Peyton Moreland (0:00)

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Jenny Moness (0:46)

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Peyton Moreland (1:49)

You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everyone and welcome back to the into the Dark podcast. I'm your host Peyton Moreland. I am so grateful grateful that you are here listening or watching this episode. Welcome to into the Dark, the true crime podcast that also ventures into everything dark and Spooky. For my 10 seconds this week I have been listening. Actually I finished a podcast called Everyone has an Ex. It is an Australian podcast. They have the cutest accents ever. It's basically different girls or guys coming on and telling a story about how their ex girlfriend or boyfriend became their ex girlfriend or boyfriend and it is just so interesting and intriguing. I love the concept of it. So yeah, it's called Everyone has an Ex if you want to go listen to it. And if you do go listen, can you just like leave them a comment on Instagram or something telling them that into the Dark sent you. This isn't sponsored or anything. I just want them to know how much I love their show and that my audience will probably love it as well. All right, let's get into it. This episode includes discussions of sexual assault against a minor, so please listen with care. Crime solving can be a bit like putting together a puzzle. Both require attention to detail, the ability to spot patterns, and skill at sorting important clues from unrelated red herrings. Tracking evidence and identifying a killer can be just as thrilling as solving your daily sudoku or getting your wordle on the first guess, assuming that is, that you're still playing wordle. But it's rare for an actual puzzle or game to be a clue or for detectives to need to break secret codes to solve a murder. Except that may be exactly what's in play in today's story. So we are going back and beginning on June 30, 1999, when a woman is driving near a seemingly empty cornfield Outside of St. Louis, Missouri. But then she sees something that looks a little off. There's something lying on the ground at the edge of the field, close to a wooded area. So she actually pulls her car over to get a better look. And that's when she realizes this strange mystery object is a dead body. So as soon as she can get to a phone, she calls the police and they rush to the scene. And right away they realize that the deceased is an adult black man in his late 30s or early 40s. He's 5 foot 6 and dressed in jeans and a T shirt. But that's just about all they can tell. It is clear that these remains have been outside rotting for a while. They are badly decomposed. In fact, the body is in such a bad state that the medical examiner can't even determine a cause of death. So it's impossible to say how he died. But there is a very deep wound on the man's neck, and the doctor theorizes that maybe that's what killed him. Someone could have stabbed him or slit his throat. But the coroner doesn't have enough evidence to say for sure if that's true. They don't even know if the neck injury was made by a knife or if it was some kind of accidental wound. They also don't know with any certainty if this is what killed the man. After all, he also has what looks like a pretty serious head wound. But it's impossible for the medical examiner to tell if it's from before or after he died. It could just be the result of the body's advanced decomposition. Now, the good news is that they do manage to pull the deceased man's fingerprints, and there is a match in the police database. So at least the investigators identify their John Doe. He is a 41 year old man named Ricky McCormick. 41 year old Ricky had spent his entire life in St. Louis, and it was a tough life. His family was poor. And complicating matters further, Ricky either had a developmental disability or a severe mental health condition. As near as I can tell, he was never formally diagnosed with anything. But from the time he was very young, his family, teachers, and classmates could tell that Ricky was different from his peers. He struggled in school. He barely knew how to read or write. He also didn't get along with other kids his own age. At recess, he would stand alone, refusing to talk to anyone else. And when he was with adults, he made up wild, fantastical stories. From the way he talked, his parents and some teachers feared that he couldn't actually tell reality from fiction. The problem was that nobody ever took him to see a counselor to see if this was a sign of something serious. And he also never got any help with his apparent learning disabilities. Even though he could barely do his homework or understand the things his teacher said, Ricky just kept drifting through school. He'd graduate and move up a grade year after year, Even though he kept falling further behind his classmates. Eventually it reached a point where he just couldn't keep up with expectations at all. So he ended up dropping out of high school. By this point, he could read and write, but not at a very advanced level. But according to everyone who knew him, Ricky had a lot of street smarts. He knew his way around and how to keep his head above water. Even if he didn't have much of a formal education, he got whatever jobs he could. Given his limitations, this meant things like working as a dishwasher or a busser at restaurants, or picking up the occasional janitorial gig. But in 1992, when he was 34 years old, Ricky's life took a turn. See, at this time, he was dating someone whose identity hasn't been made public. Even Ricky's family didn't know who his girlfriend was, Just that he had a nickname for her. He would call her Pretty Baby. Now, Ricky and Pretty Baby already had two children together, and that's when the police got involved. Because Pretty baby was only 13 years old. He's in his 30s. She and Ricky had been sexually