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Dad: 'You're not going to get her'
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/285611,CST-NWS-plane07.article)

March 7, 2007

BY TOM DAVIES

BEDFORD, Ind. -- ''I've got her, and you're not going to get her.''

Beth Johnson heard those words from her ex-husband Monday, shortly before he crashed his rented single-engine plane into his former mother-in-law's southern Indiana home, killing himself and the couple's 8-year-old daughter.

The mother-in-law, Vivian Pace, described the cell phone call Tuesday as investigators tried to determine why student pilot Eric Johnson strapped his daughter into the plane's passenger seat and apparently crashed the plane deliberately into the one-story house.

Pace said she has no doubt that the crash was intentional because Johnson had been harassing his ex-wife for months, including buying a house three doors down from hers.

Took girl to Cancun
''That was the only way he could hurt Beth,'' she said. ''That was the only way he could get to her.''

In the cell phone call, Pace said, her daughter could hear the child in the background saying, 'Mommy, come get me, come get me.'''

Police were treating the crash as a suicide and homicide. State Police Sgt. Dave Bursten said investigators had yet to find any notes indicating Johnson's intentions, but the fact that the house was his ex-wife's mother's home raised serious questions.

''All of those things together lead us in the direction that this was done intentionally,'' Bursten said.

Eric Johnson, a property manager for the state Department of Natural Resources, had recently taken the girl to Cancun for vacation.

Emily ''was to spend the weekend with dad, and dad was supposed to bring her to school Monday morning,'' Bedford Police Maj. Dennis Parsley said.

Johnson obtained his pilot's license in November, the same month the couple divorced after 12 years.