Missy Woods, analyst at center of Colorado DNA scandal, charged with 102 felonies

Shelly Bradbury, The Denver Post on Jan 22, 2025

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DENVER — A longtime Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who mishandled DNA testing in hundreds of criminal cases was charged this week with 102 felonies, court records show.

Yvonne “Missy” Woods, 64, was charged Tuesday with 48 counts of attempting to influence a public servant, 52 counts of forgery of a government-issued document, a single count of perjury and a single count of committing a cybercrime, court records show.

The most serious count is the cybercrime charge, which alleges she altered, damaged or interrupted data in a computer system in such a way as to cause more than $1 million in damages. That charge is a class 2 felony, which typically caries between eight and 24 years in prison.

Woods turned herself in to the Jefferson County jail, where she remained in custody Wednesday on a $50,000 cash bond. She is scheduled to appear in court Thursday morning; it was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney.

Woods retired from CBI in lieu of termination in late 2023 after the agency discovered widespread problems in her work. She deleted, omitted or manipulated DNA data in at least 1,003 criminal cases during her 29-year career, the CBI found in an internal investigation.

The CBI allowed Woods to stay on the job despite repeated concerns about the quality and reliability of her work over at least a decade and failed to seriously investigate several warnings about her professional conduct, the internal affairs report found. She had a reputation among her colleagues for cutting corners in order to be a high-producer in the agency, yet was trusted with the CBI’s most high-profile cases.

The criminal charges follow a year-long investigation by the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. Investigators turned their findings over to Jefferson County District Attorney Alexis King on Dec. 23. She sought additional information from CBI, which she received Jan. 15, the office said in a news release.

CBI estimates Woods’ misconduct has cost the agency more than $11 million, according to the news release.

“Based on the available facts and after careful legal analysis, we have filed charges and will now proceed with a criminal prosecution,” King said in the news release.

Woods’ professional misconduct is expected to reverberate across Colorado’s legal system for years and cost millions of dollars to address. Already, prosecutors in Boulder offered a plea deal to a triple murderer that allows him the opportunity to leave prison in his lifetime, and said the deal was due in part to Woods’ misconduct on the case. Another man claims he was wrongfully convicted of murder based on her faulty testing.

The CBI also received $3 million in funding from state legislators to retest 3,000 DNA samples through a third-party laboratory, and received $4.4 million to pay out to district attorney’s offices across Colorado to address claims by people who say they were wrongly convicted because of Woods’ work.

The Office of Colorado State Public Defender has also sought $5 million to take on wrongful conviction cases for such clients.

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