As the scandal at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensic lab moved through its second year, a series of startling developments and revelations emerged with no clear end in sight and the full toll still unknown. 

At the heart of a scandal unlike any before in state history, is the state agency’s once most revered and prolific DNA scientist: Yvonne Woods. 

In January, after more than a year of speculation, Woods, who goes by Missy, turned herself in to Jefferson County authorities and was charged with 102 felonies. She stands accused of deleting and altering findings in more than a thousand criminal cases during her 29-year-career at CBI and is awaiting trial.   

She’s scheduled to enter a plea Feb. 11, 2026, after a year of delays.

As this year closes, CBI now acknowledges 1,045 cases were impacted by her alleged deception and misconduct, or roughly one in 10 of the 10,786 cases she worked. 

And throughout the year, reverberations continued to be felt: 

On Jan. 9, the Denver Gazette broke the story that the time it took for the state lab to process rape kits had risen to 517 days because workers had been diverted to review past Woods cases, leaving sexual assault victims in limbo. 

Also, in January a lawsuit was filed alleging shoddy oversight in the CBI lab where other scientists, tasked with reviewing Woods’ work, approved her findings in one minute. Months later an independent audit of lab procedures faulted past leadership with allowing mistakes to mount, ignoring warnings, and fostering a climate described as “autocratic” and “punitive” if concerns were voiced. 

In April, the Denver Police Department announced its own crime lab was reviewing 422 past rape kits initially analyzed by Woods, presumably looking for errors or faulty conclusions. By August, the number of cases under review by Denver rose to more than 1,300. 

Yet, the breadth of the scandal remains unknown as CBI, prosecutors, and even the state attorney general remain close-lipped about what has been found, what can be released, and the full impact to those potentially wrongly convicted or suspects who might have escaped prosecution because of lab misconduct.  

Just 14 retests of Woods’ past findings had been requested by state district attorneys, who, along with some law enforcement agencies, are the only ones who have knowledge of which cases are affected — or roughly 1% of the cases CBI has flagged as problem cases. 

CBI’s new director, Armando Saldate III, said in an August interview he planned to increase transparency and accountability but could not release more information until after the Woods’ criminal case closed.   

But perhaps the year’s most noteworthy development was in the Michael Clark case, where retesting of the DNA used to convict him for a 1994 Boulder murder showed inconsistencies in Woods’ original conclusions.  

On April 11, Clark’s 2012 conviction in the murder of Marty Grisham was vacated and three days later he was freed from prison on bond after serving more than 12 years of a life sentence without parole. 

In an exclusive May interview with The Denver Gazette, Clark said he felt vindicated but also was wary as there was a chance he could be retried. That decision came in September when Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty announced Clark would be retried for the 31-year-old murder. 

A second trial of Clark is scheduled for 2026.