Female suspect in Nicole Lovell’s killing denied bail

Another student, David Eisenhauer, 18, also is charged in the death; he’s accused of kidnapping Nicole and then stabbing her to death.

Nicole Madison Lovell, 13, disappeared from her family’s apartment on Wednesday, Jan. 27, and her remains were found Saturday, Jan. 30, just over the state line in Surry County, N.C.

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 says Eisenhauer and Keepers met at a fast-food restaurant to plan how they’d kill Nicole, and drove past her home.

“Her involvement was from the very beginning”, said Montgomery County Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary Pettitt. She’s charged with being an accessory before and after the death of 13-year-old Nicole Lovell. “I believe the truth can set me free”, a police document quotes Eisenhauer as saying.

Natalie Keepers, 19, broke down on the stand Thursday in court as prosecutors detailed what she told investigators.

Eisenhauer was initially charged with abduction, authorities said.

On the night Lovell disappeared, Pettit said Eisenhauer watched her climb out her bedroom window and she said he was the last person to talk to Lovell on social media.

Her father, an aerospace engineer, said he had already contacted an electronic monitoring company so she could be fitted with an ankle bracelet if she returned to their home in Maryland, but the judge still denied her release.

Prosecutors alleged that Keepers and Eisenhauer planned the murder, devising a plan for him to lure the girl out of her apartment thinking she was going on a date, then slitting her throat at a site that the two suspects picked out together before dumping her body, the Roanoke Times reported.

Pettitt didn’t give a possible motive or describe how the killing was carried out; instead she detailed only the pair’s plans.

Like others her age, Nicole was tech-savvy, posting on Facebook and chatting using the Kik messenger app. But she also had to take daily medicine to keep her transplanted liver from failing, and survived other harrowing health problems that left her with a tracheotomy scar in her neck.

Keepers’ parents were at the hearing and spoke on their daughter’s behalf.

Defense lawyers argued that Keepers’ mental health could unravel behind bars.

Keepers gave detectives information about where in her dorm room they could find a suitcase containing a blanket that Nicole had with her when she went missing and cleaning supplies that Keepers and Eisenhauer had used.

“I’ve learned how to love myself and to take care of myself and deal with any stress that I have”, Keepers said, describing how she had promised a friend that if she stopped cutting herself, she would get a tattoo of a semi-colon, representing that her life was not ending, but taking a new path.