MO MO - Ricky McCormick, 41, St Louis, 30 June 1999

[bessie]

Has anyone googled Maury Troy Travis? A St. Louis serial killer active from about 2000-2002, but might've been active earlier. His victims were primarily prostitutes. His crimes weren't getting attention, so he mailed a letter and a computer-generated map of the West Alton area to the local paper. The map led police to one of his victims. LE traced his IP by doing a search on recent downloads of the map. He was arrested and committed suicide in jail shortly after his arrest leaving a lot of unanswered questions.

I don't know if it's related. Interesting, though.

ETA: Sorry, Riverguide. I was googling and typing, so I missed your last post.

 

[Soulmagent]

Websleuths post relating to subject Alton MO

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5032357&highlight=west+alton#post5032357

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Found Deceased MO - George Whitter, 36, St. Louis, 30 Aug 2007

 

[bessie]

Well, there is an exit 173 in Kentucky (Kentucky Speedway Racetrack) oh and guess what exit number I-71 splits from I-75 at? Give up? Yeppers, exit 173. :banghead: this could drive us batty, you know!


Also, an exit 173 in Perrysburg, but looks to be different highway, not I-75 that I can tell at first glance.

And an exit 29 off of 75 in Kentucky.

[FONT=&quot]26MLSE74SPRKSE29KENOS OLE 173RTRSE :loser:
[/FONT]

 

[riverguide]

Great minds think alike Bessie!

 

[bessie]

Now I understand what you alluded to in your earlier post, Riverguide. It's pretty intriguing that we have a serial killer operating around the same time and in the same locale as RM. He sends a letter and a map to LE, somewhat reminiscent of Zodiac, though I haven't read that the letter was encoded. Now we hear about RM, possible murder victim with ciphers in his pocket. Private citizens broke Zodiac's code, and now the FBI asks the public to crack RM's code.

 

[riverguide]

Websleuths post relating to subject Alton MO

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Found Deceased MO - George Whitter, 36, St. Louis, 30 Aug 2007

Looks like this request from the FBI may represent the tip of an iceberg.

 

[Soulmagent]

Now I understand what you alluded to in your earlier post, Riverguide. It's pretty intriguing that we have a serial killer operating around the same time and in the same locale as RM. He sends a letter and a map to LE, somewhat reminiscent of Zodiac, though I haven't read that the letter was encoded. Now we hear about RM, possible murder victim with ciphers in his pocket. Private citizens broke Zodiac's code, and now the FBI asks the public to crack RM's code.

Weird a guy who has written codes his whole life would get tied up in a case like this.

Really what are the chances?

 

[riverguide]

You know what they say in the business: "Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you." This last death was recent (about 4 years).

 

[riverguide]

He was also involved in sex related crimes and had three residences and a modest income from a disability check. How do you maintain three residences on a disability check, unless you have a cash business on the side. Many of the victims were prostitutes and quite frankly he sounds like a "pimp." Those notes could be records of business activity or they could be records of a potential partnership/joint venture with Travis, that went sour. Or maybe he was Travis' procurer and was eliminated because he connected the dots...Does anyone know if Mccormick was African American also, like Travis ? Why was it that Mccormick had three residences but was evicted from another? It sounds like he may have maintained a couple of cribs and the landlord at one of them didn't want him to remain for one reason or another, aka pimping on the premises.

 

[riverguide]

Sadly, many homicides in the African Amercian community involving prostitutes are not given priority.

BTW, apparently bodies of prostitutes are still being found in the general area. This one wasn't in one piece and was recent:

http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=225251

 

[Soulmagent]

Ricky was African American ,His picture in in a link of the first page.

So does the FBI think Rickys code is more widespread in human trafficing than Ricky's case itself would lead us to believe?

I know ,I have to have facts to work right. Why the need to crack it?

 

[riverguide]

Because they may be business records related to his dealings with the real killer or killers..and that individual may still be active. The release was very unusual. Thirty years in the business and I have dealt with the FBI many times in high profile cases and I have never seen such a flippant release -by that I mean they appear to be posting it as a matter of professional curiosity. They don't go to thse lengths for a 12 year old cold case involving a disabled man out of professional curiosity. I have handled several serial killers and it is an addiction for them. Sometimes they wait years until they do it again. Sometimes they kill prostitutes several times, then switch to kids and then switch to the elderly. Many of them have shifting victim targets. Just because they have killed a number of women it doesn't mean that they won't kill a man or a child.

 

[shadowraiths]

Here's a reasonably meaty NYT piece on Travis.

Internet Used to Find Man Who Is Charged in 2 of 10 Killings
NYT. June 11, 2002

Excerpt:

After the Post-Dispatch notified the authorities, searchers found human skeletal remains within 50 yards of the location shown by the map's X, about 300 yards from where the decomposed bodies of Ms. Wilson and another victim, Verona Thompson, had been found.

Four days later, investigators determined that the return address on the letter, ''I THRALLDOM,'' was a Web site featuring bondage and sexual torture. Thralldom is defined as the condition of a servant or someone in moral or mental servitude.

A search by Illinois State Police of Internet mapping companies led to an exact match between features on a map sent to the Post-Dispatch and one found on Expedia.com.​

Full Article: click here

That aside, I do find it rather curious that after all these years, they've renewed interest in this case, specifically wrt cracking the "code." The sequences containing the dashes are odd. My first thought was that they were software serials. Then again, perhaps they're case numbers? Or... something else...

