What Are the Ricky McCormick Notes
The Ricky McCormick notes are two encrypted handwritten documents held by the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit. The notes were found in 1999 near McCormick's body in St. Charles County, Missouri, and were submitted to the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit as part of a missing persons investigation. The FBI has listed the documents on its Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit page as one of its unsolved ciphers, alongside other historical codes and coded messages from major cases.
The FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit describes the notes as handwritten encrypted messages with no confirmed author, no clear language, and no known cipher system. The documents contain a sequence of symbols and letter-like characters that do not match standard English, Spanish, or other known languages. The FBI has not released a full transcription of the notes to the public, but it has acknowledged the documents in its Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit case files and in its public unsolved cipher listings.
Decoding Efforts and Cryptanalysis
The FBI has not publicly confirmed a successful decryption of the Ricky McCormick notes, and the agency has not released the original documents in full to independent researchers. The Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit has not published a technical breakdown of the symbols, the writing instrument, or the paper used in the notes. The FBI's public case status for the McCormick notes remains open, with the documents listed among the agency's unsolved cryptograms.
Independent cryptographers and cipher enthusiasts have analyzed the McCormick notes using pattern recognition, frequency analysis, and language modeling. Some researchers have compared the symbol sequences to historical nomenclators, homophonic ciphers, and one-time pads, but no public analysis has produced a verified plaintext. The lack of a known key, a confirmed language, or a clear cryptographic system makes the notes a persistent challenge for both the FBI and external analysts.
Legal, Investigative, and Public Record Context
The Ricky McCormick notes are part of a broader missing persons and homicide investigation in St. Charles County, Missouri. The FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit has not disclosed whether the notes are linked to a specific suspect, organization, or criminal network. Court records, missing persons filings, and law enforcement reports related to McCormick's case remain sealed or restricted, limiting public access to the full investigative context.
The McCormick case is frequently cited in discussions of unsolved ciphers, cryptographic history, and the limits of modern codebreaking. The FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit uses the case to illustrate the challenges of analyzing handwritten encrypted messages without a known key or language base. The notes remain a reference point for researchers studying historical and contemporary encryption methods, and they are listed alongside other famous unsolved codes in the agency's public cryptanalysis archives.