Former Georgia pastor acquitted in 1975 Pennsylvania girl’s murder case

MEDIAL, Pa. — A retired minister from Georgia was acquitted on Friday in connection with the murder of an 8-year-old girl, whose remains were discovered nearly fifty years ago in a park in southeastern Pennsylvania.

David Zandstra, aged 84, from the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, was found not guilty by a jury after only an hour of deliberation following a four-day trial.

The charges against Zandstra stemmed from an incident in July 2023 when he was accused of kidnapping and murdering Gretchen Harrington, who vanished in 1975 while walking alone to a Bible camp at a chapel where Zandstra previously served as pastor. Her remains were located two months later by a jogger in Ridley Creek State Park, also located in Media, Pennsylvania.

According to the district attorney of Delaware County, on the day she went missing, Zandstra had offered Harrington a ride. Prosecutors claimed that Zandstra had subsequently confessed to the crime after investigators uncovered new details and conducted an interview with him.

Zandstra’s attorney, Mark Much, argued that law enforcement officers had coerced and deceived him into admitting to a crime he did not commit. The defense maintained that there was no forensic evidence tying Zandstra to Harrington’s death, highlighting that the police had pursued other leads that were more promising in terms of identifying the actual perpetrator.

Another defense attorney, Christopher Boggs, expressed to The Philadelphia Inquirer that Zandstra’s family felt relieved that he could finally return home after spending 18 months in custody.

After Harrington disappeared, extensive searches were conducted in nearby wooded areas, with hundreds of volunteers participating. Authorities handed out more than 2,000 flyers and established a hotline, which received numerous calls from concerned individuals, as reported by the newspaper.

When her body was ultimately discovered, it was noted that her clothing was carefully arranged in a stack beside her. Disturbingly, her underwear was found draped from a tree branch, described in the media as reminiscent of a flag, seemingly intended to draw attention to that specific location.