LA Forensics: Mysterious Confession

One evening while Rebecca was cooking supper, Lancaster asked her to help him get out of a chair. She knew her 77-year-old former father-in-law's feet sometimes swelled, and when they did he had trouble getting around. Rebecca put down the spoon she was holding and walked into the den. When she reached out to Lancaster, instead of pulling himself up, he gripped her hand like a vise and tried to drag her onto his lap.

"I thought it was kind of strange," Rebecca says.

Another time, while they were hiking a deserted trail, out of the blue Lancaster said, "Wow, someone could get killed out here and no one would ever know it."

Rebecca thought it was a weird thing to say.

The sleeping arrangements at Rebecca's house were that Lancaster slept in his camper — Rebecca didn't want a man, even a former relative, inside the house at night with her and the children — but he had a key to the house so he could get in to use the bathroom if he needed.

One morning when Lancaster came in for breakfast, he asked Rebecca why she slept with her bedroom door locked. The question stunned her, and she demanded to know why he was checking her door in the middle of the night. Lancaster claimed that when he came into the house to use the bathroom, he had seen the light from Rebecca's television glowing under her door, and he had simply wanted to get into her room to turn off the TV.

While Lancaster was staying with her and her kids, Rebecca was dating a man several years younger than her. One night Lancaster told Rebecca, "I know you like that young man, but do you ever think you could fall in love with an old coot like me?"

Rebecca says her ex-father-in-law's behavior was disturbing, even frightening. "He was saying some pretty odd things."

But nothing could prepare her for what Andrew Lancaster was about to say.