments and theories pouring in from all over this
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becomes a hugely popular case on the internet because of the cipher and so let's talk about this too because you
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know we've mentioned that there are some family members that state Ricky couldn't
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read very well or couldn't read at all he couldn't write very well right um so this brings us to a popular Theory
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and one of those is you know some have suggested these notes are just simply meaningless that they are the random
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random scribblings of a man by by some accounts was functionally illiterate we don't have him being diagnosed with any
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Mental Illness but again this could be writings in a manic state or this could be uh writings of somebody that has uh
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untreated schizophrenia yeah and but the thing that I want to go back to when people suggest that these
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could be meaningless messages or just random scribblings Dan Olson Dan Olson yes the the leader of of
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the unit that cracks the codes they come out and they say look we believe this is real code and stating
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to that fact saying that this means something these messages mean something that they look at a lot of things they
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see a lot of things and investigate them that are gibberish that are arbitrary strikes on a keyboard they're stating
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this is not the case with this you know they they examine hundreds of suspected codes each year and the first thing they
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do in that process is weeding out those that are nonsense from the codes that the the bureau needs to crack and to
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solve yeah I think he said something like we've seen a lot of gibberish yes and this is not it right but the other
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thing he says is that we're really good at our job and part of me wants to say well
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obviously not good enough well this one yeah um well we you know even Tom Brady loses
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a Super Bowl every now and then boom but anyway so the the the c-r-r-u states that after they weed out
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the ones that are gibberish that after that process only about one percent of the codes go unbroken we need them to be
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more like Michael Jordan which doesn't lose championships right um but like I said I think the first
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mistake they made is not going to the family members sooner because one do we even have a writing sample of Ricky to
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know if this is his handwriting or not now they claim you know Dan Olsen claims that this they believe it was written by
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Ricky again a guy that was not known to write things so do we have any samples of any writings and I think they could
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have got that if they would have went to the family sooner yeah I think you're right um they may have checked for these
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things at his apartment that he shared with his girlfriend but you just made me think about something there captain
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and it's this you could have if for some reason you will when you're looking at a
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piece of evidence such as this you don't really know what you have right so that would make you want to
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keep it somewhat secret as well because you're not sure what you're looking at and what involvement it has in the case
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that you're working right however you could you don't have to show your full hand right couldn't you take a
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portion of that code or a portion of one of the messages and and show it to the family members
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yeah I mean you don't have to say that there could have been a happy happy middle ground here right yeah I mean you
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could have photocopied them uh and take just take a little section or rewrote the section yourself and to say look we
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found this on a piece of paper um does it mean anything does this mean anything to you yeah or if you show the
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handwriting does this mean anything to you and the mom that says that he didn't read or write might have said oh yeah
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you know Ricky wrote stuff like that you know like he couldn't spell words but he knew
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what letters were right but we don't even have any knowledge if he knew really what letters were and you're
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right maybe at least just confirming the handwriting you know even if you could just get a few people by visual aid
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saying visually looking at it and saying um I don't know why people say or why I
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say visually looking at it how else are you going to look at it but um with your
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ears your beard is on the face you have 20 20 hearing Captain yeah um so but yeah you
