A Washington State man pleaded guilty last week to murder in two 1980s cold case homicides after undercover investigators pretending to sell chewing gum obtained DNA that tied him to both crimes, according to court documents.
The man, Mitchell A. Gaff, 68, pleaded guilty on Thursday to two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Susan Vesey, who was found dead in her home on July 12, 1980, and Judy Weaver, whose body was found in her home on June 2, 1984, the Everett Police Department said in a statement.
Officers arrested Mr. Gaff in connection with Ms. Weaver’s death nearly two years ago, the police said. He was charged with Ms. Vesey’s murder on March 13. “Mr. Gaff provided statements in both homicides, admitting to his crimes in open court,” the police said, noting that the details he provided were consistent with the authorities’ findings.
Public defenders listed for Mr. Gaff, who is also known as Sam Wise Price, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He is in custody in Snohomish County, the police said.
According to an affidavit filed in March in the Superior Court of the State of Washington, Mr. Gaff, 26 at the time, entered the apartment of Ms. Weaver, 42, where he sexually assaulted and beat her and bound her with drawstrings and telephone extension cords that ultimately suffocated her.
Mr. Gaff then set fire to the apartment, in Everett, Wash., “in an apparent effort to destroy evidence,” prosecutors said. He was known to the authorities at the time, having been convicted in a 1979 assault and of two “extremely violent rapes” that took place just three months before the murder, prosecutors said. He had also admitted at the time to “multiple uncharged rapes,” prosecutors said.
Detectives found Ms. Weaver’s body in the burned home on June 2. Though DNA testing was not yet widely available as a forensic tool, they took vaginal swabs and pubic hair samples, according to the affidavit.
Detectives at the time considered several suspects, including Ms. Weaver’s boyfriend, her stepson and a patron she had thrown out of the bar where she worked the night of the murder. But the case eventually went cold.
In 2020, investigators reopened her case, and in 2023, they linked DNA from the crime scene to Mr. Gaff, who was already in a database for the 1984 rape of two teenage sisters in Everett, about 25 miles north of Seattle.
On Jan. 17, 2024, undercover detectives, hoping to gather a secondary DNA sample, told Mr. Gaff they were representatives of a gum company conducting research into which flavors consumers preferred. They were able to keep and test his chewed gum, according to the affidavit.
The DNA from that sample matched DNA found on the vaginal swabs, on the ligatures from Ms. Weaver’s neck and wrists and on the blouse, T-shirt and pantyhose cut from her body. There is no evidence that Mr. Gaff knew Ms. Weaver at the time of the murder, prosecutors said.
The DNA sample also tied Mr. Gaff to the murder of Ms. Vesey, who was also raped, beaten, tied up with drawstrings and electrical cables and strangled in her apartment in Everett.
Ms. Vesey, 21 at the time of her murder and a mother of two young children, was found dead the day after her birthday. Her husband had left around 10 p.m. on July 11 to work the graveyard shift at a gas station in downtown Seattle. He found her dead the following morning.
DNA found at that scene also matched Mr. Gaff’s, prosectors said.
Jackie O’Brien, who was assaulted in 1979 by Mr. Gaff, said she had mixed feelings about the guilty plea.
“I wanted him to go through a trial,” she said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Ms. O’Brien, 76, was 29 when Mr. Gaff assaulted her in a tool shed, where, according to court documents, he beat her with an air gun, bashed her head into the cement floor, slashed her palm with a knife and threatened to kill her.
Ms. O’Brien managed to fight off and flee Mr. Gaff, who was arrested a short time later, carrying adhesive tape and a gym bag that contained leather gloves, a bandage, stocking cap, face mask and a dildo, according to court documents. He was convicted of first-degree burglary and assault in the second degree, granted probation and placed on work-release, according to court documents.
“His punishment for what he did to me wasn’t severe enough,” Ms. O’Brien said.
“As soon as he got out of jail, he raped and sodomized those two little girls,” she added. “After all these years, 46 years, it still makes me cry — I wish, I wish I could have killed him.”
In an interview with The New York Times in 1995, Mr. Gaff, who had just completed a 10-year sentence for raping the teenage sisters at knife point, said he was stunned to learn prosecutors were seeking his indefinite confinement under a “sexual predator” law.
His sentencing is scheduled for May 13.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Livia Albeck-Ripka is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering breaking news, California and other subjects.
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