Columbus cold-case murder suspect now jailed here after capture in SC. Court date set
The suspect caught last month in South Carolina and charged in a 2003 cold-case homicide has been extradited to Columbus and is set for his first court hearing here.
Accused of murder in the July 18, 2003, slaying of Albert Carter Woolfolk, Alvin Shane Barfield, 46, will have a preliminary hearing in Columbus Recorder’s Court at 9 a.m. Friday, according to jail records.
He was booked into the Muscogee County Jail at 2:27 p.m. Tuesday, records show.
Investigators here got a warrant for Barfield’s arrest on Dec. 29, 2020. The U.S. Marshals’ Fugitive Unit arrested him at 6 a.m. Jan. 21 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he was held in the J. Reuben Detention Center in Conway, S.C.
Barfield waived extradition to Columbus in a court hearing the next day.
The homicide
Police in September announced they had new leads in the case, much of it related to witnesses’ accounts of Woolfolk’s leaving a bar with a regular patron known to be a belligerent, heavy drinker.
That was around midnight July 16, 2003, at a sports bar called Coach’s Corner, then located in the Gentian Corners shopping center. The suspect allegedly was one of three men with whom Woolfolk left that night.
Thirty-four hours passed before Woolfolk’s mother and a worker for his aluminum siding company found the 45-year-old dead about 10:35 a.m. July 18 in his home at 2634 Habersham Avenue, off Macon Road north of Cross Country Plaza.
He had been stabbed multiple times, police said.
At a news conference Jan. 21, police said they had physical evidence linking Barfield to the homicide, but would not be more specific.
Police believe Woolfolk was killed in his home within hours of leaving the bar, sometime in the early morning hours of July 17, 2003. He was married with a newborn son, but his wife and child were not home.
Police still urge anyone who from 2000 to 2004 might have encountered the suspect or his two companions to contact Detective Stuart Carter at 706-225-4319 or stuartcarter@columbusga.org.