EX-CBI DNA ANALYST MISSY WOODS GETS 10 YEARS FOR ALTERING EVIDENCE IN MORE THAN 1,000 CASES
GOLDEN, Colo. — Yvonne “Missy” Woods learned her fate on Tuesday.
The former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst — who pleaded guilty to purposely altering forensic work that touched more than a thousand criminal cases — was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Jefferson County District Judge Andrew Poland imposed 10 years on the lead count of cybercrime, plus concurrent terms of six years for perjury, six years for attempting to influence a public servant, and three years for forgery. The time runs together. She also faces three years of mandatory parole. The plea range had been 8 to 16 years. Poland landed in the middle.
“At its core, this case is about trust,” the judge said. “Ms. Woods held this trust for decades and she breached it.”
Woods, 66, spent nearly 30 years inside CBI labs in Lakewood and later Arvada. In June she pleaded guilty to those four felonies. Prosecutors dropped about 100 other counts. She had first been charged in January 2025 after an intern flagged anomalies in 2023. CBI put her on leave. She retired. South Dakota investigators handled the criminal case so Colorado was not investigating its own.
The damage is not one file. CBI’s review identified more than 1,000 impacted cases — updated to 1,045. Investigators said she altered data on evidence items, messed with quality-control samples, skipped documentation, ignored policy, and issued reports that did not match her notes. In more than 30 sexual-assault cases, she reported no male DNA when the data showed male DNA or contamination that required more work. Hundreds of the affected files were sex assaults. The misconduct stretched from 2008 to 2023 and went out to agencies across the state. Cost estimates to retest and unwind the fallout have run into the millions.
This is not a paperwork error. When a lab analyst deletes peaks, short-circuits testing, and then swears to the result, victims lose leads and defendants lose a clean record. At least one murder conviction was vacated. Michael Clark walked out in 2025 after lawyers showed Woods mishandled the DNA; prosecutors said they would try him again. In other homicides, the state took lighter pleas rather than risk a trial built on her work. Even convictions that “stuck” now have an appeal hook.
Woods told the court she accepted responsibility. Friends hugged her outside. That does not put male DNA back on a kit that was written off as clean. It does not give a rape survivor the years a detective closed the file. It does not restore a jury’s right to hear an honest lab report.
DNA is supposed to be the science the system leans on when memory fails and politics shouts. Woods made it a productivity cheat. Colorado is still counting the cases
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