Deep down, Detective Susan Logothetti knew she was knocking on the entrance door of a killer.
Undercover and on a dangerous mission, she stood on his doorstep that drizzly January day in Olympia, Washington, pondering how unlikely it was that her plan would nab him. Logothetti held her breath as she noticed prime suspect Mitchell Gaff strolling towards her. He opened the door.
Having learn his prolonged case file, Logothetti knew the horrors that Gaff was able to inflicting. He had dedicated among the most violent rapes she had come throughout in her seven years as a detective with the Everett Police Division, simply north of Seattle. Now for the primary time, he was strongly suspected of committing a cold-case homicide that was over 4 a long time previous.
Logothetti did not flinch. She launched herself to Gaff utilizing a false identify and a ruse that sounds straight out of a Hollywood crime collection. Logothetti and two different detectives have been at Gaff’s home posing as chewing gum researchers who wished him to pattern their product.
In actuality, Logothetti was determined to gather Gaff’s DNA to definitively hyperlink him to the cold-case killing. Wearing lime-green T-shirts displaying a “Zolt Vitality Gum” brand, Logothetti and the opposite feminine detective used their bubbliest voices and brightest smiles to ship the pitch.
“We now have this nice new wholesome vitality gum and we will be launching it at Safeway, and we’re searching for group members to pattern it for us and assist us decide which taste we wish to launch first,” Logothetti instructed Gaff. “We tried to be as enthusiastic about it as we may.”
It felt like a protracted shot.
“He’s a identified psychopath,” Logothetti instructed USA TODAY in a latest interview. “Mitchell Gaff is a complete totally different animal.”
Detective Susan Logothetti with the Everett Police Division is pictured.
A chilly case detective within the making
Earlier than Logothetti moved to the Pacific Northwest, the Illinois native was forging a profession that might make her uniquely certified to develop into a detective.
She labored with kids who have been victims of abuse at a foster care company after which with felons as a probation officer. Every function gave her distinctive perception into each victims and offenders, and the best way to speak to them.
Logothetti joined the Everett Police Division in 2012 and have become a intercourse crimes detective in 2019. She shortly grew to become intrigued by the division’s solely chilly case detective and commenced asking him about his instances, and finally, his upcoming retirement.
“I requested who was going to take over the chilly instances when he retired and he stated, ‘No one, as a result of no person needs to do them,’” she recalled. “So I requested if I may do them.”
Logothetti obtained her dream job. She had been working chilly instances for lower than a yr when she obtained the information that might find yourself altering her life and dozens of others.
The unit’s earlier detective had submitted a ligature used within the homicide of 42-year-old Judy Weaver, a mom of two who was brutally raped and killed in her Everett residence on June 1, 1984. The detective was satisfied that Weaver’s fiancé had killed her and he instructed Logothetti that the take a look at ought to come again confirming as a lot.
However when Logothetti opened the report in late 2023, the identify that matched the DNA was somebody she had by no means heard of: Mitchell Gaff.
“I instantly regarded him up. The very first thing I noticed was that Mitchell Gaff is a registered intercourse offender and deemed a sexually violent predator,” she stated. “Then I used to be in a position to get copies of Mitchell Gaff’s prior crimes, and instantly I knew. He was the one.”
Mitchell Gaff is pictured in 2017 after registering as a intercourse offender in 2018 in Tacoma, Washington.
Mitchell Gaff’s nightmarish case file
When Logothetti learn via Mitchell Gaff’s case file, she knew she was studying a couple of monster.
A identified sexual sadist, Gaff had been convicted of the violent sexually motivated assault of an Everett girl in 1979 and the extended 1984 rape of two sisters, ages 14 and 16, as their mom slept within the basement of their Everett house.
Within the case of the sisters, Gaff hogtied the ladies, minimize off their garments with a knife, raped them repeatedly, beat them, choked them, and shocked certainly one of them with {an electrical} wire, court docket data say. The youthful woman was in a position to escape and get assist as Gaff started choking her sister with {the electrical} wire. They survived.
Within the different case, Gaff attacked a lady as she was wrapping up some yard work in broad daylight the day earlier than Thanksgiving in 1979. The lady, Jackie O’Brien, occurred to be an officer with the Washington State Patrol who had interviewed rape victims and knew that she needed to combat like a tiger.
After Gaff beat her head repeatedly with a gun and slammed it right into a cement ground, he had her on her knees dealing with away from him when he started tying her up, she not too long ago instructed USA TODAY. O’Brien noticed a disturbing intercourse toy in his duffel bag and pounced.
