A jury must decide if David Zandstra, an 84-year-old former pastor, is guilty of the murder and kidnapping of Gretchen Harrington in 1975. The prosecution argues Zandstra's confession proves his guilt, while the defense claims investigators focused on the wrong suspect and ignored other leads.
David Zandstra's attorney said that investigators pinned the crime on the wrong man and ignored other, more appropriate suspects. Prosecutors disagreed and said Zandstra's confession proves he did it.
“Her family sat alone, wondering what happened to her,” Paine told the jury. “I submit, ladies and gentlemen, that David Zandstra was what happened to her. Him not getting his urges met is what happened to her.”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.
Zandstra was the pastor at Trinity Chapel in Marple Township, a Christian reform church just up the hill from the Harrington family home. On August 15, 1975,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.
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. 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.
MURDER KIDNAPPING TRIAL CONFESSION SUSPECTS
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