An 83-year-old former pastor has been implicated in the kidnapping and killing of the daughter of a fellow pastor in 1975, according to authorities in Pennsylvania.
According to the Delaware County District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania, the suspect, David Zandstra, was apprehended on July 17 in Cobb County, Georgia, where detectives claim he confessed to killing Gretchen Harrington, 8, nearly fifty years ago while he was a pastor in Marple Township, Pennsylvania. Gretchen Harrington’s murder and disappearance in 1975 shook Marple, a suburb of western Philadelphia.
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Investigators say that when Zandstra was confronted with the new evidence in the case, he cracked and confessed to murdering the young girl years ago. Sources revealed to American news outlet CBS News that the suspect David Zandstra, attempted to sexually assault Gretchen in his car before beating her to death. Two months later, Gretchen’s body was discovered in a field after which police started an investigation.
During a press conference on Monday, the district attorney asserted that the police department was going to bring the elderly pastor to justice in the murder of 8-year-old Gretchen decades ago.
We are gonna bring him here to Delaware County. We’re gonna try him. We’re gonna convict him. And he’s gonna die in jail. Then he’s gonna have to find out what the God he professes to believe in holds for those who are this evil to our children.
Jack Stollsteimer, the District Attorney said
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Zandstra faces charges of kidnapping a minor, murder in the first, second, and third degree, criminal homicide, and possession of a weapon of crime. Authorities have expressed concern that Zandstra may have sexually assaulted other victims. He is expected to stand trial in Pennsylvania when the police’s petition for his extradition pulls through.