Jackie Brown (now O’Brien) is pictured in her Washington State Patrol uniform in 1981, two years after surviving an assault in Everett, Washington, by Mitchell Gaff, who would later develop into a convicted rapist and identified sexual sadist.
“I threw my physique in opposition to him and caught him off guard, and he type of stumbled in opposition to the wall,” recalled the now-76-year-old. “I stood up, and I used to be trapped, and he stated, ‘You are going to die now, you b—-.’ And I knew I used to be useless.”
Gaff then pulled out a looking knife and slashed O’Brien throughout a hand that she had held up in self-defense. “Then I shoved him and I went out a technique into the storage and alley screaming,” O’Brien stated.
Gaff was arrested quickly after however solely obtained a slap on the wrist at trial. After a jury discovered him responsible of assault with a lethal weapon and housebreaking, the choose within the case sentenced him to 30 days of jail with work launch and 5 years of probation.
Gaff was nonetheless on probation when he carried out the brutal assault on the teenage sisters.
Gaff was convicted of raping the sisters in 1984 and served a couple of decade in jail and in an intensive intercourse offender therapy program. When his sentence was up, in contrast to the overwhelming majority of convicts, Gaff wasn’t free to go.
Prosecutors wished Gaff confined indefinitely below a brand new state regulation in Washington focusing on violent rapists and little one molesters who had completed their jail phrases however have been deemed prone to reoffend. After an ensuing court docket listening to, a jury discovered that Gaff was a violent sexual predator, permitting him to be saved below lock and key on the state’s Particular Dedication Middle on McNeil Island in Puget Sound. The association value the state $550,000 a yr, in response to archived information studies.
Mitch Gaff is pictured.
In 2000, on the age of 42, Gaff once more sought launch. His therapists on the state’s dedication middle stated they thought he was prepared after years of intensive remedy, and he stated he was a modified man.
“I’ve an unimaginable quantity of regret and ache for the harmless folks I’ve harmed,” he instructed the Related Press on the time, saying that he had realized the best way to deal with his feelings and empathize together with his victims. “There was no excuse, no rationalization for what I did to folks.”
One other jury dominated in 2000 that Gaff was a violent sexual predator, and he remained on McNeil Island for an additional six years earlier than he went on to win freedom.
Gaff has talked about why he attacked girls in a number of interviews and court docket hearings, blaming months of sexual abuse by a feminine babysitter when he was a boy, mixed with alcohol and drug abuse as an grownup.
“I’m not what I’ve completed,” he instructed GQ in 1995, saying a change flipped after he underwent intercourse offender therapy. “A large cog turned inside me, and I used to be like, ‘Yeah! I obtained it!’ It wasn’t, ‘Oh, I hope I by no means rape once more.’ It was, ‘I do know what to do now in order that I do not rape anybody.'”
Police say there isn’t any proof that Gaff dedicated any crimes following his launch.
Connecting the dots
Logothetti famous quite a few similarities in Gaff’s earlier crimes to the chilly case homicide of Judy Weaver. They included hog-tying the victims, utilizing the identical kind of ligatures, the situation of the crimes and the gratuitousness of the violence in every case.
“All of this stuff type of added up,” Logothetti stated.
Weaver was killed on June 1, 1984, at her residence positioned midway between the place the assaults on O’Brien and the teenage sisters came about. It additionally got here lower than three months earlier than the sisters’ rapes.
Firefighters responded to a fireplace at Weaver’s residence and located her useless inside. Her garments had been minimize off, she was hogtied with an extension wire and a drawstring, and he or she had been raped, overwhelmed, and strangled, court docket data say. A butcher knife was mendacity close to her physique, and the killer had began a fireplace.
Judy Weaver is pictured in two pictures, together with together with her two kids.
Police suspected Weaver’s fiancé however had no proof. Regardless of the putting similarities between her homicide and the sisters’ rapes, detectives did not join the dots on the time and the case went chilly.
That’s till 40 years later when Logothetti obtained the report that confirmed Gaff’s DNA was on one of many ligatures in Weaver’s case. However Logothetti wanted to agency up the case and wished extra of Gaff’s DNA.
For weeks, Logothetti carried out futile surveillance on Gaff, hoping he would discard one thing together with his DNA on it, like a soda can or a wad of gum. When that did not work, the thought of going undercover was born.
Detectives used compliments to get inside killer’s home
When Longothetti knocked on Gaff’s door that drizzly day in Olympia, she did not actually count on him to speak to her. “When he answered the door in his pajama pants together with his cat, it did take me aback for a second to see him proper there in entrance of me like that,” she stated.
