Unsolved Mysteries Day 2: The encrypted notes of Ricky McCormick

Every day this week we're bringing you one of the world's creepiest unsolved mysteries

RICKY McCormick’s body was found 72 hours after he went missing in St Louis, Missouri, in the summer of 1999.

Discovered in a field on June 30 his body was badly decomposed, despite it being only a short time since he had been reported missing.

One of the notes found in Ricky's pocket FBI

The 41-year-old murder victim had been dumped in a field 15 miles from his home and the state of decomposition made it difficult to conduct an autopsy.

Forensics ruled his cause of death “undetermined” and the only clues to his grisly death were two notes found in the pocket of his filthy jeans.

The 41-year-old's body was badly decomposed, despite only being murdered 72 hours before he was found St Louis PD

The handwritten notes appear to be encrypted, with a tangle of letters and numbers even expert cryptologists at the FBI were unable to solve.

FBI officials released copies of the notes 12 years later, asking the public if they were able to help solve the mystery, hoping the new generation of amateur online code-breakers would be able to solve the age-old case.

FBI experts are unable to break the encrypted code on the notes FBI

Nobody has yet been able to provide an answer, although officials believe it could have been written by McCormick himself up to three days before he died.

Dan Olson, chief of the Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit at the FBI, said: “Breaking the code could reveal the victim’s whereabouts before his death and could lead to the solution of a homicide.”

The riddle has stumped the world’s best code breakers and remains unsolved to this day.