A retired Georgia minister is found not guilty in the 1975 murder of a Pennsylvania girl

MEDIA, Pa. (AP) – A retired Georgia minister was found not guilty Friday in the slaying of an 8-year-old girl whose remains were found in a southeastern Pennsylvania park nearly half a year ago.

A judge acquitted David Zandstra, 84, of Atlanta, Marietta, after deliberating for an hour following a four-day trial.

Zandstra was charged with the kidnapping and murder of Gretchen Harrington, who disappeared in 1975 while walking alone to a Bible camp at the church where Zandstra was pastor. His body was found two months later by a hiker at Ridley Creek State Park in Media, Pennsylvania.

Harrington was given a ride by Zandstra the day she disappeared, the Delaware County district attorney said during the filing of the charges. Prosecutors say Zandstra confessed to the murder after investigators received new information and interviewed the retired minister.

His attorney, Mark Much, told jurors that detectives pressured and tricked Zandstra into confessing to a crime he did not commit. The lawyers of the suspects said that there is no concrete evidence linking the retired minister to the girl’s death and the police have investigated other suspects who may be the killer.

Defense attorney Christopher Boggs told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Zandstra’s family is happy that he can return home after 18 months in custody.

In the days after the girl disappeared, hundreds of people searched nearby wooded areas, authorities distributed more than 2,000 leaflets and opened a 24-hour hotline that took hundreds of calls, the Inquirer reported.

When the girl’s body was found, her clothes were “folded and in a neat pile” next to her body and her underwear was hanging from a tree branch “like a flag … as if she wanted to pay attention to the place,” the newspaper said at the time.