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Art's theft of pretty much everything, dredging culture for its composition, find its emblem here, a social signifier of all of art's making hieroglyphs of itself, items totally meaningless and full.
Some have suggested the notes are meaningless, the random scribblings of a man who by all accounts was functionally illiterate and demonstrated a low IQ. Olson is quick to argue otherwise. He is convinced the codes could contain leads about where McCormick was or with whom he met in the last hours before his corpse was abandoned to rot along with his secrets.
Ricky McCormick always stood out as different from his peers. His mother, Frankie Sparks, describes him as "retarded." His cousin Charles McCormick, who shared a brotherly relationship with Ricky for most of his life, says Ricky would often talk "like he was in another world" and suspects Ricky might have suffered from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
"The only thing he could write was his name," Sparks says. "He didn't write in no code." Charles McCormick recalls Ricky "couldn't spell anything, just scribble."
Don Olson stands by his assessment, however.
"I have every confidence that Ricky wrote the notes," Olson says. -riverfronttimes
Art's theft of pretty much everything, dredging culture for its composition, find its emblem here, a social signifier of all of art's making hieroglyphs of itself, items totally meaningless and full.