READING · 4 MIN
THE FBI GAVE UP.
SO THEY ASKED THE PUBLIC.
Two handwritten notes, found in a dead man's pockets, sat unread in an FBI file for over a decade - until the agency's own codebreakers admitted defeat and did something they almost never do: published an active case cipher and asked the world for help. This is presented as real, historical true-crime, not a game.
A field in Missouri, 1999 ◢
Ricky McCormick, 41, was found dead in a field in St. Charles County, Missouri, on 30 June 1999. His death was never conclusively explained. In his pockets were two notes, covered in a scrawl of letters, numbers, and symbols arranged in a sequence that doesn't read in a straightforward line - some words appear to need reading out of order to make sense of the layout at all.
A code he'd used since childhood, that nobody else knew ◢
McCormick's family told investigators he'd been writing in this kind of personal shorthand since he was a child - but no relative, and no one who knew him, held the key. Whatever system he used, he appears to have kept it entirely in his own head, the same way a simple substitution cipher only works if somebody, somewhere, knows the shift.
The FBI's own cryptanalysts couldn't break it ◢
The case went to the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit - the bureau's in-house codebreaking team. They couldn't crack it either. In 2011, more than a decade after McCormick's death, the FBI took the unusual step of publicly releasing images of both notes, explicitly appealing to professional cryptographers and the public for help - one of the rare times the bureau has put an active case cipher in front of the whole world rather than keeping it in-house.
Still unread ◢
As far as public record shows, the notes remain unsolved. The FBI still lists the case among its notable unbroken codes, and nobody - professional or amateur - has produced a decoding the bureau has confirmed.
Play the ciphers in this story