The Ricky McCormick Case: A Missouri Cornfield, Two Pages Of Notes, And A Code Still Unsolved
On June 30, 1999, Ricky McCormick was found in a cornfield in Missouri. What turned his death into a modern legend was the two-page coded note in his pocket and the fact that in 2011 even the FBI publicly asked for help, and it is still unresolved today.
Ricky McCormick’s body was found on June 30, 1999, in a field in Missouri, around St. Charles County. The body was partially decomposed, which made it difficult to pin down a clear cause of death.
From day one, the case felt off. McCormick did not have a car, the place he was found was a serious distance from home, and yet there was no clear, immediate wave of urgency like a formal missing person report. That is why it never looked like a routine death.
Who Was Ricky McCormick
McCormick was an unemployed man with chronic heart and lung problems, and he sometimes stayed with his mother. He never married and had four children. He had a criminal record for sexual relations with a minor, and he served 11 months in prison for that offense.
None of this explains the death by itself, but it sets the tone of the file: a man whose disappearance might not have triggered instant alarms, and a strong sense that he could have been moved or left in that field.
Why Two Pages In His Pocket Became The Whole Story
What turned this into a cult case was what was found in his pocket: two pages of scribbles. Letters, numbers, and fragments that look like shorthand or a private system. In the FBI Vault material, the notes are included visually, and the assessment is that they were likely written within a short window, possibly within the three days before his death.
The FBI side treated them as a nightmare problem for CRRU, because the text does not behave like a clean, classic cipher. It feels like a personal language, personal abbreviations, a rhythm only one person understood.
2011: Why The FBI Asked The Public
Years later, in 2011, the FBI pushed the case into the public spotlight and effectively said: can you solve this code. The public response was intense. Many people tried, professionals and amateurs alike, but no publicly verified solution emerged.
Is It Still Unsolved Today
Yes. As of February 27, 2026, there is no confirmed, publicly verified solution for the notes, and the death is still widely treated as unresolved in the public record.