Former Virginia Tech Student Faces Life In Prison For Killing 13-Year-Old To Hide Their Relationship

A former Virginia Tech engineering student faces life in prison this week for killing a 13-year-old girl.

David Eisenhauer's two-day sentencing is expected to begin Tuesday. He faces up to a life sentence, plus 15 years for the 2016 stabbing death of Nicole Lovell, The Associated Press reported.

Eisenhauer, 20, pleaded no contest to her murder in February and was convicted of abducting, killing and concealing Lovell’s body.

Lovell's corpse was found in North Carolina with 14 stab wounds three days after she went missing from Blacksburg, Virginia. Her body was about 90 miles from her hometown.  Eisenhauer’s DNA was discovered under Lovell’s fingernails, and her blood was found in his car.

Prosecutors said Eisenhauer, who was 18 at the time, killed the seventh-grader because he feared he got her pregnant. He allegedly told his accomplice Natalie Keepers, then 19, about this secret. Keepers, like Eisenhauer, was a freshman engineering student at Virginia Tech. Keepers allegedly told police that she was Eisenhauer’s "sociopath in training," according to The Fredericksburg Patch. She told police that Eisenhauer was a true "sociopath” and that by working with him, she joined  "the best club in the world."

Keepers told police that Eisenhauer told her that Lovell threatened to kill herself if he broke off contact with her. Then they allegedly discussed how he should kill her.

natalie keeprs

Police said they found text messages between Eisenhauer and Keepers in which they talked about getting rid of the body, The Collegiate Times in Christiansburg, Virginia reported. Police also found evidence that Eisenhauer researched how to discard human remains on his computer the week of Lovell's death.

Keepers is scheduled to stand trial in September. She’s been charged with being an accessory before the fact and with concealing a body.

Prosecutors said Lovell and Eisenhauer met online. They chatted over social media for months before meeting in person. Lovell had described Eisenhauer to friends as her 18-year-old boyfriend. Eisenhauer was allegedly scared she would expose their relationship.

Lovell suffered multiple health problems during her young life, including a liver transplant and lymphoma.

“Of all the children for a predator or predators to betray, it really is grotesque for Nicole Lovell to have been betrayed because she was such an innocent,” Jane Lillian Vance, who worked as a teaching assistant at Blacksburg Middle School, where Lovell was enrolled, told The Associated Press.

[Photos: Blacksburg Police Department]