A barely-literate high school drop-out turns up dead with two pages of encrypted notes stuffed into his pockets. Sounds like something right out of a crime thriller movie, doesn't it? For Ricky McCormick, this was no work of fiction. This was his life... and death. Dumped in a field in St. Charles County, Missouri, 41-year-old Ricky McCormick's body was already decomposing by the time he was found on June 30, 1999. A woman driving along a field road just off of Route 367 noticed the body lying face-down near a cornfield. He had last been seen on June 25 at Forest Park Hospital in St. Louis (which is now abandoned). Ricky's body was so decomposed that he had to be identified via fingerprint analysis. Although Ricky was known to have health issues, the police believed foul play was involved. Besides, the scene looked staged. How did Ricky end up almost 20 miles from his work and home when he had no car and no means of public transportation to get him there? And why was he dumped in an area where multiple other bodies had been discovered both before and after his death? And just what the hell was scribbled onto those two pages of notes? By all accounts, Ricky McCormick was a low-risk victim. Poor and chronically ill with a seemingly low intelligence and criminal background. After they found his body, police ran the usual gauntlet of interviewing those who knew Ricky. There was no clear suspect or motive, and the cause of death remained undetermined (albeit suspicious). What the police apparently failed to tell Ricky's loved ones was that he was found with two bizarre, encrypted notes stuffed into his pockets. And nobody talked about this for 12 years. Finally, in 2011, the FBI began investigating Ricky's death as a homicide and placed a call for help to the public on their website, asking for anyone who could crack Ricky's code to come forward. The FBI's Cryptoanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU) and the American Cryptogram Association were both unsuccessful at cracking the code. When interviewed in 2012 by The Riverfront Times, Ricky's family claimed his history of encrypting his writings (something he was said to have done since childhood) was really just a bunch of "nonsense" and that they doubted he was capable of writing those notes. According to his mother, all that Ricky could write was his own name. Everything else was merely scribbles. In fact, Ricky's own mother claims that Ricky was "retarded" and was thought to suffer from bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. He had been taken to see a psychiatrist, but it is unclear as to how much formal treatment Ricky ever received. He was known to have an incredibly vivid imagination and was a true storyteller - that is, when he wasn't off by himself, acting aloof. As a boy at recess, he would stand away from the other students and just be quiet, keeping to himself. Ricky somehow made it through to high school but eventually dropped out and began working random odd jobs. He typically worked graveyard shifts and tried to keep himself at a distance from the city's hardened criminals and drug dealers. However, Ricky himself became a criminal in 1992 when he was arrested by the St. Louis police for having fathered two children with a girl under the age of 14. He was 34 at the time of his arrest. Ricky was given a psychiatric evaluation while awaiting trial for the first-degree sexual abuse charge, and it was found that he probably had some type of mental health issue. However, he was deemed fit to stand trial. He was locked up for 13 months. Ricky ended up working at the Amoco gas station on Chouteau Avenue, and, just a few weeks before his death, took a trip to Orlando - the second and final trip he would make there in 1999. He stayed in Room 280 at the Econo Lodge. Why was Ricky in Orlando? It doesn't appear to have been a simple vacation, as phone records indicate that either he or his girlfriend at the time had made numerous calls to the Orlando area prior to his visit. While in Orlando, Ricky made one phone call to his employer at Amoco. After two days in Orlando, Ricky returned to St. Louis. When he returned from that final trip, his girlfriend noticed a definite change in Ricky, as she later confessed to police. To her, Ricky seemed afraid of something - or someone. But Ricky wasn't open to talking about his experiences in Orlando or what had taken him there in the first place. All that we know about Ricky's final few days alive is that he checked himself into Barnes-Jewish Hospital on June 22, at around 3 in the afternoon. He reported having chest pain and shortness of breath, neither symptom having been uncommon for Ricky, who was known to be something of a caffeine addict with heart problems. Ricky was kept under observation for two days, but the possibility of a heart attack was eliminated. Ricky was discharged and went to visit his beloved aunt, Gloria McCormick. She was someone special whom Ricky felt comfortable confiding in, but it doesn't seem that he told her anything about his trip to Orlando. On the 25th, Ricky checked himself into Forest Park Hospital, which is located just 2 miles away from Barnes-Jewish. Doctors thought he was simply having an asthma flare-up and chose not to admit him for treatment, releasing him just before 6 PM. The last anyone reportedly heard from Ricky was his girlfriend, who claimed he had called her on June 26 at 11:30 AM and was headed to Amoco for some food. He was last seen at Amoco on the 27th by a fellow employee, and that he had left. Since Ricky's time of death was likely on the 27th, Ricky only had a few hours left to live after leaving Amoco. So, who might have wanted to kill Ricky McCormick? The main suspect for detectives following the murder was a known drug dealer named Gregory Lamar Knox, who lived near Ricky and was already a suspected in several murder-for-hire cases. An anonymous source had tipped off police that Knox claimed responsibility for murdering a black man who worked at Amoco. However, no formal arrests have ever been made. Ricky's girlfriend, however, suspected Baha "Bob" Hamdallah, a former store owner and drug dealer with a long and bloody criminal history. Ricky had been associated with Hamdallah and might have been running errands for him down in Orlando. Had Ricky somehow screwed up in Orlando? Had a deal gone bad? Or was something else going on? Were these notes a clever rouse to distract the police? Was Ricky simply acting as a courier, the notes having been written by someone with a much higher IQ? If these notes were simply being carried by Ricky, acting as a courier, then who wrote them, and who were they being taken to? And why were they clearly never received? We might never know the truth. Numerous attempts at cracking Ricky's code have been made in the last few years without any real results. Only time will tell if the mystery surrounding Ricky's death will ever be solved. Think you can break the code? The FBI asks that you fill out this form if you think you've got it cracked.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |