Life in prison for man guilty of Everett cold case murders

Published 4:00 pm Wednesday, May 13, 2026

EVERETT — A man who admitted to murdering two Everett women in a pair of random, sexually motivated attacks that went unsolved for more than four decades will now spend the rest of his life in prison.

On Wednesday, a Snohomish County Superior Court judge sentenced Mitchell Gaff, 68, to a minimum of 50 years in prison and a maximum life sentence for the murders of Susan Vesey in 1980 and Judith “Judy” Weaver in 1984. Gaff pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder with premeditated intent on April 16.

“The family of Susan Vesey have had to wait 46 years for the answer to the question, ‘Who killed Susan Vesey?’ The family of Ms. Weaver has waited 42 years to receive an answer to the same question,” Superior Court Judge Edirin Okoloko told the court during sentencing. “The appropriate sentence at a minimum is the number of years that the families had to wait.”

The crimes Gaff committed were before the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, meaning he was given an indeterminate sentence setting the range of time he must serve.

Gaff, a level 3 sex offender who’d legally changed his name to Sam Price, was tied to Weaver’s death using DNA evidence from a piece of gum in 2024. Investigators with the Everett Police Department charged Gaff for Vesey’s murder in March of this year.

Gaff told the court on Wednesday he took full accountability for his actions, saying he was a broken, angry man hurting others in hopes of remedying his own pain.

“I had become a runaway train through the lives of everyone I came in contact with, violent, selfish and aggressive with family, friends and strangers,” Gaff said before sentencing. “I cared for nothing except what I wanted and what I thought I deserved.”

Gaff admitted to raping and murdering Vesey while she was alone inside her Everett apartment with her two young children on the night of July 11, 1980.

Gaff found the woman’s front door unlocked, took a knife from the kitchen and hid in a bedroom closet until Vesey came into the room, according to court documents. He then bound Vesey with drawstrings and electrical cords before attacking her and eventually strangling her to death.

Vesey’s husband returned from working the night shift to find her dead, police said. Their 2-year-old daughter and infant son were not hurt. Vesey was killed just hours after celebrating her 21st birthday.

Gaff murdered Judy Weaver four years later on the night of June 1, 1984, after noticing her as she returned home from a shift at an Everett bar, according to court documents.

Gaff told investigators he tricked Weaver into opening the door, then forced his way in, records said. He raped her, strangled her and then set the bed on fire in an attempt to cover up the crime, court documents said.

“It could’ve been anyone, anyone that caught his attention, who left their door open or left a window open, would have been or could have been a victim of Mitch Gaff,” Snohomish County Prosecutor Craig Mattheson told the judge. “He, in fact, is the bump in the night that should make people aware that there is more than danger at hand.”

Court documents show Gaff was well-known to law enforcement for a history of sexual violence. He was previously charged with burglary and assault for an attack in 1979, as well as two counts of first-degree rape for attacking two teenage sisters in their Everett home just three months before Weaver was killed in 1984.

Gaff allegedly admitted to committing more rapes that went uncharged and was civilly committed twice in 1994 and 2000 after being deemed a Sexually Violent Predator by two juries, according to court records and previous reporting from The Daily Herald.

Doctors who evaluated Gaff over the decades diagnosed him as a “sexual sadist,” court records said.

Gaff was not connected to the two unsolved Everett attacks until advancements in DNA technology allowed Everett police cold case investigators to take a renewed look at Weaver’s case in 2020, records said.

Three years later, a DNA report from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab provided a match in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) between DNA found on the ligature that bound Weaver’s wrists and Gaff, initial charging documents from 2024 said.

Undercover detectives then used a “gum ruse,” posing as representatives of a gum company conducting research on flavor preferences, to covertly gain another DNA sample and confirm Gaff’s link to the crime, court records said. Gaff’s DNA was found on Weaver’s body, three pieces of her clothing and the murder weapon, according to charging papers.

In 2025, Everett police cold case detectives linked Gaff to Vesey’s murder after noticing “startling similarities” between her killing and Weaver’s murder, court records said. The state crime lab performed additional DNA testing of the evidence at the scene of Vesey’s death that resulted in a match to Gaff, according to charging papers.

After accepting a plea deal in April, prosecutors recommended a more than 61-year minimum sentence, effectively a life sentence for the 68-year-old man, and a maximum sentence of life behind bars.

“In reviewing the horrors committed by Gaff it is almost impossible to quantify a sentence that is appropriate,” prosecutors wrote in a nearly 100-page sentencing memorandum filed before Wednesday’s hearing. “The sheer vileness of these acts is difficult to comprehend, much less to adequately punish. The fact that this court is sentencing Gaff for these acts forty plus years after their commission only compounds the impossibility of sentencing Gaff to any amount of time that actually begins to even out the evil he has done.”

Defense attorneys representing Gaff asked the court for a minimum sentence of 20 years. In court documents, the defense said Gaff is a “very low risk for sexual recidivism” because he is a senior citizen with 25 years of involvement in Sex Offender Treatment Programs and more than 40 years of sobriety from alcohol and hard drugs.

“He is simply not the same person sitting here before you today that he was at the time he was committing these terrible offenses,” Heather Wolfenbarger, Gaff’s defense attorney, told the court.

Loved ones of both victims spoke for nearly an hour in court, urging the judge to deliver a maximum sentence of life without parole.

“Mr. Gaff carried on with his life, never caring about the tragedy and hurt he caused an entire family,” Cathy Myers, Weaver’s daughter, wrote in a statement read by a victim advocate in court. “My wish is that he never gets to just carry on with his life again.”

Ian Davis-Leonard: 425-339-3097; ian.davis-leonard@heraldnet.com