A Georgia pastor who was arrested in the murder of an 8-year-old Pennsylvania girl in 1975 has just been acquitted of the crime.
Up until 2023, David Zandstra has been living in Marietta with his family for nearly 20 years.
In July 2023, he was arrested in the 1975 murder of 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington, who vanished while walking to Bible school.
Zandstra was the pastor at one of the two churches where the Bible school was held. Her father was the pastor of the 2nd church.
Investigators said that before he and his family moved to Georgia, Zandstra knew the victim and her family very well. His wife even helped in the search when she vanished.
His attorney, Mark Much, told jurors that detectives pressured and tricked Zandstra into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. Defense attorneys said there was no physical evidence linking the retired minister to the girl’s death and that police had investigated other suspects who were more likely to be the killer.
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According to court records, a jury found Zandstra not guilty of murder in the first, second and third degrees. Two other charges were dismissed and another was withdrawn.
In the days after the girl disappeared, hundreds of people searched nearby wooded areas, and authorities distributed more than 2,000 leaflets and set up a 24-hour hotline that took hundreds of calls, The Inquirer reported.
When the girl’s body was found, her clothing was “folded and in a neat pile” near her body with her underwear hanging from a tree branch “like a flag … as if to call attention to the place,” the newspaper said at the time.
An attorney for Zandstra released a statement Friday evening, saying Zandstra maintained his innocence for 48 years and they were “happy to have Mr. Zandstra returned to his family.”
“Our hearts along with all of Delaware County still break for the Harrington family who deserve an end to the nightmare of losing a family member,” the statement went on to say.