Virginia Tech Students Plotted to Kill 13-Year-Old Nicole Lovell: Prosecutors

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 on Thursday.

Natalie Keepers, 19, is charged with improper disposal of a body and accessory before and after the fact in the commission of a felony.

Keepers was arrested on January 31, the day after Lovell’s body was found in Surry County, North Carolina.

The Roanoke Times reports that the plan was for Eisenhauer, who is charged with Lovell’s murder, to lure Lovell out of the home on the guise of a date.

A judge has denied bond for a Virginia Tech student who’s accused of being an accessory in the death of a Blacksburg teenager.

Pettit said Keepers had been “excited to be part of something secretive and special”.

According to Pettitt, Keepers told investigators that she and Eisenhauer, 18, had planned it over a meal at a cookout restaurant in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Nicole lived and where they went to school. Her mother, Tammy Weeks, went to Nicole’s bedroom door and found it barricaded, the prosecutor said. Eisenhauer also is being held without bail.

Pettitt said the preliminary cause of Lovell’s death was stabbing.

Keepers described some of her problems in her own words.

The details came to light in a courtroom Thursday as prosecutor Mary Pettitt argued against granting bail to Keepers.

He said that his daughter is being kept in solitary confinement at the jail because she is “not street smart” and could be targeted by other inmates.

Nicole’s parents, David Lovell and Tammy Weeks, attended the bail hearing but made no comments before leaving for their daughter’s private funeral, where several hundred mourners paid their respects.

The judge denied the request because he did not believe Keepers, whose family lives in Maryland, has sufficient ties to keep her from fleeing Virginia.

It was Keepers who revealed the plot after officers tracked her down, but she tried to warn Eisenhauer first, sending him a one-word text message reading “Police”, Pettitt said.

Defense attorneys argued that they needed Keepers released to prepare for her case.

Now Eisenhauer remains an enigma, the mystery compounded by his statement to police after his arrest, “I believe the truth can set me free”. Keepers is charged with being an accessory before and after the crime, and she’s accused of helping to hide Nicole’s body.

A Howard Community College student in Columbia who knew Keepers in middle school described her similarly to the Associated Press as energetic, also noting she was not violent and had been “really interested in guys”.