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could at least show that to the family members or people close to him and say can you say in your opinion if this is
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his Ricky's handwriting or not now tell me if I'm wrong but lie detectors not using core right right
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handwriting analysis can be used in court um yes and I actually think that that varies by state okay because
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um I think now somebody's gonna get mad at me about this I think I spoke about this before we're all mad at you because
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I was looking at handwriting analysis quite a bit when we were talking about the Black Dahlia because there were some
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messages that were sent to newspapers and I believe to the police as well at the time and some have suggested that
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those are connected to the black dahlias case I believe that um I believe that it's only accepted in
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certain States because I think that the as far as far as the law enforcement Community is concerned handwriting
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analysis is not in an exact science right that it's more of somebody giving their quote-unquote expert opinion you
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know just with the same with polygraph tests you know there are there are people that are really good at
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administering and reading a polygraph test and there's other people that are poor
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at it just like with any job you know there's there's good people and there's bad people yeah I mean some people host
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a weekly True Crime podcast and they knock it out of the park and then then there's the colonel
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[Laughter] I thought you were going to say you there's LeBron James and then there's
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stinks Curry all right let's before we get too far off track here um let's continue to talk about these
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notes and what the FBI suspects you had mentioned that the FBI not only suspects
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that this is a real code but they suspect Ricky wrote this himself they would further go on to explain that the
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messages in their opinion are done in more of a format of something written to oneself rather than
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something written to someone else right like I said before the three different major kinds and the FBI when talking
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about this this topic in this this specific point to their opinion is that they point out that there are circles
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drawn around some of the segments within the code and they say this could be something as simple as
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a sug a to-do list you know where where items are kind of marked as tasks that are completed you know once you finish
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something you Circle it or you know while you're at the grocery store when you when you picked up the butter like
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you put on your list you cross it out right um the other thing that's kind of chilling in a way
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is that not only do they believe that Ricky McCormick wrote these notes himself the FBI also believes that he wrote them
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within days of him being killed um and I think that's why I think that's why they keep going back to this and
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they're stating you know if it doesn't say if the codes do not say who killed him or who he was who may
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have been running from let's say that the code could be something as simple as what he was doing at the time
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leading up to his death yeah his whereabouts or maybe who he was seeing or what you know whatever he was
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doing but page one is a lot different than page two now there's groups of letters that go with page one and page
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two they would make you believe they're written by the same person the handwriting looks
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the same but in page one there's a lot of parentheses around things and in page two you have these big circles around
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sections so you can visually see them that they're different but you can visually
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see they're written by the same person and you're describing these as page one and page two based off of uh what what
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the FBI is classified as page one and page two now one thing that's very curious to me and
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this is something simple that that I would like to know who your father is is what they're referring to as page one
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actually has what appears to be a the letter P with the number one next to it or a letter I next to it at the top of
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the page encircled right almost like somebody's marking this as page one I would love to know you know I hate when
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I hate when they release these things and then they they just tell you like uh we believe it's a code we believe that
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Ricky wrote it himself and we believe that he wrote it within days of his death go for it try to figure it out
