GIST: "Missy Woods faces 102 separate felony counts after investigators accused of her of deleting data and other anomalies in testing."
COLORADO, USA — A notorious cold case is among those in which a former state analyst is accused of deleting data during DNA testing, 9NEWS Investigates has learned.
Yvonne "Missy" Woods, who was involved in genetic testing in thousands of criminal cases, resigned from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) under a cloud in late 2023 after an intern discovered missing data and other problems with some of her work.
Woods now faces 102 felony charges – including cybercrime, perjury, 48 counts of attempting to influence a public servant and 52 counts of forgery of government documents.
Documents obtained by 9NEWS Investigates show that she was accused of deleting data and failing to complete required work during DNA testing in 2009 that she conducted on evidence in the then-unsolved January 1984 murder of Patricia Smith in Lakewood.
Smith was beaten to death with a hammer and sexually assaulted in her townhome.
Six days later, Bruce and Debra Bennett and Melissa, their 7-year-old daughter, were bludgeoned to death in their Aurora home. Melissa was also sexually assaulted, and the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, Vanessa, was horribly injured, but survived.
Alex Ewing was convicted and sentenced for both cases.
At this point, problems discovered by investigators occurred in testing of evidence in the Smith murder. It is not clear whether any questions surround Wood’s testing in the Bennett case.
Still, the bottom line, according to 9NEWS legal analyst Scott Robinson, is troubling. “Even if the shortcuts taken by Missy Woods turn out not to involve significant, important evidence, it still calls into to doubt every single analysis she ever made,” Robinson said. “It makes everyone – victims, defendants, attorneys, judges – wonder how fair was the trial when there was Missy Woods’ testimony in it?”
Woods could not be reached Tuesday for comment. Ewing’s defense attorneys declined to comment.
According to an arrest affidavit, the investigation into Woods honed in on testing on a single, unidentified piece of evidence in Smith’s murder.
During that work, Woods deleted data and “did not complete the required amplification and troubleshooting.”
The affidavit also said she uploaded three versions of the results and deleted data “in all three versions.”
The Smith and Bennett murders went unsolved for more than 34 years. Then, in the summer of 2018, a DNA hit identified Ewing, then serving a prison term in Nevada, as a likely suspect.
Lakewood and Aurora detectives obtained court orders that let them swab Ewing’s mouth. Those swabs were turned over to CBI and Woods handled the testing that linked them to DNA found at both crime scenes.
Documents obtained by 9NEWS Investigates show that the swabs taken by detectives working the Bennett case were turned over to CBI on July 16, 2018, and that Woods completed the testing and wrote a report three days later – on July 19 – that linked Ewing to evidence in the Bennet home.
Investigators working the Smith murder took swabs from Ewing that same week and turned them over to CBI on July 19, 2018.
An Aurora detective received a report six days later linking Ewing to the Smith case.
An internal CBI investigation, obtained by 9NEWS, showed that a colleague found problems with Woods’ work during DNA testing in the Smith case on July 20, 2018.
A colleague reviewing Woods’ work discovered that data had been deleted.
That colleague described what Woods did as “cutting corners” and concluded that Woods could or would be fired for what she’d done.
An Arapahoe County jury convicted Ewing of the Bennett murders in 2021. A Jefferson County jury found him guilty of killing and raping Smith in 2022.
He is serving multiple life sentences.
His attorneys have appealed both convictions. Both are pending with the Colorado Court of Appeals, with rulings possible later this spring.
Robinson said without knowing more about the evidence that was tested back in 2009, it’s hard to gauge whether it could call Ewing’s conviction into question.
Still, his attorneys have options.
“Two choices for Ewing's attorneys,” Robinson said. “Ask the Court of Appeals to send the case to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing or wait and see how the appeal turns out. And if you lose the appeal, raise it on a post-conviction motion, and then there will be evidentiary hearings about the significance of these findings,""
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.9news.com/article/news/investigations/missy-woods-accused-deleted-data-colorado-cold-case/73-1aa675f0-426c-4b86-b5f8-b3bf29d20259
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
