A Washington state resident has been sentenced to a prison term ranging from 50 years to life after confessing to two long-standing unsolved murders, which authorities solved with the help of a piece of chewing gum.
Last week, 74-year-old Mitchell Gaff received his sentence following his guilty plea to the murders of 21-year-old Susan Vesey and 42-year-old Judith “Judy” Weaver in Everett, as reported by FOX 13.
Detectives from the Everett Police Department connected Gaff to Weaver’s 1984 murder by posing as researchers from the gum industry at his residence. They offered him a free gum sample, which he accepted, according to a report by USA Today.
The gum sample provided by Gaff was then analyzed through the federal CODIS database, ultimately linking him to Weaver’s murder.
Gaff was taken into custody in May 2024 and subsequently charged with Vesey’s murder while incarcerated. Officials disclosed that Vesey was killed in her apartment a day after celebrating her 21st birthday on July 12, 1980.
In a courtroom address on Wednesday, Gaff expressed remorse to the victims’ families present, attributing his violent past to drug and alcohol abuse.
“I am sorry, not because I was caught, but the consequences,” Gaff said, according to NBC News. “No one did anything to deserve me coming into their lives.”
The court also heard from Jacqueline OâBrien, a former law enforcement officer who survived a violent attack by Gaff inside her Everett homeâs garage in 1979.
“I knew he was going to kill me,” OâBrien said, FOX 13 reported.
OâBrien managed to escape the attack and was pivotal in helping authorities identify Gaff, who was arrested several times in the years after and spent time behind bars for the rapes of two teenage sisters in 1984.
“My nightmare occurred 47 years ago, but it seems like yesterday,” OâBrien added.
Veseyâs son, Joshua Vesey, told the court he was just 3 months old and inside the apartment when his mother was killed by Gaff, FOX 13 reported.
“What the defendant took from me and my sister was not just a life, it was a motherâs unconditional love,” Joshua Vesey told the court, according to the outlet. “At any point he could have stopped the confusion, the suspicion and the pain that spread through my family.”
Leon Gregory, Weaverâs brother, also emphasized how the case haunted his family for years as they grappled with the possibility of never receiving closure.
“Your Honor, as we all know, itâs been a long 42 years,” Gregory said, according to FOX 13. “My parents, brother, two other sisters, passed on years ago, never knowing who killed Judy.”
Before determining Gaffâs fate, the judge pointed to his history of violence and attempts to cover up the crimes throughout the years as a determining factor in denying the defenseâs request that he receive the minimum sentence.
“The defendantâs history consists of sexually motivated, extremely violent crimes against women,” the judge said, FOX 13 reported. “The appropriate sentence has a minimum is the number of years that the families had to wait.”
The Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digitalâs request for comment.
