Sierah Joughin was only half a mile from home when she vanished during a twilight bike ride near Metamora, Ohio, on July 19, 2016. The 20-year-old University of Toledo business student had just kissed her boyfriend goodbye and promised to text when she arrived. She never did.
Her disappearance, the intense three-day search, and the chilling evidence that followed are the focus of 20/20’s two-hour special, She Was Almost Home, re-airing on ABC this Friday, July 4, 2025, at 9 pm–11 pm ET before streaming on Hulu.
Sierah Joughin was abducted. Three days later, searchers found her bound, gagged, and asphyxiated in a shallow cornfield grave, murdered by repeat violent offender James Dean Worley. The sections below outline what happened to Sierah Joughin, identify her killer, and explain the continuing legal and legislative impact of her murder.
Sierah Joughin’s disappearance and frantic search
Around 6:45 pm on July 19, Sierah Joughin and her boyfriend, Josh Kolasinski, split at County Road 6 so she could pedal the last stretch alone. As per an ABC News report dated October 27, 2023, Kolasinski recalled:
“I remember exactly what I said. I kissed her, I told her I loved her and to text me when she got home.”
When the promised text never arrived, family members alerted deputies. Within hours, volunteers, K-9 units, and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) were combing cornfields.
Searchers located her purple bicycle, sunglasses, men’s tools, and motorcycle tracks in broken stalks, signs of a struggle that convinced detectives they were dealing with an abduction. BCI special agent Megan Roberts was called to the scene in the early-morning darkness.
“It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. You just had this eerie feeling that you knew that this was an abduction site,” Roberts stated, as noted by the ABC report.
Inside Worley’s “barn of horrors,” evidence
Investigators canvassing County Road 6 soon interviewed neighbour James Dean Worley, who volunteered details, a lost helmet, a screwdriver, and fuses that had never been released publicly. A warrant for his nearby farm revealed a hidden room beneath hay bales containing restraints, lingerie, a blood-stained freezer, and handcuffs: evidence authorities dubbed the “barn of horrors”.
On the third day of the search, investigators discovered Sierah Joughin’s body, bound and gagged, in a shallow burial site roughly two miles from where she vanished. The autopsy determined she died from asphyxiation. Worley’s modus operandi echoed a July 1990 attack on cyclist Robin Gardner, who survived and later testified.
"I felt very strongly I had to be [Sierah’s] voice. I knew the fear. She wasn't there. I had to speak for her," Gardner told ABC.
Trial, sentence, and the legacy of Sierah’s Law
A Fulton County jury convicted Worley of aggravated murder, kidnapping, and related counts in March 2018. Judge Jeffrey Robinson imposed a death sentence on April 18, 2018, a decision the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed in 2021.
Execution dates have been stayed while federal appeals proceed, but Worley remains on Ohio’s death row. The family’s advocacy led lawmakers to pass Senate Bill 231, widely known as "Sierah’s Law", which created a public violent-offender database that went live in March 2019.
Today, nearly 5,000 names appear in that registry, and safety programs such as the annual “Joggin’ 4 Joughin” 5K keep Sierah Joughin’s memory at the centre of community crime-prevention efforts.
Stay tuned for more updates.