Ricky McCormick, 41, vanished from the St. Louis area in late June 1999 after recent medical visits for chest pain and breathing trouble. On June 26 he called a girlfriend saying he was heading to the Amoco station near his apartment; a clerk placed him there on June 27, the day investigators believe he likely died. On June 30 deputies found McCormick’s badly decomposed body facedown in a field in the 14000 block of Highway 94 North in rural St. Charles County. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death undetermined, though detectives treated the death as not an accident and the body as likely placed there after death.

Two folded sheets of paper in McCormick’s pockets contained dense lines of letters, numbers, and symbols that investigators and the FBI’s cryptanalysis specialists could not decode. The notes were released publicly in 2011 to seek help. Detectives examined McCormick’s connections to the Amoco station and to figures linked to violence; attention focused in part on Gregory Lamar Knox, a suspected violent drug trafficker who was later arrested on unrelated federal charges. No one has been charged in McCormick’s killing and suspects are listed as unknown. If anyone knew Ricky, his movements in late June 1999, or recognizes the coded pages, please come forward with information.