On June 30th, 1999, sheriff's deputies found a man's body in a field in St. Charles County, Missouri, and nobody had reported him missing. In his pockets were two handwritten pages, more than thirty lines of capital letters, numbers, dashes and parentheses. Fingerprints identified him as Ricky McCormick, 41, a high school dropout whose family later said he had been writing in code since he was a boy. The FBI's codebreakers, the unit that once read Nazi spy traffic, could not crack it, and neither could the American Cryptogram Association. In 2011 the Bureau published the encrypted notes and asked the public for help, something it almost never does. The pages remain one of the FBI's top unsolved codes. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson investigates the man nobody reported missing, the two pages that outlasted the best codebreakers in the country, and why the FBI believes that cracking them could still name his killer. Please note, this episode contains discussion of homicide and may not be suitable for all audiences. Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