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we're not telling you anything else because that P1 at the top of what is referred to as page one was that already
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on the note when they got it when they received it or did or did somewhere in the code breaking process did the FBI
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determine this is page one this is Page One let's get back to the cipher right after this quick beer break
00:25:35
foreign [Music] we're back cheers me mateys so one one of the things that I found really
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interesting about Ricky's case was you know obviously these ciphers but when you look at these ciphers I mean I've
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looked at the Zodiac ciphers a bunch I used to have them on my desk at work right which always weird people out
00:26:09
they'd be like what is what on these symbols I had it blown up really big and then my boss told me I had to put it
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away but this reminds me a little bit like Brandon Lawson where when you hear the Brandon Lawson
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9-1-1 you know call you start thinking well fill people in for those that don't know
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okay so Brandon Lawson was this guy that disappeared he went missing in uh Texas
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right and he calls 9-1-1 from his cell phone uh apparently he's on the side of the road his truck broke down now he's
00:26:45
talking very fast and he's almost inaudible at times right but when you hear it you start thinking if I could
00:26:52
slow this down or if I could go piece by piece I could figure this out I could figure out what he's saying and then
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maybe figure out what happened to this poor guy right and so this code is released and and you know we're diving
00:27:05
into the case so at some point you gotta go let me look at this code and I was expecting to look at something and think
00:27:12
I can't you know I'm I'm just uh I'm just a dumb Captain that sails the high seas what am I going to know about this
00:27:20
code but you start looking at it you start finding things you don't know what they mean but you're
00:27:26
finding them right and and then you know I was telling you before you got here I
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just kept last night I think I would look at it for about 10 minutes and I'd pass out at my desk and then I'd wake up
00:27:39
and go oh no I can still I can I can solve this um and I I got nowhere closer but it's
00:27:45
one of those things you're going to look at this code and and check it out it's going to be on the website it's going to
00:27:49
be on social media check it out you're going to start seeing patterns but you're not going to know what those
00:27:55
mean obviously well and that's what I that's why I think the FBI is so firm in their stance that this is sometime some
00:28:02
type of encrypted message because it it's even obvious I dude I look I would love to be some guy that could solve
00:28:10
codes and puzzles I wish you were too I'm not good at it because maybe you could go do that so so I look at
00:28:16
something like this with no expectation that I'm going to be able to offer anything at all but even to my eye
00:28:23
immediately as you said there's patterns within these messages right that you see
00:28:29
that that leads you to go wait I think I'm on to something here right yeah it's it's like it's a deceptive uh Cipher so
00:28:37
you have like uh I'll just give a couple quick examples we're not going to go through the whole notes here but
00:28:43
um one thing you see from time to time is p what appears to be p-r-s-e yes the letters p-r-s-e uh repeated in that same
00:28:51
sequence often throughout these mess messages you also see what most people refer to as W I'm sorry as ncbe right
00:29:00
and you see that a lot a ton and and actually on several occasions you see numbers what appear to be numbers before
00:29:08
in CBE so like it looks like 74 ncbe and then later 71 ncbe and 75 ncbe now you and I had a had a garage discussion
00:29:22
um you know before we turned on the mics here and you and I both questioned if if it it's if it's intended to be ncbe
00:29:31
you know you said well what if that's a u and I said well what if it's a w when we were both referring to the N right
00:29:38
because there's there's one portion in the in the message where it almost looks like he and I say he like we know that
00:29:47
he wrote it we don't know for certain but it looks like he wrote wcbe and then the lines underneath of
00:29:55
that then appear to be ncbe right which could just be you know the The Lazy hand
00:30:02
or or the the slant getting getting more um exaggerated as the the author continued
00:30:11
on well like you said you know all joking aside I mean neither one of us believe that we're code Breakers or even
00:30:18
capable of breaking codes like this is just not our Forte right um but what are some theories that the internet has come
00:30:24
up with since the release of these ciphers well like I said earlier there's no shortage of theories out there but uh
00:30:31
so I'll kind of start with the more popular ones we've already mentioned that one one very popular theory is that
00:30:39
it's not a code at all and we've already kind of talked through that um then there's the theory that it is a
00:30:46
code but it wasn't written by Ricky that this was written by somebody else which
00:30:51
is possible because he was at the gas station he could have just picked up something that somebody else wrote also
00:30:57
he was at two hospitals and look if this guy has some issues mentally which I believe there's evidence of that
00:31:06
um was he even changing his clothes has he has he been wearing these jeans for a
00:31:11
long time could he got one of these notes from you know he went to two different hospitals he could got those
00:31:16
notes from those hospitals [Music] um here's a theory that that there are VIN numbers on these in these messages that
00:31:25
they're driving directions okay the other thought is that it has to do with drug dealing with dealing drugs right
