Gum ruse DNA links Everett man to two 1980s cold-case murders

A stick of gum became the break that shattered two Everett cold cases. Undercover officers posed as workers conducting a gum flavor survey, handed Mitchell Gaff samples, and recovered the saliva that helped confirm he was the man behind the murders of Judith “Judy” Weaver and Susan Vesey.

Gaff, 68, was sentenced to a minimum of 50 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of first-degree murder on April 16, 2026. In court records, he was described as a diagnosed sexual sadist. Prosecutors and police said the case moved when detectives first got a hit through CODIS, then used the gum ruse in January 2024 to collect confirmatory DNA from Gaff while he was living in Olympia under the name Sam Wise Price.

That DNA matched evidence in Weaver’s killing, where investigators had already recovered genetic material from pantyhose and a ligature used to bind and kill her. Everett police said Weaver was found dead in her Rucker Avenue home on June 2, 1984, after the Everett Fire Department responded to a report of fire there. Gaff was initially arrested and booked in May 2024 for investigation of murder, rape, arson, kidnapping and burglary.

Once Detective Susan Logothetti connected Gaff to Weaver, she reopened another file that had long resisted answers. Everett police said Susan Vesey was found murdered in her Casino Road home on July 12, 1980, the morning after her 21st birthday. Her husband, Ken Vesey, found her after returning from a night shift, and the couple’s 2-year-old daughter and infant son were unharmed. Prosecutors later charged Gaff in that killing in March 2026 after the Weaver DNA match pointed investigators in the same direction.

At sentencing, Gaff told the court, “I am sorry, not because I was caught, but the consequences.” Vesey’s daughter, Debra Newton, said the family had waited more than 45 years for answers. Weaver’s oldest daughter, Colleen Kayser, said she had spent 40 years wondering who had raped and murdered her mother, and Weaver’s niece, Dawnyel Wilder Harris, asked for the harshest punishment possible.

Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin praised the police department’s use of DNA advances, and Police Chief Robert Goetz said investigators remained committed to violent crime cases even decades later. For Weaver and Vesey, the odd little gum ruse did what years of paperwork and memory could not: it turned an everyday object into the forensic thread that finally linked one man to two cold-case murders.