A suspect has been charged in connection with the long-unsolved murder of 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington, a Marple Township girl who disappeared in August 1975, Delaware County authorities announced Monday.
David G. Zandstra, 83, of Marietta, Ga., was arrested and is in custody in Georgia. A former minister who knew the victim and her family, Zandstra was charged with first-, second-, and third-degree murder, kidnapping, and other related charges, according to court records.
“Justice has been a long time coming, but we are proud and grateful to finally be able to give the community an answer,” said Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer.
Zandstra became an ordained minister in New Jersey in the 1960s and moved to Chester to start a new congregation. In the early 1970s, news reports indicated that she was working at Trinity Church Chapel Christian Reform Church leading summer youth workshops for teenage girls, and helping out at the Bible school the girl later attended. At the time he disappeared, Harrington’s father, Harold, was the reverend of the nearby Reformed Presbyterian Church.
Harrington disappeared around 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 15, 1975, when she was last seen heading to a Bible school program at Trinity Church Chapel just two blocks from her home, according to Inquirer reports from the time. As part of the Bible school program, the students started the day at Trinity, and were later taken to Reformed, Delaware County authorities said Monday. Harrington never made it to the Reformed, and his father was worried.
By 11 a.m., Zandstra contacted police and reported Harrington missing, authorities said. In the initial investigation, he denied seeing the woman on the day of her disappearance, authorities said.
A fruitless search
After Harrington’s disappearance, police launched search parties with hundreds of members to comb the woods around his home on Lawrence Road near West Chester Pike, as well as much of Marple Township and neighboring communities. Witnesses at the time described seeing Harrington talking to the driver of a green station wagon or two-tone Cadillac, but the driver – later determined to be Zandstra – was never found.
Authorities also distributed more than 2,000 leaflets with the child’s photo, and set up a 24-hour hotline that got hundreds of calls. The police stated that they identified a convicted child molester as the prime suspect, but failed to gather enough evidence to file charges. The case remains unsolved. Investigators assigned to the case said they were haunted by the incident several years ago.
In the end, the searchers did not find Harrington.
“We haven’t got a thing, not a thing,” Broomall Fire Chief Knute Keober told the Inquirer two days after Harrington’s disappearance. “If he was in that place, Jesus hid him.”
A Marple Township detective, Richard W. Mankin, even consulted a psychic about Harrington’s disappearance, who said the woman was dead, according to a 1984 Inquirer report. Mankin later receives an anonymous letter with new information, but the leads prove fruitless.
Two months after his disappearance, on October 14, 1975, a jogger discovered Harrington’s skeleton with evidence of blunt force trauma to his skull in a wooded area at Ridley Creek State Park in Edgemont Township. The area was about 2½ miles from his home, The Inquirer reported in 1984.
Authorities found Harrington’s clothes “folded and in a neat pile” near his body, and his underwear hung from a tree branch “like a flag … as if calling attention to the area,” according to the Inquirer report.
How Zandstra became a suspect
In the late 1970s, Zandstra was in Texas, working at another church. Property records show that Zandstra and his wife moved to another congregation in California before retiring in the 2000s to Marietta, Ga., where he still lives.
Police named Zandstra as a suspect in January, when investigators interviewed an unnamed witness who was her daughter’s best friend when Harrington disappeared, according to a criminal complaint. The witness said he often went to sleepovers at Zandstra’s house, and for about a week before Harrington disappeared, Zandstra molested him. When the witness told Zandstra’s daughter what happened, she told her friend that Zandstra “does that sometimes,” the complaint said.
Investigators contacted Zandstra in June, and spoke with him in Georgia on July 17. In that interview, police confronted him about the witness’ allegations of sexual assault, and he admitted to the accusations. He later admitted that he saw Harrington the day he disappeared, and that he was driving a green station wagon at the time.
Zandstra told investigators he offered Harrington a ride, and took him to nearby woods, according to the complaint. There, he parked the car, and told the woman to take off her clothes, but she refused. Zandstra said he hit her head with his fist, causing her to bleed. Believing the woman to be dead, he covered her body with sticks and left the area, the complaint said.
After his arrest, Zandstra was denied bail. He is fighting extradition to Pennsylvania, authorities said.
‘One step closer to justice’
In a statement, Harrington’s family said they are hopeful that “the person responsible for the heinous crime committed against our Gretchen will be held accountable.”
“It’s hard to express the emotions we feel as we take one step closer to justice,” the family’s statement read. “The kidnapping and killing of Gretchen changed our family forever and we miss her every day.”