00:31:33
that these were some kind of codes to indicate who he was selling to or who he was making deliveries to and
00:31:42
how much he was to give them how much money he was to collect things of that nature yeah a lot of people also think
00:31:49
that this might be his own personal like medical journal like what medicines he was taking what the dosage was and those
00:31:57
all seem to be the most popular theories that are presented uh by people out there after seeing these codes and these
00:32:03
messages however there are some that are a little more outside of the box thinking let's say right yeah
00:32:10
um and these theories are not as popular I've seen I've seen some crazy theories
00:32:15
out there captain and let's say one of them is that Ricky was killed by the um Hospital the the last hospital that
00:32:25
he was at because he saw something that they they are doing some kind of illegal activity
00:32:30
there he was a witness to it and that he made notes about that um you know inside these messages okay
00:32:39
uh the uh there's another theory that there's some kind of illegal dumping going on in the area of like uh
00:32:46
hazardous chemicals and that he may have been witness to that and he was keeping some kind of log
00:32:51
about that and that these are hazardous chemicals that are polluting the not only polluting the environment but
00:32:58
probably uh shortening people's lives uh that live in the area right there's another theory and I think it
00:33:06
may have to do with the hospital as well I I got to be honest when I got to this
00:33:11
one Captain I read like the first two lines that I'm like okay I'm spending my time elsewhere it was that I so some
00:33:19
kind of um child molestation ring Theory that he had some kind of information about that and and was going to tell
00:33:28
people or well that makes a lot more sense actually and based off his history I mean I think he was 40 what 40 some
00:33:37
years old when he was having sex with a 14 year old yeah I started having sex with her well she was
00:33:43
11. he was 34 when he got caught and and so he's 34. yeah so he was 14 at that 20
00:33:51
years older than her when that was going down that's called pedophilia right so I
00:33:56
didn't think about it from that angle well because he got lucky to be charged with statutory rape and I mean again you
00:34:02
all want a victim you bash right right but the fact of the matter is that's horrible right and and I believe
00:34:10
ah I'm going to just say this and I hope I don't get much hate mail I I really believe that he had something going on
00:34:17
mentally I feel bad for him and that doesn't make his actions right at all right but I think he was operating on a
00:34:26
much more um you think that he and the 11 year old girl may be operating on the same he had
00:34:33
probably more in common with her mentally okay yeah and again I don't know I don't know him and there's not a
00:34:39
lot of reports about his family members I mean look this guy is buried no no Mark grave right there's unmarked grave
00:34:48
you cannot go visit his grave nobody's visiting his grave right and I and I do believe that he had some mental illness
00:34:56
that wasn't diagnosed and I don't think his family really gave a [ __ ] well one
00:35:01
thing you know in in before anybody decides to type something up and send it to you or to I we're both
00:35:09
stating it doesn't make it right anything that he did what he did was wrong okay no matter what that at the
00:35:16
end of the day that's wrong right however but one thing that's been obvious to me for most of my adult life
00:35:23
is one thing that this country does not do very well is address mental health issues we're not good we're good at a
00:35:31
lot of things this country is good at a lot of things but that is not one of them and you're you're very right it
00:35:37
could have been some kind of undiagnosed mental illness or issue that he had um and and therefore I mean who knows well
00:35:47
and here's the thing if you have a guy that is known to do odd jobs you know oh hey if I have this package of drugs I
00:35:54
can give it to you and you can go deliver it to this guy but look I mean is it is it possible
00:36:00
that uh some guy approaches him because he he knows that um you know Ricky's a little off and
00:36:08
look somebody you know people write us and say don't say he's a little off that's well look if he's not diagnosed
00:36:15
with anything and he is a little off I don't know what else you call it right right and and like I said I wish he
00:36:21
would have been able to get help I wish he would have been able to get diagnosed
00:36:24
I wish he was not dead right but the fact of the matter was he was a little off so is it possible that some
00:36:32
sicko knows that Ricky was with an underage woman at some point some sicko that he meets in prison and says hey
00:36:40
maybe you can help me I could give you a little bit of money that's not that far-fetched I would just think that the
00:36:47
family members or any of his friends would have mentioned this at some point yeah so
00:36:53
let's let's toss out I would prefer to kind of toss out the more wild theories though the ones that I deemed outside of
00:37:02
the box thinking because if we talk if we discuss every Theory that's out there regarding these messages
00:37:09
um we could do a whole a whole year of this so let's start with the popular ones right Captain yeah so some of my
00:37:17
issues when people talk about this is possibly driving directions do you have this uh sequence that at some point
00:37:24
where it's basically the same words over and over but they're not really words it's the same set of letters and then
00:37:32
you get the 71 74 and the 75. now to me with the driving directions that doesn't
00:37:38
make a lot of sense because normally you don't drive up 71 and then hit 74 and then hit 75 you know what I mean right
00:37:45
like you do on occasion but yeah it usually doesn't follow in that I was on 60 then I got on 61 then 62 then 63 made
00:37:54
a left at 64. right on 65. and it seems like most of the time when there are numbers in this Cipher that they're
00:38:03
close in relationship at one point there's a 36 and then the next line there's a 35.