The number of murders in the area (18, thx for bringing this up river & bessie), in that time frame, seems rather astounding. And I agree. Trafficking could very well be a possibility. Timing wise, this renewed interest would certainly make more sense. That is, since trafficking is gaining more prominence in the news. Occam's razor, of course, says the renewed interest is purely due to the very natural desire to crack codes. I suppose we'll have to wait to see if old Occam is right in this case.

Either way, I've downloaded all that I could find on the serial killings and will be setting up a crime map. Maybe it will help to tease out (or rule out, for that matter) various angles.

 

[DOC OZ]

Ok, I am very new to this and i am in afghan, in the US Army i am a medic and even with out a great deal of education Latin is in everyday life, sometimes we don't know that it is there.
look at these line that i think we can say are directions or a locale
(FLRSE PRSE ONDE 71NCBE)
(CDNSE PRSE ONSE 74NCBE)
(PRTSE PRSE ONREDE 75NCBE)

In Latin SE is Situs Est which mean it is located... As far as this goes in the rest of the text it might fit if after the SE its a locale or something. or i can mean Space...lol
never got into this as much as this thank you all for this, its better than here in Afghanistan.

 

[Soulmagent]

Because they may be business records related to his dealings with the real killer or killers..and that individual may still be active. The release was very unusual. Thirty years in the business and I have dealt with the FBI many times in high profile cases and I have never seen such a flippant release -by that I mean they appear to be posting it as a matter of professional curiosity. They don't go to thse lengths for a 12 year old cold case involving a disabled man out of professional curiosity. I have handled several serial killers and it is an addiction for them. Sometimes they wait years until they do it again. Sometimes they kill prostitutes several times, then switch to kids and then switch to the elderly. Many of them have shifting victim targets. Just because they have killed a number of women it doesn't mean that they won't kill a man or a child.

Yeah I figured out my answer after I saw bodies were still showing up.

 

[littleboyworm]

New here - I am a IT guy/Analyst by trade. I have never been much of a code breaker but this one caught my eye. Mainly because as I read it it seemed like some of it made sense.

The first thing that caught my eye was 99.84.5 being a IT guy I thought IP address. But it was a little short for that. Then I thought abount what this guy with what I know of his life would be doing and my mind jumped ot the GPS units that just had cordinates. I googled a while and found a point in the middle of KS that lined up with in a N/S direction but that was about it.

Last night my wife and I got talking and another thought struck me. If this guy was into code maybe he had been researching it. I started thinking the number is the number of a library book at his local library. They have a numbering system which is normally how you look up the book.

Being in IT support I am forever jotting down little bits of info on paper. Often when I am researching an issue I circle an area of info just like he did. Most of the time the things I have down wouldn't make sense to others but it would me. This fits in my library idea. I don't think people walking around would write things in boxes, meaning when he wrote the note I think he was sitting. Sitting where and doing what? My guess is on a computer or while on the phone. In 1999 and looking at this guys past I am guessing he may not have had a home PC so my mind thought back to where I got on the internet in 1999.... it was at the public library. 71,74,75 could be page numbers in a book with a title N____ C___ B___ E___ etc..

________
I also had one other thought when I read the note. If the guy got killed he may have been into something illegal then when I read this section : 74SPRKSE29KENOSOLE is see 74 Speakers 29 Consoles. Although if i read the first part of that I would guess it said 26 Miles and I dont know how that would fit in with a inventory list.

 

[tlcya]

Welcome littlewormboy. Your post reminded me that when I first started trying to decipher this a couple days ago I discovered that CDNSE could refer to Chengdu NewStar Electronics Company which is a company that has something to do with the making of digital/radio broadcast equipment. When I heard that Ricky was uneducated I dismissed it but who knows - maybe it means something.

Also found that NCBE stands for National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Educators.

Both of these could mean something - or more probably - nothing. Just found it interesting.

 

[DOC OZ]

even with his education level i still see, what i think is a little hidden insight just like the SE "could" be Latin i find this there is a HWY 2 that goes east west in the northern states, it starts in the the east, wait for it off of I-75, and PTE is if in this case he used it as slang for the word Poniente which is west in Spanish.
again shooting in the dark here.
NMNRCBRNSE PTE 2 PTE WSRC BRNSE

 

[bessie]

Ok, I am very new to this and i am in afghan, in the US Army i am a medic and even with out a great deal of education Latin is in everyday life, sometimes we don't know that it is there.
look at these line that i think we can say are directions or a locale
(FLRSE PRSE ONDE 71NCBE)
(CDNSE PRSE ONSE 74NCBE)
(PRTSE PRSE ONREDE 75NCBE)

In Latin SE is Situs Est which mean it is located... As far as this goes in the rest of the text it might fit if after the SE its a locale or something. or i can mean Space...lol
never got into this as much as this thank you all for this, its better than here in Afghanistan.

This post jumped out at me because I've been wondering in some of the letters are actually Roman numerals. XL appears several times, as well as others.

 

[drew1]

Hi All- new to this post. I was just wondering if maybe one letter or a series of letters could just be there as indicators or triggers that just signify the letter immediately before or after that letter is part of the message. He could have randomly written letters with no specific occurence except when followed by or preceding these "triggers". Just a thought !