Two Virginia Tech students have been arrested in relation to the abduction and murder of 13-year-old Blacksburg resident Nicole M. Lovell.
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Police also charged 19-year-old Natalie Keepers, an engineering student who had previously interned with NASA, with improper disposal of a dead body and accessory after the commission of a felony, according to NBC News.
Eisenhauer’s hearing happened ahead of schedule and out of sight of reporters on Monday.
Eisenhauer was appointed a lawyer and would remain in jail without bond, a court clerk said. Cameras, not allowed inside, would have captured Keepers in her orange jumpsuit and shackles telling the judge – barely above a whisper – she understood the charges against her and hired her own attorney. “Obviously they’ve never been in your arms”, she posted on July 28, 2015.
Police said they arrested Eisenhauer based on tips and leads obtained from social media, and they say he and Lovell knew each other.
Nicole’s mother said she was heartbroken that he girl who had endured such hardship would end up being preyed upon by the suspect.
“My understanding is she was way off down in the woods there”, the sheriff said of the victim’s remains. The teen’s life hadn’t been easy, her mother, Tammy Weeks, told The Washington Post.
Nicole didn’t like going to school because girls called her fat and talked about the scars from her transplant, Weeks said.
Weeks says her daughter loved pandas and wanted to be on “America Idol” when she got older.
Davy Draper, who said he’s a close family friend of the Lovells and knew Nicole most of her life, described her as an energetic and outspoken person who got along with everyone.
Little did the volunteer drone operators know that two students from their own engineering department were allegedly involved in her murder.
Keepers and Eisenhauer lived in residence halls just a few minutes apart on the Virginia Tech campus, which has 31,000 full-time students.
Police did not announce a motive for the murder or reveal how Lovell was killed, according to USA Today. David Eisenhauer is charged with first-degree murder and Natalie Keepers faces charges including improper disposal of a body.
State police divers have been searching a pond on campus, but authorities would not say what they were looking for.
While officials have not said how the teen died, in charging documents, they wrote that a gun was not used, reports The Baltimore Sun. Her body was found Saturday just across the Virginia state line in North Carolina, hours after Eisenhauer was arrested.
The body of Nicole Madison Lovell, 13, of Blacksburg, Virginia, was discovered Saturday off N.C. 89 at Lowgap, in an area near Snowbird Curve where a road-construction project recently occurred.
The 13-year-old girl went missing Wednesday from her home in Blacksburg, where family members found a dresser pushed up against her bedroom door.
“He was an excellent student”, James LeMon, principal at the high school in Columbia, Maryland, said in a telephone interview. Even kids whose parents closely monitor their activity on sites such as Facebook often use smartphones with other social media where predators lurk, said Adam Lee, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Richmond. His coach told the newspaper that Eisenhauer was “the best-kept secret in Maryland”.
The school said in a statement Saturday that he has been suspended from the university.
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A number listed for Eisenhauer’s parents in Columbia, Maryland, rang busy.
