A lifelong fan of codes, Ricky McCormick wrote out two pages of letters, numbers and symbols and stuck them in his pocket. His body was found in a Missouri cornfield in the summer of 1999, those two sheets of paper still in his pants.
The FBI has been trying to break the code on and off since 2001, Olson said. They have tried just about all of the standard routes of cryptanalysis that the top experts use, he said, so the FBI didn't bother asking for help from the government's chief code-breaking agency, the National Security Agency, and its high-powered computers in the Maryland suburbs just outside the capital.
"The answer is going to come from a non-cryptological source," Olson said.
Since the FBI first made its plea for help last week, more than 1,000 tips have come in — so many by mail and phone that the FBI established a Web page at
http://forms.fbi.gov/code
to help handle the flood. But nothing so far has given agents the breakthrough they need to figure out what McCormick was writing.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
