 On June 30th of 1999, the 41-year-old body of Ricky McCormick was found by a cornfield on the side of the road in St. Charles County, Missouri. The coroner ruled the death as undetermined. It seemed that there was no evidence on the body that this had been a murder. However, the police quickly ruled this death as a homicide, and it wouldn't be for another 12 years when in March of 2011, the FBI updated their website asking for help in Ricky McCormick's murder. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button and give us a like. I would also again like to give a special shout out to our producer Tiffany Monroe. Tiffany Monroe is a Ricky master and teacher here in Atlanta. If you would like to talk to her about her services, her email address is listed down below. Welcome to SOTaric Atlanta. My name is Bryce, and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about the Code Breaker Murder. This case is so fascinating, and you know if the FBI can't figure it out and they're having to ask people for help, there is probably something really juicy here. So let's start at the beginning. Ricky McCormick was born on June 14th in 1958. His whole life, he showed signs of some personality disorders or mental disorders. He apparently was half illiterate and half dyslexic. He dropped out of high school and worked multiple jobs around the Midwestern Missouri area. He had many addresses, and if you look at his record, you can see that he did live with his mother a lot off and on. So I can understand if there was some mental disability there that it probably would have been better for Ricky to be with a family member. So that does make sense to me. Ricky was known to tell stories and have a very active imagination where he kind of seemed from what I gathered that he really believed the stories that he was telling people. The idea of schizophrenia has come up in some of the accounts that I read, although I never saw for sure if he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but that has been mentioned from time to time. Basically, to make a long story short, we know that Ricky was not 100% healthy-minded, and I do feel like his mental disturbances do play into his murder somehow. Now, in 1992, Ricky was arrested for having an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl. It is said that he fathered two children with this particular girl, and at the end of his life, he had fathered at least four children, although Ricky was never married to any of the women who were the mothers of his children. After his arrest in 1992, he did spend 13 months in jail. Once he got out of jail, he took a couple of trips back and forth to Orlando, Florida. When he came back from Orlando, Florida, he always came back with baggies full of drugs. Now, a lot of people speculate that because of Ricky's mental problems and because he was never able to get a good-paying job, he possibly got involved in selling drugs. This is not known for sure. We have no idea to really prove or how to really prove that he was a drug dealer. The drugs he came back with from Orlando could potentially have been solely for him, or there is potential that he was used as a runner to traffic the drugs from Orlando to Missouri. Now, after his last trip to Orlando, Ricky started to complain about chest pains. Now, Ricky did have chronic problems with his heart and his lungs, and on top of having these chronic problems, health problems, he also was a pack-a-day smoker and was highly addicted to caffeinated beverages. I myself am also highly addicted to caffeinated beverages, so I don't blame Ricky for that one. However, if you do already have heart and lung problems, smoking a pack a day and drinking that much caffeine is probably not that great for your system. Now, one of Ricky's last hospital visits for his chest pains was five days before his body was found. We know that because when his body was found, a receipt from the local ER was found in his pocket. We also know that Ricky did odd jobs here and there at a local gas station. Now, there is some speculation about whether this work at this gas station was documented or not, because we do know that Ricky was also on unemployment from disability. And if you're on a disability payment plan from the government, I don't really know what the laws are, but I don't think you can actually have a legal job and get both the paychecks. So anything he was doing at the gas station was probably undocumented, which would also make sense, because apparently, allegedly, the owners of this particular gas station in the 90s were notorious for being drug runners. And so that would make sense with all of Ricky's trips back and forth to Orlando to pick up drugs. Again, we don't know if Ricky himself was actually dealing the drugs or perhaps somebody was paying him to run the drugs. We have no idea. But back to the gas station. Not only was Ricky seen at the ER or at the ER five days before his death with the paper evidence of a receipt, but eyewitness also claimed to have seen Ricky at this particular gas station a couple of days before he died. Now, the reason why this is really, really interesting and adds a little bit of a twist to our story is that when Ricky's body was found, it was already pretty well decomposed. From what I gathered, not that I'm an expert in decomposing bodies, but from what I gathered from the experts is that this was really strange because according to this eyewitness, he would have only been dead for three days, and the state of his body showed someone who had been dead for a whole lot longer. Now, another interesting thing to note is that off this particular road by this cornfield, this apparently was a huge dumping ground for murders. Now, again, remember that the coroner had put down his death as undetermined because his physical body didn't show signs of a murder when they did the autopsy. Another thing to notice about this murder is that Ricky's body was found 20 miles away from his home. Now, for a lot of people watching, this might not mean a whole lot, but for us in America, that's a big deal. The reason why it's a big deal is because Ricky did not know how to drive. He didn't have a car. He didn't have a driver's license, and there was no public transportation. You see, for all of our friends in Europe or other countries, for kids growing up in America, most of us get our driver's license in our late teens. It is a big deal here in America. We all learn how to drive because most of America is small towns with no public transportation. We also have to remember that this is Missouri in June. I can't tell you, for people who don't live in the United States or don't come from warm countries, it is hot as balls outside. There is no way that a person is going to try to walk 20 miles in the heat and humidity. It's just not healthy. It's too hot. And I think, especially for people who grow up in this area like Ricky had grown up, regardless of mental instabilities or not, would have known this. So basically, there's no way Ricky got himself to this particular place where his body was found, unless this is also a theory, unless he had a mental break, unless for some reason, whatever mental disorders Ricky had, something happened where he did wonder off in the Missouri heat and he ended up dying of a heat stroke and his body decomposed quickly because of the heat and humidity. That is a theory out there. However, I don't think that's accurate. The reason why I don't think that's an accurate theory and this is solely my opinion is because when you grow up in a small town, everybody knows everybody. And regardless of whether you're a good guy or a bad guy, if somebody had seen Ricky wandering around the cornfields in a daze, they probably would have called the police or gone and got Ricky themselves. People are neighborly in America and I just don't think that that would have gone unnoticed by a resident of the town. Now, again, here's where things take another twist and get super interesting. As I said in the intro, in March of 2011, 12 years after Ricky's death, the FBI updated their website asking the public for help in Ricky's murder. Again, the coroner had always classified this murder as undetermined. FBI and the police know this is a homicide. So why were the FBI asking for help? Well, you see, when Ricky's body was found, not only did they find the receipt from the ER, but they also found notes, notes that seem to be encrypted in a special code. The police and the FBI had kept this evidence secret for 12 years. Ricky's family did not even know about these notes in his pocket. Once the family was made aware of the notes, they were quick to tell people that they didn't believe there was any way Ricky could have written these notes. Remember, Ricky was half illiterate and he was dyslexic. His mother said the only thing he could do was pretty much write in chicken scratch. And these notes, there is a pattern. There is a rhythm to the lettering. This is obviously coded. Now it appears that the FBI does believe that these notes are where we're going to figure out who killed Ricky and what happened. There are many theories, of course. One of the main theories people believe is that these notes do have to do with drug trafficking. Whatever Ricky had gotten involved with, with the owners of the gas station or someone from Orlando is how he ended up with these notes in his pocket. And it is important to also mention that right after Ricky got back from his last trip to Orlando, his girlfriend and his aunt both said Ricky was terrified. It was almost like he was scared for his life. So did these notes get Ricky killed? What was Ricky actually involved with? And because of Ricky's mental disabilities, did whoever killed Ricky use him because he was an easy mule, an easy target to carry drugs back and forth? And if he was murdered as a result of these notes, how come there's no evidence of murder in the autopsy? And how did his body decompose so quickly? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you again to all of our patrons. If you want to help support the channel, there's a link to our Patreon page down below. Thank you to Josh McKay, as always, for doing our music. And as always, if you would like to purchase our opening song, there's a link down below. Also, thank you so much to Todd Roderick for helping me produce this video. If you want to follow Todd's band, The Flying Mystics, you guessed it, there's a link down below. All right, guys, I hope you have a wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.