00:38:08
so that's weird and then there's a group uh in the second page where it's 99.84.5
00:38:21
right two and that could be a z or it could be a two so 99.89.52 so I don't know what these I have no
00:38:33
clue what these numbers mean but when I think when people start saying that their directions
00:38:39
I just have a problem with that because the numbers don't seem to add up all the
00:38:44
time now again there's this one section where it's 36 74. 29 and maybe some other numbers in there
00:38:54
that aren't legible maybe a 75 there or 175 right so there's a couple spots where you go well maybe this part's
00:39:03
directions again you start wondering well if that's directions this middle section
00:39:09
is that just directions that he could read and that's just how he wrote you know I mean like he doesn't know how to
00:39:16
write a word but he can he kind of sounds it out and it's enough for him to remember what it is
00:39:23
so there's a few issues I have with it being driving directions first of all the obvious that he the man didn't own a
00:39:30
vehicle nor did he have a driver's license right that doesn't mean that he wouldn't have driving directions on his
00:39:37
person I just think it makes it much more less likely that he would have them right and second of all
00:39:44
um the other thing the the thought that's there's kind of two thoughts when you mention driving directions there's
00:39:51
also the possibility that they're not really directions directing you from point A to point B and then then on from
00:39:59
there that they're just each line might be some type of location right and it's just a list of locations right now the
00:40:08
issue with that and with the driving direction issue is that you know we're not given a lot of
00:40:15
information from the FBI regarding this but one thing that Dan Olson did say from the FBI said we worked that angle
00:40:22
we worked that angle big time that was something that we considered early on after receiving this these messages and
00:40:30
we we tried comparing things within these messages to you know uh the state of Missouri and the surrounding states
00:40:39
and nothing nothing lined up to work out yeah nothing lined up to work that out yeah so they worked that angle big time
00:40:48
um well you while you're we're talking about numbers maybe we should mention the the you know the VIN number vehicle
00:40:56
identification number that that's one Theory that's presented time and time again the problem I have with that
00:41:01
theory is VIN numbers are typically 17 digits right and and a VIN number is just that you know the VIN number
00:41:09
describes it very good because when you look at a VIN number it's mostly numbers
00:41:15
and not letters if it were mostly letters they would call it Vin letters right and these are mostly letters when
00:41:22
you look at this message it's a it's a lot of letters in very few numbers hey I got this great idea we should do a whole
00:41:28
podcast about a letter that you can't see this will be super entertaining for the
00:41:35
listeners no but check it out you know yeah I don't see it being a VIN number because most of the time there's more
00:41:43
letters uh or more numbers within a VIN right then what are on these these papers now okay so medical journal we
00:41:54
said it could be possibly a record of medications that Ricky was taking uh the time and dates that he was taking them
00:42:02
the dosage and I could be wrong and are are amazing uh nurse nurses will call me
00:42:09
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
00:42:18
um 36 milligrams right right or like 29 milligram this is kind of weird number they're normally
00:42:27
like 15 you know 20 I mean like it seems like these would be weird numbers for dosage well and the other
00:42:36
thing though Captain with even with his reported health problems with the chest pains with the breathing issues
00:42:43
even with those known health problems it it's not known that he was on any prescriptions right because he didn't
00:42:52
have much money right so how would he be paying for these you know prescriptions well and and if it
00:42:59
were if he were he'd have to be on a lot of them for these notes to be required would be
00:43:04
my guess right um I mean there there's these are lengthy messages is what I mean by that yeah now drugs
00:43:12
so going from uh uh legal drugs to illegal drugs the thought that these have something to
00:43:20
do with his drug runs or with dealing drugs the problem I have with that is the numbers okay the numbers that are listed
00:43:31
on these messages don't make any sense to me in that manner right but they don't have
00:43:39
to make sense to you they have to make sense to him that's true and what's interesting here is one of the best
00:43:44
movies of all time Rocky one okay I thought you're gonna say a beautiful mind because we're on
00:43:50
