A jury in Pennsylvania last week acquitted a retired minister who had been living in East Cobb for the killing of a young girl nearly 50 years ago.
News reports in the Philadelphia area said George Zandstra, now 84, was acquitted by jurors in Delaware County, Pa., after a four-day trial.
He was arrested and extradited in 2023 and charged with the kidnapping and murder of Gretchen Harrington, who was 8 when she was found dead in 1975, after walking to a Bible school at a church where he was a pastor.
Zandstra, who had lived in a home in Northeast Cobb since 2005, following his retirement from the ministry, was accused by prosecutors in Delaware County in a longstanding cold case file.
He had confessed to the murder and abusing two other young girls, but during the trial his attorney said the confession had been coerced and persuaded a jury to find him not guilty.
The district attorney’s office brought the charges after being told by an individual who said she was best friends with Zandstra’s daughter, and who would stay at the minister’s home for sleepovers when she was a girl.
The witness said that when she was 10, she was awakened by Zandstra groping her, and another friend told her that he “did that sometimes,” according to the Delaware County DA.
That was right before Harrington went missing. The same witness also told authorities a child in her class was almost kidnapped twice, and noted in her diary that she thought Zandstra might have been behind those attempts, the DA’s office said at the time.
Her body was found two months after her disappearance by a jogger at a nearby state park, bludgeoned to death with a rock and covered with tree branches.
When Zandstra was charged in 2023, a law enforcement official at the time said that “justice does not have an expiration date.”
But Zandstra’s attorney, who argued that there was no physical evidence linking his client to the crime, said that Zandstra had been lied to and misled by police investigators during an interview they conducted at his home in East Cobb.
“He maintained his innocence for most of his interview, and he maintains his innocence to this day,” defense attorney Christopher Boggs said in a statement issued after the verdict.
“We are happy to have Mr. Zandstra returned to his family. Criminal trials in this country are amazing things and we thank the jury for their hard work this week. Our hearts along with all of Delaware County still break for the Harrington family who deserve an end to the nightmare of losing a family member.”
Related:
- Ann Harris elected as Cobb Superior Court Chief Judge
- Eight youths graduate from Cobb Diversionary Court program
- Newly elected Cobb District Attorney sworn into office
- Cobb Chief Magistrate appoints three to magistrate bench
- Man gets life sentence for 2015 murders of East Cobb c0uple
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