A convicted rapist who has spent more than two decades behind bars for a series of violent attacks in Snohomish County may soon get a taste of freedom – under tight restrictions.
Mitchell Gaff, 48, was expected today to be the subject of a court hearing on an agreement reached with Snohomish County prosecutors.
If the agreement is approved by a judge, Gaff would be allowed to move to a Seattle halfway house, where he would be required to live under “an enormous number of conditions and restrictions,” deputy prosecutor Paul Stern said Tuesday.
Since the mid-1990s, Gaff has been confined in the state’s prison-like treatment center for people legally judged to be sexual predators, now located on McNeil Island.
Gaff had been scheduled to begin a trial this week to determine whether he is ready for release from the state’s Special Commitment Center.
State experts have said they think Gaff is ready.
The experts had the same opinion in 2000, but at a jury trial, Stern convinced jurors otherwise. A state appeals court later upheld the verdict.
Under the law, Gaff can regularly challenge in court whether he should remain locked up.
As this trial approached, lawyers on both sides engaged in several months of negotiations, and reached what Stern said is a “creative, complex and far-reaching agreement.”
Stern declined to discuss specifics pending action by the court.
“I believe that the package, as presented, is in the long term the most effective means of enhancing community safety dealing with Mr. Gaff,” Stern said.
Gaff has been locked up since 1984 for a series of sexual attacks in Everett.
Twice – in 1995 and 2000 – juries have found Gaff to be a sexually violent predator who legally could be confined to receive treatment.
At his 2000 sex predator trial, Gaff testified he raped eight women and girls during the late 1970s and early 1980s and sexually attacked scores more. At one point, he was accosting or attempting to attack 10 to 30 women a day, knocking some to the ground and putting his hands up their skirts, he admitted.
But Gaff also insisted he’d changed over the years, thanks to treatment.
Gaff has been behind bars since he slipped into an Everett home 22 years ago and bound and gagged two sisters, one 14, the other 16. He spent more than two hours repeatedly raping, sodomizing and beating the pair.
The attack ended only when one of the girls was able to wriggle free and escape, naked, into the street. At the time, Gaff had been trying to strangle one of the girls with an electrical cord.
Gaff served 10 years in prison for the 1984 rapes. On the eve of his release, prosecutors filed papers to have him legally detained under the state’s sexual predator law.
Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.
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