CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Elizabeth Watts walked an Eyewitness News crew around to the back of her house where a thief broke in on a Sunday morning in March.

By the time she got home, police were there.

“We had a walk-through with the police officers. It took an hour and a half, and in that time they caught the guy and got all of our stuff back,” she said.

Her case was solved that quickly, but police were hoping for more.

“We had neighbors that were broken into. We had a couple of people that were repeat victims in the same two-week period of time,” said Detective Ed Gallaway of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

Gallaway said he believes the same suspect was responsible for as many as nine break-ins in that neighborhood in two weeks, so detectives took a DNA sample from him, hoping the crime lab could match it against DNA they'd found at the other break-in scenes.

“So that request was put in to have the DNA at the scene be compared against the DNA collected from the suspect,” Gallaway said.

“And you're still waiting (for the results)?” asked reporter Mark Becker.

“Yes, but that was only four months ago,” Gallaway said.

The crime lab’s director, Roger Thompson, said the lab is swamped.

Thompson showed Eyewitness News files from almost 800 DNA cases that are in line to be analyzed -- many of them dating back to last year or even further.

Part of the problem, he said, is that DNA evidence is proving to be so valuable that detectives are using it in a lot more cases, like break-ins. But the bigger problem is that he simply can't keep DNA analysts in the lab, he said. In the last two years, he's lost several to other crime labs and he now has three jobs open.

“There's more demand out there than there are qualified DNA analysts,” he said.

With a short staff and a long list of cases, Thompson and his staff have had to make tough choices. They’re moving homicide and rape cases to the front of the line, while cases like break-ins are put on hold.

“Are there criminals out there simply because we can't get to some of this stuff fast enough?” Becker asked.

“Sure, sure,” Thompson said.

Gallaway has a list of almost 300 break-in suspects who've given DNA samples that still haven't been analyzed, including the sample from that suspect in the break-ins in Watts' neighborhood, where residents are still waiting for an answer.

“I don't think they ever determined it was the same guy because of the DNA stuff,” Watts said.

The trouble finding DNA analysts doesn’t appear to be just about money. In researching the story, Eyewitness News compared starting salaries in Charlotte and in other crime labs. The starting salary in the Queen City is $56,000 to $59,000 while the State Bureau of Investigation crime lab is offering just $40,000 to $42,000. The South Carolina state crime lab is offering $37,370 for new analysts and the range at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation lab is $35,000 to $49,000. In Virginia, analysts with no experience start at $47,000 to $50,000.

One other factor is the economy is making it difficult for people to move, and Thompson said the lab actually had someone hired, who then said he or she couldn't sell their home in Florida so the hire backed out of the deal.