Colorado's star DNA scientist manipulated results in 652+ cases over 15 years, and the state is now spending $7.5 million to figure out how many convictions are wrong

Yvonne 'Missy' Woods was the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's most relied-upon DNA analyst for nearly three decades. Police and prosecutors across the state depended on her work to solve cold cases and convict violent offenders, including infamous murderers like 'Colorado Hammer Killer' Alex Ewing. In 2023, an internal review revealed that Woods had manipulated DNA testing data in at least 652 cases between 2008 and 2023, posting incomplete results and altering data. She was placed on leave in October 2023 and forced to retire the following month. The CBI subsequently stated that all of her work is now in question, and a separate review of her cases from 1994 to 2008 is underway. She now faces more than 100 felony charges. The consequences cascade in both directions. For people convicted on the basis of Woods's manipulated results, their convictions may be illegitimate. For victims whose cases Woods handled, the real perpetrators may still be free because the forensic evidence was compromised. Colorado has allocated $7.5 million for retesting evidence and reviewing impacted cases, but that process takes years. Meanwhile, as of June 2025, the average turnaround time for processing sexual assault kits in Colorado ballooned to 570 days because the scandal consumed lab capacity and eroded institutional trust. Over 1,200 sexual assault kits await testing. New victims are waiting a year and a half for their evidence to be processed because the state's forensic infrastructure collapsed under the weight of one analyst's misconduct. This problem persists because crime labs operate with minimal real-time oversight of individual analysts. Woods worked for 15 years manipulating data before anyone caught it. Lab quality assurance systems are designed to check whether procedures were followed, not whether an analyst is deliberately falsifying results. Peer review, when it exists, is perfunctory. The structural incentive for crime lab managers is to process cases quickly to keep law enforcement clients happy, not to scrutinize their own analysts' work. When an analyst is productive and prosecutors are satisfied, nobody looks too closely. The discovery of misconduct is almost always accidental or triggered by an external complaint, never by the lab's own quality systems.