Fairfield Cold Case Reopened After Former Pastor Admits to Another Killing
A 1991 cold case involving the disappearance of a 4-year-old Fairfield girl is being reopened by investigators following the arrest of a former Fairfield church pastor on murder and sexual assault charges relating to the 1975 killing of an 8-year-old Pennsylvania girl, Gretchen Harrington.
83-year-old David Zandstra recently confessed to Georgia state troopers that he killed 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington some 48 years ago in Pennsylvania, where Zandstra lived before moving to Fairfield, California.
KCRA 3 reports that Zandstra was a pastor at Fairfield Christian Reformed Church during most of the 1990s and through 2005. An address for Zandstra at the time places the pastor within mere minutes of the site where Amanda Nicole Campbell, a 4-year-old Fairfield girl, was last seen. Campbell had been riding her bike to a friend’s house the day of December 27th, 1991. The girl never made it to her destination. Her bicycle was found a few blocks away from her home.
Zandstra has already admitted to killing Gretchen Harrington, an 8-year-old Pennsylvania girl, in 1975. Harrington was last seen walking to a bible school about a quarter mile away from her home in Broomall, Pennsylvania. The girl’s body was discovered two months later by a jogger in Ridley Creek State Park.
Investigators in the Harrington case were led to question Zandstra following the recent publication of a true crime book that helped garner fresh interest in the case.
“We’ve been told that by Marple Police and we’re encouraged that, you know, that we somehow contributed to this,” Joanna Falcone Sullivan, the book’s author, told CBS News. “I think we got people talking again.”
Fairfield police told KCRA 3 the department is currently reviewing evidence in the Campbell case to search for any clues that may point to Zandstra’s involvement.
Anyone who may have knowledge about Zandstra and the disappearance of Amanda Campbell should contact Fairfield police at (707) 428-7300.