active since she was just 11. Now, of course, once the police learned about this, they arrested Ricky and charged him with first degree sexual abuse. He hired a lawyer, and after he talked to his attorney, she became convinced that Ricky wasn't mentally fit to go to trial. She thought that his condition meant he literally didn't understand that it was wrong for him to sleep or be in love with such a young girl. So she arranged for him to see a psychologist and get assessed. Except the mental health professionals concluded that Ricky was mentally competent. He did understand that he had broken the law and that he had hurt pretty baby. Now, once those results came through, Ricky and his lawyer changed their strategy. He agreed to plead guilty to the charges, and he was sentenced to three years in prison. But thanks to good behavior, he was set free again after 13 months. Now, once he was released, Ricky actually got a job at a local gas station called Amaco. And he also began dating again. And this time, all of the girls he was dating were age appropriate. And he had two more children, meaning he was now a father to four. And his life became pretty routine after that. He lived on his own, went to and from work, mostly kept to himself. He didn't have very many friends, and it sounds like he wasn't even in close contact with the people he dated. As near as anyone can tell, he also wasn't involved with his children at all. Ricky actually was such a loner in life that nobody had even noticed or reported when he died. Which means that by the time his body is found in that field, nobody had reported him missing. It takes some work for the officers to figure out how long he's been dead or to even build out a timeline of his disappearance. As near as they can tell, he was last seen alive June 27. This was three days before his body was found, and at the time, he was working a shift at Amaco. But there are other details about Ricky's death that are a bit odd. First, nobody can figure out how his body ended up in this particular remote cornfield. Ricky doesn't own a car, and he has to either walk or take public transit to get around. The local bus and subway don't have any stops that are anywhere near the field. And Ricky's home was, like, 15 to 30 miles away from it. So there's no way he walked there on his own. And on top of that, this particular field actually has a reputation in this area. It is where the local gangs, drug dealers, and other criminals dump murder victims. All through the 90s and into the early 2000s, there were multiple dead bodies found in this field. Many of them had gunshot wounds and other signs that their deaths were not natural. So this has the police wondering if Ricky was also murdered by whoever was killing these other people. In fact, the state of his body suggests that he didn't even die in the field. It looks like he passed away somewhere else and then somebody moved his remains here. And I know that's not hard proof or much to go off at all, but it is enough for the police to treat his death like a murder and so they immediately start investigating. You guys, I know summer is busy for majority of you and sometimes when it comes to meals, you only have a couple minutes Factor helps you eat smarter with tasty chef prepped meals that are dietitian approved and delivered right to your door. And now with more than 65 weekly meals made for how you live and what you like to eat, you've got even more ways to fit in a real meal wherever the day takes you. Honestly, sometimes eating can be such a headache. Planning meals, especially if you're involving other people in that. And that's why I think Factor is genius. They have more variety, more meals. You can choose from a wider selection of weekly meal options including premium seafood choices like salmon and shrimp at no extra cost. 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Yes, it's an absolute riot and the only movie that can be described as so, so much weirder than the last time. What last time? It's the Frequel. You ready? We've been waiting for that Absolutely slays what deeply out of touch old person came up with that? You did. Wow. Don't miss the comedy event of the summer for all ages. Disney's Freakier Friday in theaters this Friday. Get tickets now. Rated pg. Parental guidance suggested now, since he doesn't have any known enemies, they start by questioning Ricky's girlfriend. At this point, his girlfriend was a girl named Sandra Jones. And right away, Sandra tells the police that she thinks she knows who killed Ricky. It's his bosses from Amaco, a pair of brothers named Yuma and Baja Hamdala. Now, as a side note, Baja uses the nickname Bob. So that's what I'm going to be calling him. So Yuma and Bob, Ricky's bosses at the gas station, both have connections to organized crime in the St. Louis area. The police have linked them to numerous drug deals, shootings, and unsolved murders. The problem is that the brothers either have friends in very high places or they're good at covering their tracks. Because every time the police get close to arresting one of them, the case falls apart at an inconvenient time. Back in 1998, Bob allegedly shot another of his brothers in public in front of numerous witnesses. But when the investigators tried to press charges, the victim, his own brother, claimed he didn't even know who the shooter was. It was a stranger he had never seen before, according to him. But all of the other witnesses said no, it was Bob, his brother, perfectly. It was clear to investigators that he was the one who had done it. But since the brother was unwilling to cooperate with the police and testify, the case fell apart pretty quickly. Another time, some officers arrested Bob. It was because he had supposedly got into an argument with an unhoused man and then beat him with a hammer. Now, this man survived, and he gave a statement that allowed the police