Minister charged in 1975 killing of 8-year-old Delco girl Gretchen Harrington

For years, a team of investigators dug into a nearly half-century-old Delaware County cold case that had haunted its initial detectives. Now, they say they’ve identified an 83-year-old reverend as the person who abducted and killed 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington in 1975, with authorities calling him “evil” and a “monster.”

In a news conference Monday, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer announced multiple charges against David G. Zandstra of Marietta, Ga., including first-degree murder and criminal homicide for allegedly killing Gretchen on Aug. 15, 1975. At the time of Gretchen’s slaying, Zandstra was a reverend at Trinity Church Chapel Christian Reform Church in Broomall, and a friend of the girl’s family, said Stollsteimer. Zandstra exploited this friendship and Gretchen’s trust to get her into his car that fateful morning, he said.

Zandstra had become an ordained minister in New Jersey in the 1960s and had moved to Chester to start a new congregation. By the early 1970s, news reports show he was working at Trinity Church Chapel leading youth summer workshops for teen girls, and assisting at the Bible school the girl later attended. At the time Gretchen went missing, her’s father, Harold, was the reverend of the nearby Reformed Presbyterian Church.

“He is every parent’s worst nightmare. This is a man who is a remorseless child predator who acted as if he was a friend, a neighbor, and a man of God. And he killed this poor little girl,” said Stollsteimer.

Gretchen went missing at about 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 15, when she was last seen heading to a Bible school program at Trinity Church Chapel about two blocks from her home, according to Inquirer reports from the time. As part of the Bible school program, students started the day at Trinity, and were later taken to Reformed, Delaware County authorities said Monday. Gretchen never arrived at Reformed, and her father became concerned.

Just after 11 a.m., Zandstra contacted police and reported Gretchen missing, authorities said.

In the wake of Gretchen’s disappearance, police launched search parties with hundreds of members to comb through the wooded areas around her home on Lawrence Road near West Chester Pike, as well as most of Marple Township and neighboring communities. Witnesses at the time described seeing Gretchen speaking with the driver of a green station wagon or two-tone Cadillac, but the driver — later determined to be Zandstra — was never located.

Authorities also distributed more than 2,000 leaflets with a photo of the child, and set up a 24-hour hotline that garnered hundreds of calls. Police asserted they had identified a convicted child molester as a prime suspect but failed to compile enough evidence to bring charges. The case remained unsolved. Investigators assigned to the case said they were haunted by the incident years later.

Ultimately, searchers were unable to find Gretchen.

“We haven’t got a thing, not a thing,” then-Broomall Fire Chief Knute Keober told The Inquirer two days after Gretchen’s disappearance. “If she’s in the area, she’s by Jesus well-hidden.”

One Marple Township detective, Richard W. Mankin, even consulted a psychic regarding Gretchen’s disappearance, who said that the girl was dead, according to a 1984 Inquirer report. Mankin later received an anonymous letter with new information, but leads proved fruitless.

Two months after Gretchen’s disappearance, on Oct. 14, 1975, a jogger discovered her skeletal remains bearing evidence of blunt-force trauma to her skull in a wooded area of Ridley Creek State Park in Edgmont Township. The area was about 2½ miles from her home, The Inquirer reported in 1984.

Authorities found Gretchen’s clothing “folded and in a neat pile” near her body, and her underwear had been hung from a tree branch “like a flag...as if to call attention to the place,” according to an Inquirer report. She died as a result of cranial cerebral injuries, an autopsy later found.

By 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 resides.

Police honed in on Zandstra as a suspect in January, when investigators interviewed an unnamed witness who was best friends with his daughter when Gretchen disappeared, according to a criminal complaint. The witness said that she often went to sleepovers at Zandstra’s home, and during one about a week before Gretchen’s disappearance, Zandstra molested her. When the witness told Zandstra’s daughter what had happened, she told her friend that Zandstra “does that sometimes,” the complaint said.

Two Pennsylvania State Police troopers — Cpl. Andrew J. Martin of the criminal investigation assessment unit and Trooper Eugene Tray — traveled to Georgia last Monday and coaxed a confession from Zandstra, who initially denied seeing Gretchen on the day of her disappearance. At that interview, police confronted him with the witness’ allegations of sexual assault, and he admitted to the accusations. He later admitted that he had seen Gretchen the day she disappeared, and that he was driving a green Rambler station wagon at the time.

Zandstra told investigators that he offered Gretchen a ride, and took her to a nearby wooded area, according to the complaint. There, he parked the car, and told the girl to remove her clothing, but she refused. Zandstra said he struck her in the head with his fist, causing her to bleed. Believing the girl to be dead, he covered her body with sticks and left the area, the complaint states.

After his arrest, Zandstra was denied bail. He is fighting extradition to Pennsylvania. The District Attorney’s Office will seek a warrant from the governor to bring him to Pennsylvania to face the charges, Stollsteimer said.

Although Zandstra did not confess to other victims, Stollsteimer called on the public to send in any tips.

The Harrington family on Monday released a statement lamenting the loss of Gretchen, whom they described as an “amazing” and “sweet and gentle” girl. They said they were seeking closure with Zandstra’s arrest.

“It’s difficult to express the emotions that we are feeling as we take one step closer to justice,” the family’s statement read. “The abduction and murder of Gretchen has forever altered our family and we miss her every single day.”