The Weld County Sheriff’s Office fired a forensic DNA analyst this week after discovering abnormalities in her case work and plans to pursue criminal charges against her, officials announced Friday.
Following a month-long internal investigation, Chiara Wuensch was fired Wednesday from the Weld County Sheriff’s Office at the Northern Colorado Regional Forensic Lab for anomalies in her case work, violating the Weld County code of proper conduct and breaking the sheriff’s office’s standards of conduct policy, sheriff’s officials said in a news release.
The sheriff’s office will pursue criminal charges against Wuensch over the problems with her work, however just what those charges will be has yet to be determined as the criminal investigation is still ongoing, officials said.
Weld County officials did not disclose the nature of what they only called “anomalies” in Wuensch’s work, but said they were limited and that it’s too soon to tell what impact they will have on criminal cases she worked on during her 10-year career with the agency..
The problems with Wuensch’s DNA work were brought to light during a separate and unrelated investigation conducted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation into its own personnel, sheriff’s officials said
Weld County officials did not say which CBI investigation unearthed the errors in Wuensch’s work, but the state agency has been focused for months on an ongoing, multimillion-dollar problem: flawed work by longtime CBI analyst Yvonne “Missy” Woods.
In early February, the CBI said thousands of DNA samples in criminal cases would need to be retested due to abnormalities in Woods’ work at a $3 million price tag. More than $4 million more was allocated to district attorney’s offices across Colorado to address claims of people being wrongly convicted by Woods’ forensic work.
Woods resigned in lieu of being disciplined in November 2023 after 29 years with the CBI, according to a resignation form obtained by The Denver Post through a public records request.
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The former CBI scientist had her hands in numerous high-profile criminal cases across Colorado over the past years, including the kidnapping, rape and murder of Rhonda Maloney in 1994; the prosecution of Aaron Thompson in the death of his daughter in 2005; the Kobe Bryant rape case in 2004; and the murder of University of Colorado student Susannah Chase in 2009.
Reporter Shelly Bradbury contributed to this report.
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