to arrest Bob and charge him with the assault. Except then, a few weeks before Bob could go to trial on those murders, the unhoused man was murdered, and nobody could identify the shooter. So suddenly, once again, this entire case against Bob fell apart. There was no living victim, no witnesses, nothing. And there are more strange stories like this in his history of Bob or his brother getting into legal trouble and then avoiding consequences. It said that they probably did use intimidation and violence to get away with their crimes. But that's just speculation, because in fairness, neither of them has been convicted of anything serious. Except, according to Ricky's girlfriend Sandra, Ricky was terrified of these brothers, and he had been ever since he first started the job. She also thinks he was too afraid of them to say no when they made unreasonable demands, like when they tried to involve him in Their alleged criminal activities. I'll also note that Ricky was very low income, and he didn't make much money at his job. Add in that his whole family was living in poverty, and it's not like he could have just asked his relatives to help support him. And now Ricky had been diagnosed with a heart condition and asthma, and they were serious enough for him to qualify for disability payments, which he collected regularly, but they weren't huge payments. He was barely getting by. There were times into his adulthood that he even had to live with his mother because he couldn't afford rent on his own. And there were also a few periods where he was unhoused, even with the disability money. So if the brothers told him that he could make some extra cash by helping them with illegal gigs, and it would have been difficult for Ricky to say no, because he really needed the money. Now, whatever his reasons, in the past few months, he had been traveling a lot, and Ricky never used to be the sort of person to go on spontaneous vacations. But between January and June of 1999, he had been to Florida twice, and each time he went, he took a Greyhound bus and paid for the ticket in cash, meaning there wasn't any paper trail connected to the trip. And once he arrived in Orlando, he checked into a cheap hotel, and then he spent his entire trip on the phone. The police could tell from call records that on these trips, he was in contact with a bunch of people the entire time he was in Florida, including his bosses, the brothers back home. And Sandra said that on at least one occasion, he came home from Florida with a suitcase full of marijuana. She saw it with her own eyes. There were hundreds of tiny plastic bags all full of weed. Now, when Sandra asked Ricky why he had done all of this and where it had come from, he told her that he was holding onto it for his bosses, the brothers. Sandra thinks this means, she tells police, Ricky was smuggling drugs for Yuma and Bob, and the deal must have gone south, because after his last trip to Florida, he began acting differently. Just a few days after he came back, he started complaining that he was having health issues. Now, Ricky had always had asthma, but beginning in mid June of 1999, he said that it was much harder for him to breathe than usual, and he was having severe pains in his chest. On the 22nd, he walked into an emergency room at a local hospital. They held him for two days, ran every test they could think of, and concluded that there was nothing wrong with him. So on the 24th, the hospital discharged Ricky. The day after that, on the 25th, he went to a different hospital with this same, exact same symptoms. But this time around, the doctors didn't even admit him. They gave him a quick exam and concluded he was fine and asked him to leave. Now, at some point that same day, he picked up some medicine from a doctor, and less than a week after that, his dead body was found in that field. Now, his girlfriend, Sandra, doesn't actually think he was going through a medical emergency. Her theory is that he was afraid for his life and he didn't believe his home was safe anymore and he didn't have anywhere else to go. He couldn't afford to book a hotel room. So she thinks he was actually faking these breathing problems in the hope that the hospital would keep him safe from the brothers. Now, all to say, there is no proof that Yuma and Bob had anything to do with Ricky's death. But the evidence overall is kind of compelling. Between the trips to Florida, Sandra's allegations about the suitcase full of weed, and the brother's violent history, it's worth looking into. Except after the police investigate, they can't find any proof one way or another. They can't rule out either man as a suspect, but they also don't have enough evidence to move forward with an arrest, especially because somewhere in the process of looking into the brothers, another suspect emerges. A confidential informant tells the investigators that they think the killer is a man named Gregory Knox. Who? Gregory is a drug dealer, and the informant says that he's a hitman, too. Supposedly, he had been hired to kill other people at least twice, and in addition, he allegedly murdered someone whose name the confidential informant didn't know. But they tell police they heard the victim is a black man who worked at a local gas station. They also say the victim had some kind of tie to the brothers and his body was dumped in the same field where Ricky's was found. Basically, the confidential informant describes Ricky's case perfectly. The problem is, once again, police don't have any proof, just allegations, speculation, and suspicion. The informant isn't able to provide any hard evidence. And while the detectives bring Gregory Knox into questioning and treat him as a person of interest, they can't move forward with an arrest. He claims he doesn't know anything about Ricky, and the police have no way of knowing if he's telling the truth. He really might have nothing to do