this oh code breaking thing that's why in the beer description I said the Beautiful Minds over at the Dayton Beer
00:43:56
Company um no that's a great movie too but in Rocky one he is a debt collector and he
00:44:04
you know he got to break their thumbs right uh just do what I'm telling you rock but what do you do guy couldn't
00:44:10
read or write really and he took down notes yeah every time that his boss told him to go collect
00:44:18
from somebody and so uh when you see something like that and you know I mean look I know it's a
00:44:25
fictitious character but is it very possible that that Ricky would write down little messages for himself to
00:44:32
remember on these runs I don't think that's unlikely I think that's a good plausible thing but I also think if he's
00:44:40
writing down these notes for him to remember that we're never going to solve this
00:44:46
right these were just things that weren't in his head that made sense to to him now the big one which you see all
00:44:53
the time is that ncbe right so a lot of people that think that means no cash being exchanged
00:45:03
meaning I'm going to drop these drugs off and this guy doesn't need to pay me it's
00:45:07
simply a delivery it's not a sell it's you know I'm not showing up and selling you the drugs I'm just giving them to
00:45:13
you which does make some sense because it's at the end of each you know it's normally found at the end
00:45:21
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
00:45:27
description of what he's supposed to give to them followed by no cash being exchanged yeah
00:45:34
yeah so you're not gonna have to make change for anything you're not to exp accept or to you're not to expect cash
00:45:41
from whoever this is yeah uh that way things don't get tricky so I mentioned outside of the box
00:45:47
thinking Captain this is the time in the garage show where I give you my weird brain on a platter and you go and
00:45:55
everybody can laugh at me all right very easy yeah so here I just want to go through my thoughts as we're wrapping
00:46:01
this up hey no you have good thoughts you're an intelligent guy all right well you should say that after you hear this
00:46:08
okay but I did you know I I sometimes pick on you and I think sometimes people think that you know I don't appreciate
00:46:15
your thoughts I sit here and listen to you every week I think you're a smart guy that's true and at one time you were
00:46:21
the only one sitting here listening to me every week still though I'm still the only one here with us so here's what my
00:46:29
thoughts are um and I want to kind of go back to the beginning so was oh God was was Ricky
00:46:37
murdered it is a big major question here yeah I see I see detectives spending a good deal of time treating this like a
00:46:46
homicide I see detectives telling the medical examiner we suspect Foul Play here I'm going to go off of their expert
00:46:55
opinion and just agree with them to make this nice and easy here okay okay I think that there was something that they
00:47:02
know or something that indicated to them that this was a murder so I'm going to just agree with them on that now as far
00:47:09
as the code is this a real code or not does it mean something again I'm going to go to The Experts we
00:47:17
have the FBI stating this is a code this means something we don't know how valuable it is to the case or not but if
00:47:23
we could crack this we could either roll it out or rule it in so I'm again going to to defer to The
00:47:30
Experts to people that are smarter than I in this specific area all right so I think he was murdered I
00:47:36
think this was a code I don't know that it necessarily has anything to do with his murder or maybe
00:47:43
that it could even help solve the case right and so you're going to go against the experts on that one
00:47:51
um well here's the thing they may just be saying we think it could solve the case if it could tell us the last place
00:47:57
he was right that could point us in to a suspect that we would need evidence otherwise to convict the person
00:48:04
obviously you can't hold these notes up in court and go see see n c b e O.J Simpson did it it's right
00:48:12
there ncbe so and here's my thought though and as far as did Ricky write this code I think he did I think he did
00:48:21
and and I'm not just going to defer to the experts on this one and this is where my suspicion lies okay
00:48:28
I I heard his family and what they have to say and I believe them maybe to their
00:48:33
knowledge he didn't read or write very well or maybe not at all right but here's one thing that that I kind of
00:48:40
kind of went back to several times when looking at this case heard several old I've heard I've heard several older
00:48:50
inmates and prisons say this to incoming inmates did they whisper in your ear um no then no one said this specifically
00:48:59
to me okay I've heard this is passed on okay the second hand knowledge is what they
00:49:05
