BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Seventh-grader Nicole Madison Lovell was stabbed to death the same day she climbed out of her bedroom window, reportedly by a Virginia Tech student who got help from a fellow freshman before and after the crime, authorities said Tuesday.
David Eisenhauer, the engineering major accused of kidnapping and killing the 13-year-old girl, was arrested Saturday and charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder. "I believe the truth will set me free," he told police after his arrest.
Nicole was stabbed to death Jan. 27, said Mary Pettitt, the commonwealth's attorney for Montgomery County.
Pettitt said a classmate of Eisenhauer's, Natalie Keepers, will face a charge of being an accessory "before the fact" to first-degree murder, in addition to earlier accusations of helping to dispose of the body.
The new charge carries 20 years to life in prison, Pettitt said, adding that she would not take questions about the investigation, and that her responsibility is to "seek justice inside the courtroom."
Eisenhauer, 18, and Keepers, 19, said little during their first court appearances Monday; their lawyers have since declined to comment. Neither had criminal records, police said.
Keepers will appear in court again today at a bail hearing where she is likely to be arraigned on the new charge, according to the Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court clerk's office.
Nicole's mother, Tammy Weeks, discovered her missing on the morning of Jan. 27. Police quickly zeroed in on Eisenhauer and then found Nicole's body Saturday hidden off a North Carolina road, two hours south of campus.
Weeks spoke Tuesday of the health problems her daughter battled and the joys in her short life.
"Her favorite color was blue. Nicole was a very lovable person. Nicole touched many people throughout her short life," Weeks read from a statement. Her sobs then grew louder, until she was ushered away.
Nicole suffered from bullying at school and online over her weight and a tracheotomy scar, her mother has said. She also needed daily medication after a liver transplant, lymphoma and a drug-resistant bacterial infection she survived as a 5-year-old.
Blacksburg police said they have evidence showing Eisenhauer knew the girl before she disappeared.
"Eisenhauer used this relationship to his advantage to abduct the 13-year-old and then kill her. Keepers helped Eisenhauer dispose of Nicole's body," a police statement said.
Stacey Snider, a neighbor of Nicole's family, said Tuesday that before she vanished, Nicole showed her 8-year-old twins, who often played with Nicole, a picture of Eisenhauer and a thread of texts they had shared through Kik, a smartphone messaging application.
Snider said Nicole told her girls that she would be sneaking out that night to meet him. Nicole said she had been seeing Eisenhauer repeatedly, and described him as her "boyfriend," Snider said.
Snider said she learned all this from her girls only after Nicole vanished. "I would have told her mother. But we didn't know nothing about it until she came up missing, unfortunately," she said.
Snider said she told law enforcement officials about the Kik messages. A spokesman for Kik Interactive said the Ontario, Canada, company was "active in helping the FBI carry out their investigation," spokesman Rod McLeod said.
Information for this article was contributed by Juliet Linderman, Larry O'Dell and Alanna Durkin Richer of The Associated Press.
A Section on 02/03/2016