The 1975 murder of an eight-year-old girl from Pennsylvania has been solved with the confession of one of her former Bible camp teachers.
After being confronted with evidence against him, the now 83-year-old retired Pastor David Zandstra admitted to killing Gretchen Harrington nearly a half-century ago, according to the Delaware County District Attorney (DA), which announced Mr. Zandstra’s arrest on Tuesday.
In a released statement, Delaware County DA Jack Stollsteimer said Mr. Zandastra admitted he killed Gretchen along the way of a short drive between a morning class he was teaching at one church and another church where Gretchen’s father, also a pastor, was teaching an afternoon class as part of a summertime bible camp in townships outside of Philadelphia.
Her disappearance that day made national headlines, as did the discovery of her remains two months later at Ridley Creek State Park, just a few miles away from her home in Marple Township and about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. A jogger had discovered Gretchen’s remains.
Now 48 years later, Mr. Zandstra is in custody for the brutal murder of Gretchen.
“Justice does not have an expiration date,“ said Lieutenant Jonathan Sunderlin of the Pennsylvania State Police, which led a multi-agency investigation into Gretchen’s murder. ”Whether a crime happened fifty years ago or five minutes ago.”
According to other public records in the cases. Mr. Zandstra was interviewed once at the time of Gretchen’s disappearance and ruled out as a suspect.
The new evidence comes from a woman identified by the district attorney as the best friend of Mr. Zandstra’s daughter at the time.
The woman told investigators that when she was 10, Mr. Zandstra groped her during a sleepover at the pastor’s home and that when she told his daughter, she responded by saying he “did that sometimes.”
According to the DA’s press release, the woman kept a diary at the time and wrote that she suspected “Mr. Z” was the person who “kidnapped Gretchen.” She also wrote that she suspected he was the person who twice tried to kidnap another girl in the area.
Margie McAboy, a spokesperson for the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office, told The Epoch Times that investigators are now checking Zandstra’s DNA against other cold case files of murdered children in the region but would not confirm if DNA played a role in linking him to Gretchen’s murder.
On the day Gretchen disappeared, a witness told police she saw the little girl speaking to someone driving a green station wagon or two-tone Cadillac. According to the DDA, Mr. Zandstra admitted he picked up the little girl in his green station wagon and drove her to a wooded area where he demanded she strip naked.
When she refused, Mr. Zandstra said he delivered a fatal punch to Gretchen’s head and then covered up her body with ground covering.
Beth Warnock, executive director of Parents of Murdered Children, told The Epoch Times that she believes it is the oldest resolved coldest case file of a child in the United States in modern times.
“This only underscores just how very important it is for police to continue to work on cold cases,” said Mrs. Warnock.
She called the arrest of Mr. Zandstra a “blessing” for Gretchen’s family. She said members of her organization whose loved one’s murder cases remain unsolved suffer tremendously.
“It’s a lifetime of grief no matter what, but the not knowing what happened, the whys and the who did it—really eats families up inside even worse,” she said.
Her organization runs a “Second Opinion” program that is supported by private investigations and medical examiners to help solve cold case files or cases in which the cause of death is “undetermined.”
While they did not work on Gretchen’s case, they have worked on others and have overturned murders initially ruled a suicide.
Mrs. Warnock said her organization has “unfortunately” grown tremendously since it was started in 1994, from about 2,000 members to more than 100,000 members. She told The Epoch Times she would like to see a federal agency dedicated to solving cold case files.
According to Uncovered, which tracks unsolved murders, cold case files in the United States have topped 200,000.
A map created by the group shows that the Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Ohio corner has the second highest cases of unsolved murders—second only to the Chicago area.
In a statement released to the press in response to Zandstra’s arrest and confession, Gretchen’s family said it “was difficult to express the emotions” they were feeling as they “take one step closer to justice.”
They had no difficulty expressing how proud they remain of Gretchen.
“If you met Gretchen, you were instantly her friend. She exuded kindness to all and was sweet and gentle. Even now, when people share their memories of her, the first thing they talk about is how amazing she was and still is ... at just 8 years old, she had a lifelong impact on those around her,” the Harrington family wrote.
The Christian Reformed Church, where Mr. Zandstra was serving as pastor at the time he killed Gretchen, also issued a statement extending their condolences to Gretchen’s family and expressing their regret that it was a retired pastor responsible for her murder.
“We are grateful that local law enforcement did not stop in their pursuit of answers, and we pray that the truth for Gretchen and any other survivors of abuse or violence will continue to come to light,” the church said in their statement.
The church also indicated that in June, it adopted a code of conduct for all ministry leaders.
It calls on ministry leaders to “resist all temptations to abuse their power through the misuse of position, authority, or influence.”
