A Colorado crime lab analyst faces more than 100 criminal charges in connection with allegations she altered reports in sexual assault cases.
Yvonne “Missy” Woods was charged with 52 counts of forgery, 48 counts of attempting to influence a public official, one count of first-degree perjury and one count of cybercrime, according to the First Judicial District Attorney. Woods is accused of changing and deleting quantification values, rerunning batches of DNA without documentation, and hiding potential contamination.
She allegedly submitted reports stating “No Male DNA Found” in more than 30 sexual assault cases in which DNA was found or contamination was present.
Jail records show Woods was in custody Thursday morning. An attorney named in an affidavit for Woods’ arrest warrant did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
In November 2023, Colorado authorities asked the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation to investigate Woods’ work, the affidavit states. She worked at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation from January 1994 until her retirement in November 2023.
According to the affidavit, an error was discovered by a Colorado Bureau of Investigation intern two months before the request. The intern, who was not identified, was assigned a project to review quantification data and alerted lab management that specific data appeared to be missing, the affidavit states.
An internal investigation was launched to review all of Woods’ cases, finding several instances of deleted or altered data, according to the affidavit.
In a recorded interview, Woods was asked about her work at the lab and how the contaminated DNA samples were handled. Woods told investigators that before about 2017 or 2018, some contamination was accepted, according to the affidavit.
But since then, she reportedly said, any contamination would have to be addressed, and she agreed with investigators that it would take “considerable time” to reanalyze batches of DNA. Woods was asked during the interview about discrepancies in her work, including a time she was placed on leave in 2018 due to concerns about manipulated or altered data, according to the affidavit.
Woods reportedly said during the interview that she did not know if similar instances of data manipulation were all intentional and that she could not give a timeline for when she would have started altering the data.
“She was asked what the benefit would be of deleting or manipulating data and she quickly responded, ‘being able to report it,'” the affidavit states.
At one point, the affidavit says, Woods was asked if she deleted the data “simply to move specific cases forward quickly, to avoid having to do additional work and she agreed.”
More than 500 cases were affected by Woods’ inaccurate reporting starting in 2008, according to the affidavit. These cases are now being “questioned” due to alleged data manipulation.
The prosecutor’s office said the financial cost of Woods’ alleged misconduct was more than $11 million.
A Wisconsin-based company was hired to review the office’s policies and procedures following the fallout and provide solutions for any potential improvements, according to NBC affiliate KUSA. The company was awarded a $770,000 contract, the station said.