with Ricky's case. Now, given the lack of a smoking gun, it's only a matter of time before Ricky's case goes cold. The detectives don't make any New breaks or bring in more suspects? Not for years. Behind the scenes and out of the public eye, they're still hard at work because it turns out they have one more huge clue. And it's something they haven't revealed to the public yet. See, not long after Ricky's body was discovered and identified, investigators actually found something in his front pants pocket. It's a two page note. And when the investigators tried to read it, they had a hard time. Because the note isn't written in English or any known language. It's a bunch of seemingly random letters in no clear order. It appears to be some kind of code. Imagine two pages filled with letters which fill the paper from one margin to the other. There are 30 lines of text across the two pages. Every letter is capitalized and there are a few numbers mixed in there. There aren't any spaces or punctuation marks other than a few dashes and parentheses. No periods, exclamation marks, commas or question marks. However, there are a ton of ease. Way more ease than you would use in ordinary circumstances. There's also a four letter sequence that appears again and again on the two pages. N, C, B, E. So the police figure NCBE might be an important name or word that's used repeatedly, but they don't actually know what it stands for. And on top of that, like I said, some portions of the note are in parentheses, others are circled like they're important. Except again, nobody quite knows what makes those passages significant. Plus, since the police can't read the letter, they don't know who wrote it. Theoretically, it could be from a murderer and it might contain a key clue that would let detectives identify them. Or maybe it has something to do with Ricky's alleged drug smuggling work. Perhaps one of his bosses wrote a message to another dealer and put it in code just in case the police found it. It's possible that Ricky was supposed to deliver the note to someone and died before he could find the recipient. If that's the case, once again, the police might be able to learn the killer's identity if they could decipher this message. The problem is they couldn't figure it out. So at some point, the local police bring in a team of code breaking specialists who worked for the FBI. This division has a fantastic track record. They solve 99 of all the ciphers that they examine. Except Ricky's note is in that 1%. Even the best experts in the world can't make heads or tails of it. They even use computer algorithms to analyze the letters or look for Patterns. But these efforts go nowhere. And after 10 years, by 2009, they are stumped. So this is when police decide to make a public announcement. First, they reveal to the world that this letter exists, because before that point, it had been a secret. No one even knew. Literally no one outside of law enforcement knew about it. But now, the investigators don't only tell people about the note. They also publicly post pictures of it. They say, hey, if you're out here, if you're a code breaker, puzzle solver, and everyone else all over the world, can you figure this out? As one spokesperson put it, we are really good at what we do, but we could use some help with this one. Now, the investigators set up a phone number and website where people can share their discoveries about how to decode the note. And before you know it, they have over 7,000 tips to sort through. There are so many, an FBI spokesperson actually comes forward and says, hey, stop calling and emailing. They say it's still okay to submit tips via snail mail if there's something really important to share. But the flood of information is making the division's phone and email servers crash. There also aren't enough people to sort through all of the information quickly or effectively. It takes a long time for the officers to review everything. And the problem is that none of those tipsters have actually broken the code. There are people with promising theories, and some folks think they might have deciphered a stray word here or there. Some think the letter is full of vehicle registration numbers, serial numbers for different computer parts, or the names of different kinds of medicine. Some tipsters actually think that the code includes the name Seth written over and over. One person even suggests that it's a cheat code for a video game. But none of these tips check out. The investigators still don't know what the note says or what it's even about. That year in 2009, an American code breaking association hosts a huge conference, and they invite all of the nation's top experts to gather and try to decrypt this note. But even with all of these people working together and cooperating with the FBI, they can't figure anything out about the letter. And to this day, you guys, Ricky's note still hasn't been deciphered, but the code breakers have racked up a few small victories. Running a business comes with a lot of what ifs, but luckily, there's a simple answer to Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, including Thrive Cosmetics and Momofuku. And it'll help you with everything you need, from website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations, Shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality. Turn those what ifs into Sign up for your $1 per month trial@shopify.com Specialoffer support for this podcast and the following message comes from America's Navy the Navy offers new graduates hands on training and experience in careers like computer science, aviation and medicine, plus education and sign on bonuses. Parents help your grad start their career today@navy.com apparently some experts have determined that the text corresponds to something that's written in English, so they know it's not a random jumble of letters or another language. Now, in