At first Gaff appeared a bit reluctant to fall for the gum ruse however Logothetti gained him over with compliments and the promise of a Safeway reward card.
“I actually was like, ‘I don’t know, most guys in jail will not fall for one thing like this,'” she remembers pondering.
However Gaff is a identified narcissist, which labored in favor of the detectives.
“He loves to speak about himself … He needs to be complimented,” Logothetti stated. “The opposite feminine detective was complimenting a few of his art work in the home and he was happening about that … We have been positively complimenting his yard and home and artwork.”
Gaff let his guard down and agreed to the survey, discarding a number of wads of chewing gum into carafes and handing them again to the undercover detectives.
“When he switched to a brand new taste he is like, ‘Oh I obtained to spit out this gum,'” Logothetti stated. “After I noticed him spit it right into a carafe I actually needed to include my pleasure … We have been all giddy.”
Three detectives posing as gum researchers wore these shirts once they knocked on the door of convicted serial killer Mitch Gaff.
One other homicide
Simply as detectives suspected, DNA from Gaff’s gum got here again in 2024 as in keeping with vaginal swabs and a neck ligature taken from Weaver’s physique. He was arrested in Might 2024 and was ordered held in jail till trial.
Logothetti thought that was it. Then in January 2025, she obtained a name from an indignant man demanding to know why detectives had made no progress of their investigation of his spouse’s loss of life in Everett in 1980. As the person described the homicide, Logothetti instantly acknowledged “startling similarities” between the case and that of Weaver’s killing.
On July 12, 1980, Susan Vesey’s husband got here house from work to seek out his spouse brutally killed the day after her twenty first birthday. Their 3-month-old child was on the mattress in the identical room as his mom’s physique and their 2-year-old daughter was in a crib in one other room.
Vesey had been hogtied, her garments had been largely eliminated, and he or she had been raped and strangled, court docket data present.
Susan Vesey is pictured together with her two younger kids not lengthy earlier than she was brutally raped and murdered in her house in 1980.
Logothetti submitted a number of gadgets from Vesey’s crime scene to the Washington State Patrol’s forensic lab for up to date evaluation. In April 2025, DNA from a white wire used to bind Vesey matched Gaff, court docket data say. In March 2026, one other piece of white wire from the crime scene matched Gaff, court docket data say.
Gaff was charged on March 13 with homicide in Vesey’s loss of life. What he did subsequent shocked police, prosecutors and his victims.
Responsible plea and sentencing
Gaff, now 68, had been set for trial in September on homicide expenses within the deaths of Weaver and Vesey. However he unexpectedly determined to plead responsible in April. He described the 2 murders intimately in open court docket as a part of a plea settlement with prosecutors.
At his sentencing in Might, relations who had waited greater than 4 a long time to seek out out who killed Weaver and Vesey have been finally in a position to confront him in court docket.
“I used to be in the identical room when the defendant killed my mom … I used to be discovered swaddled on her mattress. That is the start of my life,” Vesey’s son, Joshua Vesey, stated in an announcement learn through the sentencing listening to. “What the defendant took from me and my sister was not only a life − it was a mom’s unconditional love, the type of love that shapes who you develop into earlier than you’ll be able to perceive it.”
Earlier than Gaff was sentenced, prosecutor Craig Matheson emphasised to the choose “the predatory randomness” of Gaff’s crimes.
“He’s actually the bump within the evening that ought to make folks conscious that there’s mortal hazard at hand,” Matheson stated. “It may have been anybody that caught his consideration”
Gaff additionally addressed the court docket, exhibiting little emotion whereas saying that he was “with out excuse or protection” and apologizing to his victims and their family members. “Nothing I can say or do could make up for what I’ve completed,” he stated.
The choose sentenced him to 50 years to life in jail, all however guaranteeing that Gaff will die behind bars.
It was one of the vital gratifying days in Logothetti’s profession. She sat entrance and middle through the listening to and loved watching Gaff get indignant when Jackie O’Brien confronted him about his assault on her.
With all of the horrors and terror that Gaff inflicted on girls, his courtroom exit felt applicable.
“After sentencing I handcuffed him and walked him again to the jail with the correction officers,” Logothetti stated. “It was type of for my very own closure. However I additionally assume a feminine actually wanted to be the one to cuff him.”
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers chilly case investigations and the loss of life penalty for USA TODAY. Comply with her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This text initially appeared on USA TODAY: Detective particulars undercover ruse that nabbed serial killer Mitch Gaff