BLACKSBURG, Va. — Two Virginia Tech students carefully planned the kidnapping and killing of a 13-year-old girl, arranging a pre-dawn rendezvous online after buying cleaning supplies and a shovel at separate Wal-Mart stores, a prosecutor alleged Thursday.
Montgomery County Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary Pettitt described how authorities believe David Eisenhauer and Natalie Keepers plotted the stabbing death of Nicole Lovell, a seventh-grader who used social media to escape from bullying after surviving a liver transplant and other health scares.
Pettitt revealed just enough information to persuade a judge to deny Keepers’ bail, leaving key aspects of the crime a mystery. She did not suggest a possible motive, nor describe the killing itself.
But the prosecutor said messages on the girl’s phone led to the suspects, and accused the college freshmen of deciding together in a fast-food restaurant that Eisenhauer would cut her throat.
Defense lawyers argued that Keepers’ mental health could unravel behind bars.
Judge Robert Viars Jr. decided Keepers should remain behind bars after Pettitt said she “is in the same position as the person who carried out the murder.”
Eisenhauer, 18, is jailed without bond on charges of kidnapping and first-degree murder.
Keepers, 19, is charged with being an accessory to kidnapping and murder and with helping to hide the body.
The prosecutor said Eisenhauer initially denied his involvement when police found his messages on Nicole’s phone, but eventually, he said he drove to the girl’s home, watched her climb out of her window and greeted her with a “side hug” before they drove off to pick up Keepers.
Keepers is adamant that she was not present at the killing itself, but she went along for the ride, Pettitt said. And once Nicole was dead, Keepers helped load her body into Eisenhauer’s Lexus, the prosecutor added.
Nicole’s remains were eventually found at a remote spot two hours south of campus.
Pettitt said it was Keepers who revealed the plot after officers tracked her down, but that she first tried to warn Eisenhauer, sending him a one-word text message reading “Police.”
A neighbor said Nicole told 8-year-old friends before she vanished that she planned to sneak out to meet her 18-year-old “boyfriend,” a man she said was named David, whose picture she displayed on her phone. Authorities have not confirmed that this was Eisenhauer’s photo.
