By David Lohr

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March 7, 2007

BEDFORD, Ind. (Crime Library ) —  "I've got her, and you're not going to get her."  According to Vivian Pace, those are the last words her former son-in-law said to her daughter before he crashed a single-engine Cessna into the side of Pace'shome Monday morning, killing himself and his young daughter.

crashed plane

Pace was sitting in her living room at about 10:45 a.m., when the foundation of her home was rocked by the impact of the plane.  "Everything fell off the walls," she said in an interview with The Times-Mail yesterday.  Pace attempted to call 911, but her phone line had been knocked out by the collision, which left half of the plane lodged inside her house.  As she ran to a neighbour's house, a firefighter was already arriving on the scene.  Rescuers could see that there were two victims inside the plane; however, neither appeared to be moving, and it would take some time to free the wreckage from the home, and remove the passengers.  At the time, the crash seemed like a tragic accident.

As the dust settled at Pace's house, her daughter, Beth Johnson, was arriving at the Bedford Police Department to report that her ex-husband, Eric Johnson, 47, had abducted their eight-year-old daughter Emily.  Johnson had spent the past week visiting with his daughter, and was supposed to have dropped her off for school, but he never showed up.

Eric Johnson

In a shocking discovery, investigators soon linked the crashed plane's tail numbers to Eric Johnson, and soon thereafter, they positively identified the two victims in the crash, both of whom were dead, as Johnson and his daughter. 

The Indiana State Police issued a press release yesterday afternoon, detailing their agency's findings.

"...Based on the developing investigation, in cooperation with the Bedford Police Department, state police investigators are treating this event as a homicide since indications in this ongoing investigation are that Eric Johnson deliberately crashed the plane into the house.  The reason the investigation has taken this direction is based on information provided by witnesses of the crash, the direction the aircraft was traveling in relation to the airport and the fact the plane crashed into the home of Eric Johnson's former mother-in-law..."

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Contact  David Lohr at           crimewriter74@hughes.net

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