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 yesterday as investigators tried to determine why novice pilot Eric Johnson strapped his daughter into the plane’s passenger seat and apparently crashed the plane deliberately into the one-story house.

Ms. 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.

“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, Ms. Pace said, her daughter could hear the child in the background saying, “Mommy, come get me, come get me.” It was unclear whether the call was made from the cockpit or before the plane took off.

Police were treating the crash as a suicide and homicide. State Police Sergeant 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,” Sergeant Bursten said.

Andrew Todd Fox of the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators were also reviewing whether the plane was functioning properly and hoped to have a preliminary report within a week.

Virgil I. Grissom Municipal Airport has no controller on duty, so there was no tape available of any radio communication, Mr. Fox said.