addition, I'm not quite clear how they determine this, but the investigators say the letter was written a few days before Ricky's death. Maybe three days. But that's about all they've learned. Police officers have even analyzed the handwriting and compared it to Ricky's and some other samples, but they can't say for sure who wrote it. They still have a theory, though. They think Ricky wrote the note himself, and they say it has nothing to do with his murder. According to them, it might be something like a shopping list. Apparently, the officers think he wrote it in code for fun, or maybe, given his possible learning disabilities, he used abbreviations that only make sense to him, since he may not have known how to write the list in proper English. Now, the police are basing their conclusion on a few facts. First, like I mentioned before, some text in the letter is circled. The investigators suspect that means this is a to do list and Ricky might have circled each entry after he completed it, sort of like he was checking them off without actually crossing the text out or covering it up. Plus, people who understand code making and code solving say something about the cipher itself feels like it wasn't really meant to be cracked. The reasons behind that are a bit too technical to get into, but the thinking is that this feels more like some kind of personal shorthand note. So not an actual code or puzzle that was left in his pocket on purpose in hopes of being solved. It's more like when you write a quick note to yourself, it only matters that it makes sense to you, not that someone else would be able to understand it. The police think that's what this note could have been, Ricky's message to himself that was never meant to be decoded. Except a lot of Ricky's relatives actually think this is unlikely. They don't think the note was a to do list. They don't think Ricky was checking items off. They don't even think he had the mental capacity to come up with a simple cipher, let alone one that was so complex it stumped the best code breakers in the FBI. They say it's a lot more likely that he scribbled some random letters on a paper while he was bored one day. Maybe the reason they can't be deciphered is because these letters don't actually mean anything. However, there are other relatives who say that Ricky was a lot better at ciphers and puzzles than anyone realized. Apparently, he used to make up secret languages exactly like this one when he was a kid, and they were almost impossible to solve. In fact, his family members never figured out what some of those childhood notes said said. And Ricky never taught anyone how to read his notes and how he came up with such complex codes. The problem is that we'll never know for sure what he was capable of or if he wrote this message until we can decipher it. And as for Ricky's possible murder, it is still unsolved. We don't know who did it, how, or why. And since this is still an open investigation, the St. Louis police and the FBI are accepting tips related to Ricky's death. In fact, this is interesting. Even though they don't think the letter has anything to do with the killing, they're also open to hearing from code breakers who think they might have solved it. As one spokesperson said, even if we found out that he was writing a grocery list or a love letter, we would still want to see how the code is solved. This is a cipher system we know nothing about. And realistically, even if it is something like a to do checklist, it could still help solve the case. It might help the police establish a timeline for Ricky's disappearance. Hypothetically, if it says something like pick up dry cleaning, buy soap, put my rent in the mailbox, and the first two items are checked off and the third one isn't, well, that could tell the police that Ricky went to the dry cleaner in the store but never made it to the mailbox. Again. This is just a hypothetical, but any information like that could be a game changer. Unfortunately, even though this is considered one of the division's top unsolved cases, the FBI is not offering a reward for tips. They still hope puzzle enthusiasts will get involved, either for the thrill of breaking one of the world's toughest ciphers or just to help bring peace and closure to Ricky's loved ones now while he waits for justice. Ricky's death is currently classified as suspicious, meaning he still hasn't even been legally ruled a murder victim, even if the police are treating his death as a homicide. He's buried in St. Louis, but there's no headstone over his grave. There's no sign that anyone has dropped off any flowers or visited him in years. Tragically, Ricky seems to be almost forgotten in death. He's as alone now as he was during the bulk of his life, and all appearances, whatever secrets he died with will remain buried until someone breaks the code and hopefully a solution will come soon. It's actually insane to me to think that cases like this exist. That someone wound up dead in a cornfield and they found a secret note stuffed in his front pocket of his jeans. And all of the experts have looked at it and no one can tell what this note says. That seems wild and fake, but you guys, it is true. It is a real case. I hope to see justice for Ricky and hopefully this code solved one day. But until then, we will just keep following the case. Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll see you next time as we go further into the dark together. Goodbye. Mom, Dad, I humbly suggest you save some money and shop Amazon for Back to School. It's for my growth, meaning my body's growing at an alarming rate and clothes you buy me this year will be very small very soon. Plus the clothes I love today will be out of style tomorrow. But at least your wallet doesn't have to be my fashion victim if you shop low prices for school at Amazon. Hopefully this is helpful. Amazon Spend less, smile more.