For 40 years, before David Zandstra and his wife took up residence near Marietta, he served the Christian Reformed Church in five congregations across the country. On Monday, prosecutors announced that the 83-year-old retired minister had confessed to abducting and killing an 8-year-old girl in 1975 and would face charges in her death.
The alleged confession shed some light on nearly 50 years of mystery surrounding the disappearance of Gretchen Harrington, a camper at Zandstra’s Bible school in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. But it has raised hard questions in the other communities where Zandstra served across the northeast, Texas and California, most recently in the Sacramento suburb of Fairfield.
Officials there are taking a fresh look at the 1991 disappearance of 4-year-old Amanda Campbell after discovering Zandstra lived within 3 miles of her home at the time she went missing, records show. His church — the Fairfield Christian Reformed Church, where he ended his career in ministry in 2005 — was just over 3 miles away.
Campbell was last seen two days after Christmas while riding her bike to a friend’s house around the corner from where she lived, The Daily Republic newspaper reported. Her bicycle was found a few blocks away, and police K-9s tracked her scent to a nearby McDonald’s restaurant before losing track of it on an interstate ramp.
“A detective from the Special Victims Unit has been assigned to the case for follow up,” said Jennifer Brantley, a spokesperson for the Fairfield Police Department. “Further details will be provided after detectives had had an opportunity to investigate and speak with the involved allied agencies in Pennsylvania and Georgia.”
Cobb County police would not confirm if they had been contacted by the California agency but said Tuesday there are no open cases involving Zandstra. The GBI also confirmed it was not investigating him, as did police in Plano, Texas, where Zandstra pastored after leaving Pennsylvania.
“The members of our church are shocked and horrified that any person, much less a pastor, could commit such crimes and conceal this evil for close to five decades,” the Fairfield church said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution regarding Gretchen’s death. “May God in His mercy comfort all of those who have been affected by these heinous acts.”
The national office of the Christian Reformed Church, a Protestant congregationalist denomination, said Wednesday that it is unaware of any other abuse allegations against Zandstra and that the two congregations where investigations are active are cooperating with law enforcement.
“The (church) would like to extend condolences to the Harrington family,” a spokesperson for the national office said. “We were heartbroken to hear about Gretchen’s kidnapping and death back in 1975. We are additionally grieved now to hear that a CRC pastor was responsible for her murder.”
The church has implemented several policies to prevent and report abuse in recent years, the spokesperson said, although it was not clear what safeguards were in place in 1975.
“Despite these systems, we know — and have seen in Gretchen Harrington’s case — that sometimes our best efforts fail,” the church said. “For this, we lament, and we commit to a church culture in which abuse in all its forms will not be tolerated.”
The denomination office had no record of Zandstra’s church membership in Georgia. In fact, little has been made public about how Zandstra spent his years in retirement in northern Cobb.
The Zandstras lived quietly in their Lakewood Colony subdivision for nearly 20 years amid manicured lawns and well-kept homes. Their neighbors were taken by surprise when they learned of the arrest of the man they came to know as a nice neighbor who liked to walk the cul-de-sac and greet those he passed.
An author biography listed on a devotional website indicated Zandstra provided counseling at pregnancy resource centers and served in other ministries. His most recent devotional was published in 2014 but has since been removed from the site.
Investigators in multiple states have called on any possible victims to come forward. Pennsylvania State Police, which is handling the Gretchen Harrington case, did not immediately return a request to confirm if they had been apprised of any other cases.
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