Man pleads guilty to killing 2 Everett women in 1980s
An Olympia man pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 1980s homicides of two Everett women whose cases went cold for decades until DNA evidence unearthed their killer.
Mitchell Gaff, 68, is a convicted rapist who was recently charged in the 1980 death of 21-year-old Susan Vesey and the 1984 death of 42-year-old Judy Weaver. Both women were brutally raped and killed in their homes.
In a statement he read in Snohomish County Superior Court on Friday, Gaff, who changed his legal name to Sam Price, said he went out looking for women to rape or burglarize, according to The Daily Herald in Everett. In the case of Vesey's murder, he walked by residences trying random doors until he found her door unlocked.
Gaff sneaked into Vesey's Everett apartment, hid in her bedroom closet with a knife from her kitchen, and raped and strangled her. She was found in the morning, still bound, by her husband. Her 2-year-old daughter and infant son were in the home, unharmed.
Weaver was similarly found dead in her Everett home in June 1984 after she walked home from work. Gaff broke in, attacked Weaver and used drawstring and telephone extension cords to strangle her.
Gaff told the court he rang the doorbell and knocked repeatedly on Weaver's door until she started to open the back door, at which point he kicked it in, knocking her to the ground.
Both women were strangers to Gaff.
Gaff was convicted in the 1980s of assault, burglary and two counts of first-degree rape - the rape of two teenage sisters, 14 and 16. Juries found Gaff was a sexually violent predator and he was civilly committed on McNeil Island. He was released in 2006.
DNA was not yet a sophisticated forensic tool in the early 1980s. Weaver's and Vesey's cases went cold.
Law enforcement began looking back into Weaver's slaying in 2020, and forensic testing discovered a mixed sample of male DNA from one of the cords that bound Weaver's wrists, which matched Gaff's sample in CODIS, the national law enforcement database of DNA profiles for convicted offenders, according to the charges.
Detectives used a ruse to retrieve chewing gum from Gaff, providing them with DNA that matched DNA on the cords used to bind and strangle Weaver.
In 2017, Everett detectives referred Vesey's now-deceased husband, Ken Vesey, for murder charges, but prosecutors declined the referral. In January 2025, Ken Vesey called the Police Department and discussed his dissatisfaction with investigators' work on the case.
The Everett police detective who had handled Weaver's case reviewed Vesey's file last year and discovered "startling similarities" between the two murders.
Prosecutors charged Gaff with killing Weaver in 2024 and in Vesey's death in March.
He will be sentenced on May 13.
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