Two Virginia Tech students sat at a Cook Out fast-food restaurant in Blacksburg, Virginia, last month, maybe drinking Cheerwine floats, maybe having a dozen hush puppies — and, prosecutors say, plotting the abduction and murder of a 13-year-old girl.
Details of the scheme were revealed in a bond hearing on Thursday: According to prosecutors, David Eisenhauer and Natalie Keepers talked about how to lure the young girl, Nicole Lovell, out of her house and to a remote location to cut her throat and then hide her body in the trunk of a Lexus. Lovell’s body was found on the side of the road 80 miles from her home on January 30, at the end of a three-day search that had started when the seventh-grader and her Minions blanket vanished via her bedroom window on a Wednesday night.
Eisenhauer, 18, was arrested in his freshman dorm room the same day Lovell’s remains were found. The star cross-country athlete is believed to have had an “inappropriate relationship” with the 13-year-old girl. The two allegedly met on the social-networking app Kik. Investigators believe Eisenhauer was scared that Lovell had begun to talk about their relationship — she’d shown his photo to a friend, bragging about the older guy she was meeting up with, according to WTKR — and decided to take drastic action.
Prosecutor Mary Pettitt said Keepers’s motive for aiding in the plot was less direct: “She wanted to be part of something secretive and special.” She’s charged with two counts of being an accessory to murder and with concealing a body. Eisenhauer was charged with abduction and murder. Both are being held without bail and, if convicted, face 20 years to life in prison.
