DNA Breakthrough Links Washington Man to Two Decades-Old Everett Murders

A chewing-gum ruse and decades-old biological evidence helped Everett police close two killings that had haunted the city for more than 40 years. Mitchell A. Gaff, 68, admitted killing Judith “Judy” Weaver and Susan Vesey after investigators matched modern DNA to preserved evidence, including a small piece of fabric used to bind Weaver’s wrists.

Weaver was 42 when she was found dead in a burning apartment on Rucker Avenue on June 2, 1984, after firefighters responded to a fire reported just after midnight. Detectives said she had been tied up with a phone cord, strangled and brutalized. Prosecutors reopened the case in 2022 and sent preserved evidence to the Washington state crime lab, where newer DNA work helped identify Gaff as a suspect. Undercover officers later collected his saliva in January using a chewing-gum ruse, strengthening the match.

Vesey’s case dated even further back. She was 21 when she was found dead in her home on Casino Road on July 12, 1980, the morning after her birthday. Her husband, Ken Vesey, discovered her when he returned from a night shift, and the couple’s two young children were unharmed. Prosecutors linked Gaff to that killing as well, and he was charged in the case after investigators connected the two murders through DNA and patterns in the attacks.

Gaff was arrested in May 2024 in connection with Weaver’s death and held without bail. At a Feb. 3, 2026 arraignment in Snohomish County Superior Court, he pleaded not guilty before later pleading guilty in both murder cases. Everett officials credited advances in DNA analysis and the persistence of detectives, including Det. Susan Logothetti and retired Detective Steve Brenneman, for pushing the cold cases across the finish line.

The arrests also cast new light on Gaff’s violent history. His record includes a 1979 attempted rape and assault conviction and guilty pleas for raping and assaulting two teenage sisters in 1984. Investigators said the wrist-binding similarities across the Everett cases, combined with DNA evidence, tied the crimes together and showed how long-preserved trace evidence can still identify a predator decades later.