- Oct 17, 2011
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An 83-year-old former pastor has been charged with the kidnapping and murder of a neighboring pastor’s daughter in 1975, Pennsylvania officials announced Monday.
The suspect, David Zandstra, was arrested on July 17 in Cobb County, Georgia, where investigators say he confessed to killing 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington nearly five decades ago when he was a pastor in Marple Township, Pennsylvania, according to the Delaware County District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania.
Zandstra admitted he offered Gretchen a ride to the summer camp the morning of her disappearance, according to the complaint. He told officers he drove the child to a wooded area and told her to take off her clothes, the complaint said.
His confession came after investigators presented him with new evidence gathered early this year, which came from an interview with a confidential informant and a diary entry the informant wrote in 1975 when she was a 10-year-old girl, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.
The woman showed police a diary she kept in 1975 in which she wrote that the then-pastor “touched her groin area” on two occasions while she was attending a sleepover at his home, the complaint said. The informant told investigators when she told Zandstra’s daughter what happened, the daughter replied that her father “did that sometimes,” the release said. [The diary also mentioned the killing: “I think it was Mr. Z.”]
The suspect, David Zandstra, was arrested on July 17 in Cobb County, Georgia, where investigators say he confessed to killing 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington nearly five decades ago when he was a pastor in Marple Township, Pennsylvania, according to the Delaware County District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania.
Zandstra admitted he offered Gretchen a ride to the summer camp the morning of her disappearance, according to the complaint. He told officers he drove the child to a wooded area and told her to take off her clothes, the complaint said.
His confession came after investigators presented him with new evidence gathered early this year, which came from an interview with a confidential informant and a diary entry the informant wrote in 1975 when she was a 10-year-old girl, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.
The woman showed police a diary she kept in 1975 in which she wrote that the then-pastor “touched her groin area” on two occasions while she was attending a sleepover at his home, the complaint said. The informant told investigators when she told Zandstra’s daughter what happened, the daughter replied that her father “did that sometimes,” the release said. [The diary also mentioned the killing: “I think it was Mr. Z.”]