say so um I've heard that sometimes the older inmates tell the incoming inmates you
00:49:12
know do you read or write well if you don't you're going to do some hard time because reading and
00:49:19
writing is a way of passing the time making the time go faster for you something constructive you can do as you
00:49:26
wait to serve your sentence because that's really all you're doing in a prison sentence is you're just waiting
00:49:30
it out so I wonder we know Ricky was in prison for 13 months right I and and think
00:49:37
about prison one of the worst parts of being sentenced and punished in that manner is that you have little to none
00:49:45
privacy little to no privacy at all that's one of the biggest parts of that punishment
00:49:51
and I think that possibly whether he could read or write or or none of the above
00:49:57
that I think that maybe at some point he developed some kind of system that he could he could write whether it
00:50:05
was jotting down notes whether it was keeping some kind of personal Daily Journal lots of inmates will write down
00:50:11
personal daily activities to give themselves something to write and they'll write things that are so
00:50:18
monotonous things that are like today had fish sticks for lunch right with applesauce and the broccoli was terrible
00:50:26
and I took a walk for an hour in the yard and then I read a book then received letters
00:50:33
then for dinner I had this this and this you know just really boring stuff that they're keeping track of
00:50:40
and I wonder I wonder if maybe he developed some kind of system either to pass the time or if he coded
00:50:46
his little journal to himself to have some form of privacy so that he could keep these thoughts and keep these
00:50:53
records of things without other people being able to read them and invade his privacy more
00:50:58
and I'm wondering that it let's say he did use some type of kind of code like that right
00:51:07
he could have used this for running drugs or for just daily activities once he got out of prison that could be a
00:51:14
combination of both the other thing that I wonder too is that we have the FBI stating that we think he wrote this
00:51:21
within days of him being killed and I part of me wonders I go back to cookie saying you know I heard from
00:51:28
people that yeah he he checked into the hospital at five they checked him out at
00:51:33
5 50 less than an hour later but I heard from people he stayed in the hospital all night long in the waiting
00:51:40
room I wonder if he was jotting writing these things down there you know that would give him ample time
00:51:46
to sit down have you ever tried to sleep in one of those Hospital waiting rooms you're not getting no sleep so I wonder
00:51:52
if that's what it is now and I want to point out another code that I think could help understand my reasoning here
00:52:00
okay and I'll read it to you best I can it's it's scribbled on my page here ebcmw
00:52:07
no spelled n-o-l-t-o pep spelled p-e-p then we have the next line which is M Works spelled
00:52:17
w-o-r-k-s mwff plus symbol s s i t mlt20 the number two zero Twenty One slash two this is I'm sorry this is the
00:52:31
next line one slash two third spelled three R D Dash add add c-h-i-x H the number two in the letter o
00:52:45
okay that is a code that's that's a code that I wanted to point out here what is
00:52:49
that code that I just read to you my code that I came up with myself many years ago when I used to when I
00:52:58
used to bartend and wait tables I had chicken scratch I came up with my own code for when you when you would read
00:53:05
off your order what you wanted to me that I would write it down that fast because I knew that one thing I learned
00:53:11
very odd that my income was based off of how friendly accurate and fast I was so
00:53:16
if I can make myself faster and more accurate not get your stuff wrong then I would more likely get a bigger
00:53:23
tip from you so what that is is you just [ __ ] you just heard a party of three and one person ordered a six ounce bacon
00:53:31
and cheddar burger medium well minus lettuce tomato onion with french fries and a Pepsi to drink the next person
00:53:38
ordered a 10 ounce Worx Burger medium well with everything french fries plus a side salad with Italian dressing a
00:53:46
breadstick and a Miller Lite 20 ounce draft and the final person ordered a half a salad with Third Street dressing
00:53:52
and grilled chicken and a breadstick with water to drink so yeah this sounds delicious anyway
00:54:01
especially that Miller Lite 20 ounce draft but what I'm getting at is that the key the key to solving this code
00:54:09
could be in Ricky's brain it could be in his mind and without him these will never be solved it'd never mean anything
00:54:18
to anybody like my my little code there that I came up with yeah would make sense to zero even the people that
00:54:25
worked at that restaurant they might be able to pick out some things but not all
