There was a murder in the summer of 1999, and it’s remained unsolved. The FBI recently released the cryptic notes found in the victim’s pocket, and asks for help to decipher them.
www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911
On June 30, 1999, sheriff’s officers in St. Louis, Missouri discovered the body of 41-year-old Ricky McCormick. He had been murdered and dumped in a field. The only clues regarding the homicide were two encrypted notes found in the victim’s pants pockets.
Despite extensive work by our Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU), as well as help from the American Cryptogram Association, the meanings of those two coded notes remain a mystery to this day, and Ricky McCormick’s murderer has yet to face justice.
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
1. It’s not a sophisticated code.
2. There are no mysterious symbols, excepting what appear to be typos.
3. It’s a mnemonic code, so character/word frequency counts won’t work well.
4. The scribbled letter “n” stands for “and.”
5. Some of the characters that appear as the letter “R” are actually the letter “Q.”
6. I suspect that the character groups “WLD,” “SE” and “CBE” are the initials or references to people’s names.
7. The character group “on” means the same as the word, followed by a date.
8. “71″ likely refers to July 1 1999; “74″ refers to July 4; “75″ refers to July 5.
9. Parentheses are parentheses. The “+” means “plus” as it’s clearly different from the capital “T” in the cryptogram.
10. The last line indicates Day-Week-Month-Year. MIL suggests the word “military.”
Have at it.
____________________________
Update: Apparently the FBI has received so many responses and tips that it’s set up a separate website for them:
