Authorities are continuing to look for a Virginia boy who went missing while he was home alone more than 10 years ago.
Quinn R. Woodfolk was 11 years old and had been by himself at his Charlottesville home on July 4, 1988. He was gone when his father came home, and authorities don’t know where Quinn went or why he disappeared, said Melinda Stevens, director of the missing children’s division at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“We have very little information as to the circumstances,” she said.
The center has distributed posters and age-progressed photos in hopes of finding Woodfolk.
The organization has also collected DNA reference samples from several of Woodfolk’s family members, Stevens said, something that is commonly done in long-term missing-person cases.
That way, she said, if the body of an unidentified individual is found, authorities can use the samples in the family-reference section of the Combined DNA Index System database — known as CODIS — to determine whether the body belongs to someone who has been reported missing at some point in the past.
“DNA is the gold standard for identification,” Stevens said.
Woodfolk may go by the nickname “Lil’ Quinn,” according to the center and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
He would now be 34 years old.
Woodfolk is described as a black man with brown eyes and black hair. He has a birth mark on the top of his head and a scar near his eye.
Anyone who has information about his case is asked to call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST (843-5678) or the Charlottesville Police Department at 434-970-3280.