00:54:29
and what what I mean by that referencing the letter c okay in my little code I use the letter c for multiple things
00:54:36
sometimes it's to tell me if cheddar is on a burger or if somebody ordered a chicken sandwich I'll use the C for both
00:54:45
but depending on where it appears in what order I know when I look at the page if it means cheese or chicken right
00:54:54
so so like you said I mean he wrote so he was murdered he wrote this it could just be a journal it could have been
00:55:03
directions it could have been multiple things yeah but all the codes are in Ricky's head so
00:55:10
you're not gonna probably get the answers right and I hope that I'm wrong I hope that somebody comes out with
00:55:15
something because the FBI says you know we release this to the public hoping I I
00:55:20
think that not only that somebody could solve it obviously but maybe somebody could come forward with some type of
00:55:26
information that would help them to solve it right meaning you know they were stating if we had a third page here
00:55:32
we think we could solve this we just don't have enough to look at or nothing to compare it to
00:55:39
to double check our work well right and that's the big problem with them not going to the family sooner they might
00:55:45
they're able to get something there you were right about that Captain so yeah my
00:55:49
thought is you know he was in the hospital was was he in pain uh he had all these
00:55:58
illnesses right uh I think he had severe mental illness um which was die wasn't diagnosed or if it
00:56:08
was at some point you know the it happens a lot they can't afford their medicine
00:56:14
they can't afford their medicine then they can't get their their brain straight um and we and that's a horrible issue in
00:56:22
this country I don't know if he was murdered you know we have this individual that
00:56:29
walked would take um public transportation but also which would hitch rides from people is it
00:56:37
possible that he was at the gas station and hitched a ride for somebody and then
00:56:40
he started walking and on a hot day he was dehydrated yeah as a bad ticker and look the
00:56:51
autopsy doesn't make any sense at all no so I can't trust that at all and we don't
00:56:57
even know what the cause of death is now if the FBI did come out and say hey well
00:57:01
look he was shot we know that okay well then look at the people that ran the gas station look at people that he
00:57:09
ran drugs for right and those are your suspects but I don't know if there's even
00:57:16
evidence that he's that he was murdered and the sad thing about it is like I said he's he's in an unmarked grave yeah
00:57:25
there is no headstone that identifies Ricky McCormick's final resting place uh he is buried at Laurel Hill Memorial
00:57:33
Gardens and if it were not for an entry in the cemetery's log book no one would ever know that he was buried there
00:57:42
and like I said I do believe he was dealing with mental illness and when when his friends and and people
00:57:49
that actually did like Ricky say well sometimes he talked like he was from another world well anybody that has
00:57:55
dealt with mental illness knows that there's times in your um illness that you might feel like you're in a
00:58:02
different world and you might be talking as if you might be writing as if so maybe he wrote these
00:58:10
um it's more likely to me that he did write these but I think it's on some level
00:58:16
it's um it's almost like coherent gibberish and like yes maybe if he wrote these these
00:58:24
mean something to him um that nobody ever is ever going to figure out and it so it's just weird
00:58:31
because there's you know I we wouldn't be talking about this case um you know some mentally ill guy
00:58:41
um with a checkered pass is found dead on the side of the road no evidence of being murdered we want to
00:58:52
be talking about if it wasn't for these ciphers but I don't know if these ciphers are going to get
00:58:56
us any closer to the truth well what we would like for everybody to do out there as the captain said we will
00:59:03
post both of the notes and messages ciphers codes whatever you want to call them on our website at truecrime
00:59:09
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
00:59:16
thoughts uh if you see anything within these messages let us know please post that on our blog at truecrimegarage.com
00:59:25
[Music] hey Colonel yo you feeling for me I'm feeling for me my friend hey good news
00:59:41
we got filling family t-shirts that are available on the website so check those out I just printed a limited number so
00:59:49
once they're gone I'm probably not gonna order them again but uh check those out
00:59:54
filling for me I'll get your T-shirt today until next time thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend be
01:00:01
good be kind and don't litter [Music] [Applause] thank you