A grand jury indicted two former Virginia Tech students on first-degree murder and other charges Tuesday for the high-profile killing of 13-year-old Blacksburg resident Nicole Lovell, a prosecutor said. Keepers faces life in prison, too.
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Keepers graduated from Hammond High School and she was indicted on charges of being an accessory to murder before the fact, also transporting or concealing a body, Pettitt said.
Montgomery County Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary Pettitt said in an email Tuesday that prosecutors would have to show David Eisenhauer abducted Nicole Lovell last January with the intent to sexually defile her in order to seek a capital murder charge against him. Prosecutors allege that Eisenhauer and Keepers then dumped Lovell’s body.
Two former Virginia Tech students were indicted Tuesday in the slaying of a seventh-grade girl who was found dead last January days after authorities say she sneaked out of her window to rendezvous with the older teens, a county prosecutor said. Eisenhauer faces up to life plus 15 years in prison for his crimes. Natalie Keepers, also 19, was charged with being an accessory to kidnapping and murder and with helping hide the body, the commonwealth’s attorney said.
Police later revealed that Nicole used a messaging app called Kik to meet up with her accused killers – who lure her into the woods where Eisenhauer allegedly stabbed her to death.
Keepers told investigators she was not present for the actual killing.
Eisenhauer appeared in Circuit Court and waived his right to a speedy trial.
The trial is scheduled to begin sometime in March 2017, according to the Associated Press. No motions have been filed at this time.
Trial dates were set Tuesday in both cases for March 2017.
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Prosecutors said Keepers’ role in killing Lovell was particularly chilling because she did not know the girl. A motions hearing has been set for January 17th-20th.
