A hearing in Weld County called to shed light on the scope of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA science/testing debacle was postponed when only one of three parties showed up.

That party was the district attorney who called the hearing in the first place.

Michael Rourke, 19th Judicial District Attorney, subpoenaed the Colorado Attorney General’s office — which is representing the CBI — to appear before 19th District Judge Marcelo Kopcow to produce an elusive internal affairs investigative report into former CBI DNA scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods.

State officials announced a week and a half ago that DNA findings in more than 1,000 criminal cases in Colorado are now “in question” due to data manipulation by Woods. 

Woods did much of the DNA work on a 45-year-old murder cold case which is awaiting trial in Weld County. As the CBI Northern Colorado liaison, Rourke said that Woods worked on 85 cases from 2008 to the present.

But according to Attorney General’s Office spokesperson Lawrence Pacheco, the court clerk told his office that they didn’t need to show up, so no one from Phil Weiser’s office came to the courtroom to represent CBI, a confusing development which Rourke described as woefully inadequate.

“I’m tired of CBI and the Attorney General’s office dragging their feet. That’s why I issued a subpoena in the first place. This is absurd!” said Rourke, so frustrated that he slapped the podium where he was standing.

Defendant James Dye and his attorneys from the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender were also missing from the hearing until Kopcow’s court clerk was able to corral one of the lawyers on Webex. Deputy Public Defender Reshaad Shirazi explained that an office-wide computer crash may have caused him to miss an email alerting his team to the Tuesday morning hearing.

At issue is a nearly 100-page CBI law enforcement internal affairs report on hundreds of cases which were investigated by Wood in her 29-year career with the CBI.

The report, which purportedly includes whistleblower interviews, alleged that Woods “cut corners” on some of her investigations. Prosecutors across the state are fuming that the anomalies will mean postponements because of a possible retesting backlog. Included among those cases are decades-old murders, which are set for trial and now sit in limbo.

“What she’s alleged to have done could call into question the quality control policies and procedures from the CBI forensic laboratory,” Rourke said.

Though the AG’s office did not attend the hearing, it filed an argument requesting that only the redacted version of the Woods Investigative File be released to both sides — but not to the general public — in order to protect privacy of the law enforcement witnesses. 

Last Wednesday, a Boulder County triple murder which was supposed to start in April was postponed for months as attorneys for the defendant retest DNA results which Woods performed. Rourke is arguing for the entire file to be unsealed to the public. 

In the Weld County case, James Dye, 66, faces charges in connection to the with rape and murder of Evelyn “Kay” Day, an Aim’s Community College teacher whose body was found five days after Thanksgiving 1979 sexually assaulted and strangled with the belt from her own jacket. 

He was not arrested until 2021 after his DNA matched the profile found from spermatozoa found on Day’s body, her coat, pantyhose, underwear, pants and the belt.

The case was dormant until 2011 when technology had advanced enough to identify DNA from Day’s husband, Chuck, on the belt which strangled her. Though the sperm found on Day’s body did not match that of Chuck Day, he was considered a suspect in his wife’s murder but was never arrested, according to a January 2024 Supreme Court filing.

It wasn’t until 2020 that the DNA found on Day’s clothing and body was resubmitted to the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, and matched the DNA profile to Dye, a ex-convict living in Wichita.

During a February 2022 preliminary hearing, Dye’s attorneys argued that Chuck Day was an alternate suspect, as the couple was reported to have been having marital struggles.

Still, during the evidentiary hearing, Woods testified that Day’s finger clippings samples showed it was 17 trillion times more likely to be her and Dye’s DNA rather than that of Day and an unidentified person. 

Rourke is worried that uncertainty which looms around Wood’s results in the Day murder will impact the work of other forensic scientists and thus make more work for prosecutors as they scramble to retest evidence.