A Delco jury acquitted a pastor in the 1975 murder and kidnapping of Gretchen Harrington

After about an hour of deliberation Friday, a Delaware County jury acquitted a former Marple Township pastor of murder and kidnapping in the 1975 killing of Gretchen Harrington.

David Zandstra, 84, hugged his attorney, Mark Much, as the verdict was read, an emotional moment that capped a four-day trial into one of the county’s most shocking and confounding cold cases.

Much’s cocounsel, Christopher Boggs, said afterward that Zandstra’s family was relieved to be able to bring him home after 18 months in custody.

“I think the Commonwealth was absolutely in a difficult spot, trying to prove something that was 50 years old,” Boggs said, adding that Much worked hard to prove to jurors that Zandstra was innocent, as he had professed for years.

In his closing arguments earlier Friday, Deputy District Attorney Geoff Paine maintained what he has said since 2023, when Zandstra was charged with the 8-year-old’s murder after confessing to the crime: That Zandstra was burdened by perverse sexual urges when he took Gretchen, drove her to a secluded section of Ridley Creek State Park and beat her to death.

After the verdict was read Friday afternoon, Paine said he knew it would be a difficult case going in, given the unavailability of some witnesses. And though his office believed that Zandstra was the correct suspect, they respect the jury’s decision.

“We have made a commitment to the families of all of our cold-case victims, and we’re not going to change that commitment based on one verdict in one case,” Paine said.

During his own closing arguments Friday, Much said that Pennsylvania State Police detectives had coerced and manipulated his client into confessing to a crime he did not commit, planting ideas in his head with false claims about forensic and eyewitness evidence they did not have.

The case, he told the jury, was riddled with reasonable doubt, and he urged them to acquit Zandstra of any wrongdoing.

“He believes law enforcement is there to help. He doesn’t believe they’re there to trick him,” Much said. “If you killed a child in 1975 and got away with it for 48 years, why would you go in and speak with the police?”

Zandstra was the pastor at Trinity Chapel in Marple Township, a Christian reform church just up the hill from the Harrington family home. On Aug. 15, 1975, Gretchen was last seen walking to the church for the final session of vacation Bible school before disappearing into Delaware County history, the victim of a vicious crime that has long shocked the community.

Her body was found two months later near a walking trail in Ridley Creek State Park, her clothes nearby. An autopsy later revealed that she died from blunt-force trauma to the head — she was beaten to death.

During an interview with two state police detectives in 2023, Zandstra admitted to abducting and killing Gretchen, saying the episode was something he had often replayed in his mind in the intervening years.

The interview was scheduled, Paine said, after a woman who was a lifelong friend of Zandstra’s daughter told police in 2022 that Zandstra had groped her at a sleepover at his home in 1975, days before Gretchen’s disappearance. At the time, Paine said, the woman was the same age as Gretchen and looked like Gretchen.

“If that happened today and there was a report, there’d be one suspect in this murder: The guy who tried to molest little girls from the church,” Paine said.

Testimony during Zandstra’s four-day trial revealed that, before his confession, state police had developed multiple suspects in the decades since Gretchen’s body was found. Suspects that Much, Zandstra’s attorney, stressed in his own closing arguments were more likely than his client.

There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime: DNA found on Gretchen’s clothing belonged to two unidentified men and one unidentified woman.

Zandstra, Much said, was excluded from being even a potential contributor.

“If David Zandstra doesn’t talk to the police, we’re not here,” Much said. “They didn’t have any evidence to arrest him in 2023.”

Among the alternate suspects Much presented to the jury was Richard Bailey, a convicted child rapist and kidnapper, who was seen a mile from where Gretchen disappeared on the day she was abducted. Bailey died in state prison in the 1990s.

Another prime suspect, according to Much, was Gretchen’s sister, Zoe Harrington, who in 2021 admitted to killing her sister with a rock during a bizarre, occult-like ritual involving her father, who was also a pastor, and members of the congregation he led.

Because of that statement, Much said, state police at one point considered Harold Harrington, Gretchen’s father, a potential suspect. Harold Harrington died in 2021.

Paine, the prosecutor, dismissed Zoe Harrington’s confession, saying she had a history of mental-health illness. He told jurors that Much’s theories were a distraction meant to obscure the truth.

During his confession, Zandstra was able to recall details of Gretchen’s abduction freely, including the detail that she was terrified on the drive to the state park and asked him to take her home, Paine said.

Other witnesses, in reports filed to police in 1975, said that Zandstra was not at Trinity Chapel on the morning Gretchen disappeared, with one woman saying the day had a “spooky” feel to it as the day’s normal activities were delayed.