COLD CASE SOLVED

Ex-Reverend Arrested for Murder of 8-Year-Old on Her Way to Bible Camp

David Zandstra, 83, apparently confessed to police shortly after his arrest last week.

A former reverend has been arrested for the 1975 murder of an eight-year-old girl in suburban Philadelphia, authorities announced Monday—capping a bizarre, headline-grabbing cold case that haunted the small community of Broomall, Pennsylvania for decades. David Zandstra, 83, confessed to police shortly after his arrest last week, according to a criminal complaint cited by ABC News. He told officers that he picked up Gretchen Harrington as she was headed to a Bible camp just a short distance from her home—then drove her elsewhere and demanded that she remove her clothes. When she refused, Zandstra said he beat her to death with his bare hands before disposing of her body. “We’re going to try him, we’re going to convict him and he’s going to die in jail,” Jack Stollsteimer, the local district attorney for Delaware County, Pennsylvania, said at a press conference Monday. “And then he’s going to have to find out what the God he professes to believe in holds for those who are this evil to our children.”