Missy Woods sentenced marks the end of the criminal case and the beginning of a cleanup Colorado has barely started. District Court Judge Andrew Poland sentenced former Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensic scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods, 66, to ten years in the Colorado Department of Corrections on September 8 for criminal conduct committed between 2008 and 2023. The ten years came on the cybercrime count and carry three years of mandatory parole, with six years each on perjury and attempting to influence a public servant running at the same time rather than back to back.
The case did not start with an audit or a whistleblower complaint from the top. It started with an intern. In September 2023, a CBI intern found missing DNA data in a sample Woods had processed in 2018, and a broader review turned up similar alterations and deletions, which pushed CBI to ask the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation to run an independent criminal investigation. When a forensic scientist told Woods she would not sign off on the review and explained what she had found, Woods said nothing and looked befuddled, according to the affidavit.
Another forensic scientist reported spotting inconsistencies in Woods’ work back in March 2014. That person’s manager told Woods to correct the errors, and she offered no questions and no explanation for why the data was missing. She kept working rape kits for nine more years after that.
What she actually did was quieter than tampering with a sample. She changed the paperwork. Woods went into batch notes to add zeroes or increase values so the ratio of male DNA to total human DNA came out distorted. She also re-ran testing without documenting it and uploaded multiple versions of the same testing, both against CBI policy. Prosecutors said she manually altered the amount of DNA on sexual assault swabs and always reduced it, across cases involving women and children between 2008 and 2023.
Reducing the male DNA reading matters because that number is often what decides whether a lab reports a usable profile at all. A swab that would have produced a suspect can come back looking like there was nothing there.
CBI identified 1,045 impacted cases as of August 2025. State officials say more than 400 of the affected cases were sexual assaults. Chief Deputy District Attorney Darren Kafka told the court that a single edit Woods made in one case ultimately called 27 other cases into question, including 13 sexual assaults, five of them involving children, and two homicides. He said the resulting confusion will take Colorado years to untangle, long after her sentence ends, and that the effort has already cost the state millions. The price tag was estimated at more than $11 million two years ago, with no updated figure since.
Woods pleaded guilty on June 23 to four felonies, a deal that consolidated the original charges and required her to accept responsibility for the full scope of the conduct. The agreement set a mandatory prison range of eight to sixteen years. She had originally been charged with 102 felony counts in January 2025: 52 counts of forgery of a government-issued document, 48 counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of first-degree perjury and one count of cybercrime. Her attorney, Tom Ward, asked the judge for eight years. Woods cried as she gave a personal statement at the hearing.
District Attorney Alexis King said the sentencing closes the criminal prosecution but is only the start of repairing the damage, and that Woods undermined the confidence that law enforcement, defendants, victims and the public have to be able to place in forensic evidence. CBI said her actions do not reflect the work or integrity of the people who work there.
Two things are still open. A restitution hearing is set for November 12. And the retesting backlog remains, though state lawmakers did pass a bill last year, prompted by this investigation, that creates procedures for reporting misconduct.
Every one of those 400 plus survivors was told at some point what her swab showed. For an unknown number of them, that was not true.
