Retired Georgia minister found not guilty in 1975 slaying of Pennsylvania girl

MEDIA, Pa. (AP) — A retired Georgia minister was acquitted Friday of killing an 8-year-old girl whose body was found in a southeastern Pennsylvania park nearly half a century ago. Discover.

After a four-day trial, the jury deliberated for an hour before acquitting David Zandstra, 84, of Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta.

Zandstra was charged in the summer of 2023 with the kidnapping and murder of Gretchen Harrington, who disappeared in 1975 while traveling alone to a Bible camp at the church where Zandstra served as pastor. Two months later, a jogger discovered her body at Ridley Creek State Park in Media, Pennsylvania.

The Delaware County district attorney said in filing the charges that Zanderstra invited Harrington for a ride on the day she disappeared. Prosecutors said Zandstra confessed to the murder after investigators received new information and interviewed the retired minister.

His attorney, Mark Much, told jurors that detectives pressured and tricked Zanderstra into confessing to a crime he did not commit. Defense lawyers said there was no physical evidence linking the retired minister to the girl’s death and police had investigated other suspects who were more likely to be the killers.

Defense attorney Christopher Boggs told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Zanderstra’s family is happy to have him home after 18 months in custody.

In the days after the girl disappeared, hundreds of people searched nearby woods and authorities distributed more than 2,000 flyers and set up a 24-hour hotline that answered hundreds of calls, according to the Inquirer.

The newspaper said that when the girl’s body was found, her clothes were “neatly stacked near her body” and her underwear was “hanging from a tree branch like a flag … as if to draw attention to the place.”