Nicole Lovell, a vibrant 13-year-old girl from Blacksburg, Virginia, tragically lost her life in January 2016 at the hands of a man she had been chatting with on the online messaging app, Kik.
Nicole was born with a malformed liver, and so needed a liver transplant at an early age. After the surgery, she was left with scars on her neck and abdomen. These scars made her prone to bullying. By the time she was 13, she was convinced that no one liked her.
Nicole’s father, David Lovell, also made her life more unbearable. He had abandoned Nicole’s mother, Tammy Weeks, before Nicole was born, and was never really present in her life. He was never really in her life.
Nicole’s Disappearance and the Search
On January 27, 2016, Nicole’s mother, Tammy Weeks, reported her missing after discovering that Nicole’s bedroom door had been moved and her window slightly open. Nicole, a liver transplant recipient who relied on daily prescribed medication, was last seen around midnight.
The Blacksburg community, including members of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, immediately joined the search for Nicole. Her disappearance sparked concern due to her medical condition and the need for her to take her medication regularly.
After Nicole went missing, the investigators found something on the walls of her room that would help them solve the mystery of her disappearance: passwords and usernames of all her social media accounts.
As they dug into her accounts, they discovered she had been in frequent communication with an anonymous user on Kik Messenger. The user goes by the username: Dr_Tombstone. At this time, the FBI has taken over the investigation.
Kik app allows users to chat with others anonymously, and this is why some teens like it because they can pretend to be adults without being discovered. The FBI made an emergency disclosure request to Kik, asking them to reveal the identity of Dr_Tombstone. Kik provided an IP address associated with the account and this led the investigators to David Eisenhauer, 18, a freshman engineering student at Virginia Tech.
David was a high school track star, and those who knew him described him as being extremely brilliant. David was a user of the Kik Messenger and had been chatting with Nicole for months.
The investigators traced him to his dorm room and arrested him. When he was brought in for questioning, he claimed he had gone out to meet Nicole that night she was reported missing, but he backed off after he saw that she was just a girl. The investigators were unconvinced because the chats they recovered from Nicole’s phone suggested she had met with David, and most likely they had been intimate.
Without being asked, David revealed that he had bought a shovel to clear snow. He stated that he purchased the shovel in a Walmart store in the company of his friend, Natalie Keepers.
The shovel was later found in David’s car, along with a blood stain in the trunk of the car.
Natalie Keepers
She was brought in for question after David mentioned her, she was a 19-year-old Virginia Tech student. Natalie is a brilliant daughter of a former NASA engineer and had the dream of becoming a NASA engineer like his father.
After she was brought in she revealed, Natalie told investigators that David had met Nicole online, and was terrified when she threatened to expose him as a child predator when he wanted to end their relationship. So, he decided to take a drastic measure to make sure his image didn’t get tarnished. He thought of different ideas to kill Nicole but finally settled on stabbing her.
That night, he agreed to go out on a date with Nicole, but when she entered his car, they drove her to the place he stabbed her to death before her body was disposed of. Natalie claimed she initially thought David was joking about the plot, and decided to play along.
She told investigators where her body was.
On January 30, 2016, Nicole’s body was discovered by Virginia State Police approximately 80 miles south of her residence, near an on-ramp on Route 89 in Surry County, North Carolina. The medical examiner determined that Nicole had been stabbed 14 times, including a lethal wound to her neck.
The medical examiner also noted on her scalp, a stab wound to her ear. She also had a fractured cervical spine which the examiner concluded was severed while she was still alive.
Trial and Sentencing
The pair were arraigned on February 1, 2016.
David Eisenhauer pleaded no contest to murder, abduction, and concealing a body. On June 27, 2018, he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Natalie Keepers was later sentenced to 40 years as an accomplice.