A RETIRED US church pastor who presided nearly half a century ago at the funeral of a kidnapped eight-year-old girl has been charged with her murder.
Gretchen Harrington went missing in the Philadelphia suburb of Marple Township on the morning of 15 August 1975 while attending summer Bible camp.
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Earlier this year, an anonymous woman told investigators she believed her best friend’s father was the culprit.
David Zandstra, 83, is now charged with murder and kidnapping of a minor.
“He is every parent’s worst nightmare,” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer told reporters on Monday.
“He killed this poor eight-year-old girl he knew and who trusted him. And then, he acted as if he was a family friend, not only during her burial and the period after that, but for years.”
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Interest in the case was revived in part by a book published last year, called Marple’s Gretchen Harrington Tragedy: Kidnapping, Murder and Innocence Lost in Suburban Philadelphia.
In 1975, Mr Zandstra was pastor at the Trinity Christian Reformed Church. Bible camps were held on its premises each morning and he would then transport the children to a second church.
But Gretchen never showed up at the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and it was Mr Zandstra himself who reported her disappearance to police that morning.
Her remains would be found in a nearby wooded area nearly two months later.
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The suspect was a family friend of the Harringtons, helped search for her and even presided over the child’s funeral, sources told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.
Investigators say Mr Zandstra had invited Gretchen into his car once she was out of view of her late father, who had watched her walk up the road from the family home.
