A number of years ago the FBI released what they believed to be encrypted notes that could help solve a murder case. The FBI had the notes for over a decade and could not crack the code. As a last resort they reached out to the public and despite getting so much feedback they had to create a web page dedicated to the case the notes have still not been decrypted.
Here is one of the two notes released:
I will admit to having spent more time than is healthy trying to break the code. Something about the challenge of trying to break a code that no one else could was exciting to me. Eventually I didn't care about being the one to solve it. I just wanted it solved so I could see what they said. Eventually I packed my notes away and managed to forget about Ricky.
A couple of weeks ago I was driving somewhere with my daughter and the topic of trying to break that old code came up. So, I am back at it trying to figure the notes out again and thought I would record my efforts here so that maybe someone else might feel like joining in the quest.
Earlier this week I had what I think might be a breakthrough. This is not my first rodeo so I won't say I have solved it. I returned to an old theory of mine that it isn't so much a code as the writings of a person with severe dyslexia. The problem with that line of thinking is if you just decide you can reorder letters to say what ever you want you really will never have proof if you are right.
I decided to settle on this one tiny section to see if I could make sense of it.
I have seen a number of different transcriptions of this but many think it is 1/2 MUNDDL5E
It is generally accepted that the letter E is probably a spacer throughout the notes so I'll ignore that letter.
I thought the MUN actually looked like the number 362 when rotated. The next four look like 0075 but upside down so if you flip that around it becomes 362-5700. When I did a search on those numbers and Saint Louis I saw that many number with the 362 prefix belonged to Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Having read pretty much everything I could on this case I remembered that Ricky was treated at Barnes-Jewish Hospital just days before he was found dead.
So, now the next step for me is to use the same method to try to find other items in this section of the note to prove the dyslexia theory.
Overall I think the notes are not encrypted at all but the combination of dyslexia and phonetic spelling just makes them very difficult to read. If anyone has any thoughts I am always interested to hear them.