Judy Carol Rawlings was sixteen years old and lived with her family on Marsh Mountain Road in the rural community of Sophia, North Carolina. On the morning of October 3rd, 2001, her mother, Tammy Schmidt, left home around seven thirty a.m. for a doctor’s appointment related to cancer treatment. That was the last time Schmidt saw her daughter alive. According to family accounts, Judy had received permission from her grandmother to go for a ride on a four-wheeler with a neighbor. She never returned home.
Judy was reported missing on October 5th, 2001. Tony Ray Sierra Jr., then eighteen years old and a neighbor, told investigators he had given her a ride on a four-wheeler and dropped her off at Farlow Oil Company on October 4th.
On October 19th, 2001, approximately two weeks after she disappeared, a hunter found Judy’s body in a field roughly half a mile from her home off Groom Road. The remains were partially clothed and had been scavenged by animals.
An autopsy was performed, but advanced decomposition prevented determination of a precise cause of death. However, the report noted that the circumstances were “extremely suspicious for an intentional fatal injury,” leading authorities to rule the death a homicide.
The Randolph County Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation immediately, but soon reached a dead end. In 2019, nearly eighteen years later, detectives reopened the case with renewed vigor, leveraging advances in forensic technology. Lead investigator Justin McAdams stated at the time that evidence had been sent for advanced testing and that the team was re-interviewing witnesses and revisiting every detail.
The case gained national attention when it was featured in an episode of the Investigation Discovery series Breaking Homicide in 2019, titled “Lost in the Woods.” The show helped spotlight the investigation and generate potential leads, though the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office emphasized that certain portrayals in the episode did not reflect their official findings.
Tony Ray Sierra Jr. has been identified by investigators as a person of interest in the slaying. He was never charged in Judy’s death. In 2020, he faced separate charges involving felony sex offenses against a child, prompting renewed focus on his potential connection to the 2001 case. As of available reports, no arrests have been made in Judy Rawlings’ murder.
The case remains active on the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office cold cases list. A $5,000 reward offered by the Office of the Governor at the time of the investigation is supplemented by an ongoing $5,000 reward from Randolph County Crime Stoppers for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
Crime Immemorial 