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 52 counts of forgery of a government-issued document, 48 counts of attempting to influence a public servant, a single count of perjury and a single count of committing a cybercrime, court records show. The most serious charge is the cybercrime count, 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 carries between eight and 24 years in prison. Woods turned herself in to the Jefferson County jail Wednesday afternoon, where she remained in custody 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 the 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. A 35-page affidavit filed against her in the criminal case widely echoes the findings of the CBI’s internal investigation, which found that Woods took unethical — and now allegedly criminal — shortcuts in order to work faster, produce more cases and avoid time-consuming but mandatory troubleshooting. She told criminal investigators that she deleted the data for “expediency,” because it moved cases along — so she could work seven cases a day instead of five, she said, according to the affidavit. 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 the CBI, which she received Jan. 15, the office said in a news release. The affidavit lists 58 separate criminal cases between 2008 and 2023 in which Woods manipulated data, including 38 sexual assault cases, six homicides, two robberies and a variety of other cases ranging from missing persons to a vehicular assault. The cases spanned the state. Woods told internal affairs investigators she deleted data about low quantities of male DNA in some sex assault cases so that she wouldn’t have to complete additional testing that was unlikely to produce conclusive results on those small genetic samples. She deleted the data in sex assault cases “because it was easy,” she said, according to an internal affairs report. She admitted at the time that she may have wanted to avoid questions from defense attorneys about why additional testing on the deleted samples was not done. 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The CBI estimates Woods’ misconduct has already cost the agency more than $11 million, according to the affidavit. Some of those reverberations have already been felt in court. Prosecutors in Boulder offered a plea deal to a triple murderer in June 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. Prosecutors in Douglas County this month offered a lesser charge and prison sentence to a man in a 1985 homicide for the same reason. Another man claims he was wrongfully convicted of murder based on her faulty testing. The CBI said earlier this month that its backlog of sexual assault testing almost doubled in 2024 because the agency devoted so many people to retesting Woods’ old cases that it did not have the staff to keep up with new sexual assault investigations. The CBI now takes 517 days to test sexual assault cases, far and beyond the state’s goal of 90 days. The state agency has hired an outside consulting firm to review its forensics practices in an attempt to restore public confidence in its employees’ work. The CBI 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 attorneys’ 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 sought $5 million to take on wrongful conviction cases for such clients. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.