Mitchell Gaff pleaded guilty in April 2026 to the 1984 murders of Judith “Judy” Weaver and Susan Vesey in Everett, Washington, closing two cases that had gone cold for roughly four decades. A Snohomish County Superior Court judge sentenced him in May to 50 years to life.
The break in the case came after Everett Police Detective Susan Logothetti obtained a DNA sample from Gaff through a ruse involving chewing gum, submitting it for modern testing in November 2023. Authorities arrested Gaff in May 2024 after the sample matched evidence from Weaver’s killing. DNA later tied him to Vesey’s murder as well.
Weaver was found bound, sexually assaulted and strangled inside her apartment off Rucker Avenue in June 1984. Investigators determined Gaff had cut her clothing with a knife and set a fire to try to destroy evidence. Police initially suspected her fiancé, Bill Richards, who remained a person of interest until his death in 1994. Vesey was found beaten and bound in her Everett home on June 2, 1984 — the morning of her 21st birthday.
A long record of violence
Court records show Gaff’s history of sexual violence stretches back decades before the murders were solved. In 1979, a jury convicted him of first-degree burglary and second-degree assault after he bound a woman’s hands, beat her with a pistol and smashed her head against concrete before she escaped, according to a Washington Court of Appeals opinion. He received probation and work release.
While still on probation in 1984, Gaff broke into an Everett home and raped two teenage sisters, ages 14 and 16, at knifepoint. A judge handed down an exceptional 138-month sentence and revoked his probation.
Before his scheduled release, the state petitioned to commit him as a sexually violent predator. During psychological evaluations, Gaff admitted to making obscene phone calls and committing sexual assaults — including six rapes, according to court records. A jury found he met the legal threshold for civil commitment, a decision the Washington Court of Appeals upheld in April 1998. A state-retained psychologist diagnosed him with sexual sadism and found him likely to reoffend, while a defense expert believed he could live safely in the community under controlled conditions.
From maximum confinement to the street
By 2005, state evaluators determined Gaff no longer required maximum confinement, and in 2006 he moved from the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island to a secure halfway house in Seattle’s SoDo district. The arrangement required GPS monitoring and supervision whenever he left the facility, and it barred him from challenging his sexually violent predator status for eight years.
That civil commitment ended in September 2018, when a court dismissed the sexually violent predator petition against him and released him unconditionally, according to a 2019 report in The Olympian. Gaff later lived in Olympia under the alias “Sam Wise Price.”
Forensic psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland, who is not connected to the case, said ignoring a predator’s own admissions carries real risk. “Psychologically, if he’d confessed but discovered there’d be no consequence, he’d likely feel emboldened to potentially repeat it,” she said. She also noted the legal difficulty of keeping someone confined past their sentence: “It’s tricky to hold them beyond their sentence, and sometimes it means having to prove they’re an imminent danger, not just a possible one.”
Detectives suspect more victims
Everett police are now reviewing other unsolved homicides, sexual assaults and cold cases for possible ties to Gaff. “This is ongoing. I absolutely believe there are more victims,” Detective Logothetti said, pointing to his admissions to rapes made during psychological evaluations decades ago.
Logothetti said Gaff told evaluators he would often alter his account of events “without giving away too much.” “He said it was amusing to him to change details in his admissions, which his treatment team did not pick up on over the years,” she said.
Detectives have compared details from Gaff’s disclosures to unsolved cases across Washington and other states, but have not identified additional victims or crimes since his 2024 arrest or 2026 guilty pleas, according to Logothetti. Gaff’s defense attorney, Heather Wolfenbarger, declined to comment.
Anyone with information about other potential victims linked to Gaff is asked to call the Everett Police Department tip line at 425-257-8450.
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