No Bail for Laurel Teen Charged in Virginia Girl's Death

BLACKSBURG, VA – The Laurel woman charged as an accessory in the murder of a Virginia teen will be held without bail.

Natalie Keepers, 19, is charged with improper disposal of a body and accessory before and after the fact in the commission of a felony.

Prosecutors said that Keepers and fellow Virginia Tech student 18-year-old David Eisenhauer planned the killing of a Blacksburg middle school girl.

Keepers was “excited to be part of something secretive and special,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary Pettitt reportedly told a judge Thursday at the bail review hearing.

Nicole Madison Lovell, 13, disappeared from her family’s apartment on Wednesday, Jan. 27, and her remains were found Saturday, Jan. 30, just over the state line in Surry County, N.C.

Pettitt said the preliminary cause of Lovell’s death was stabbing. Days before Lovell was killed, the two Virginia Tech students allegedly met at a restaurant called “Cook Out” to plot her death, according to CNN.

Prosecutors alleged that Keepers and Eisenhauer planned the murder, which involved him luring the girl out of her apartment thinking she was going on a date, then slitting her throat at a site that the two suspects picked out together before dumping her body, the Roanoke Times reported.

Keepers told police that she helped Eisenhauer put the girl’s body in the trunk of his Lexus, but she was not there at the actual time of the murder, according to the report.

Taking the stand Thursday, Keepers testified she was medicated for anxiety and depression and had been seeking counseling at Virginia Tech since arriving at the university in August 2015, the Roanoke Times reported. She also reportedly said she had struggled with suicidal thoughts and self-mutilation since eighth grade.

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Those who knew Keepers did not recall darkness in their accounts of the ambitious young woman, who was enrolled in the engineering program at Virginia Tech and had joined a learning community there for women in male-dominated fields.

Her former math teacher told the Associated Press he didn’t recognize Keepers when he saw her mug shot because she always seemed “bubbly and happy and excited about her future” while attending Hammond High School in Columbia.

A Howard Community College student in Columbia who knew Keepers in middle school described her similarly to the Associated Press as energetic, also noting she was not violent and had been “really interested in guys.”

Keepers’ parents reportedly said that they first learned of their daughter’s friendship with Eisenhauer, who also went to high school in Howard County, when he took her to the hospital for an appendectomy in October 2015. Before college, he attended Wilde Lake High School in Columbia.

Both were studying engineering at Virginia Tech, where they have been banned from campus since the charges were announced, The Roanoke Times reported.

A funeral service was held for Lovell at 3 p.m. on Thursday in Blacksburg, Va.