She Climbed Out Her Bedroom Window With Her Minions Blanket For A Date With A College Freshman Who Killed Her

In the middle of the night on January 27th, 2016, 13-year-old Nicole Lovell climbed out of her bedroom window in Blacksburg, Virginia.

She lived there along with her mom, Tammy Weeks, and her grandparents. Her dad had walked out on them before Nicole was brought into the world. Nicole loved dancing, music, and panda bears. Tammy affectionately called her Coley.

Nicole took her favorite blue-colored Minions blanket and her phone along with her and vanished into the dark.

When Tammy went to open Nicole's bedroom door the next morning, it worried her that Nicole's nightstand had been moved up against it and that Nicole was nowhere to be found.

The night before, Tammy had thought about knocking on the wall to tell Nicole to come sleep in her room, as she often did; however, she didn't end up doing that.

Tammy quickly called and texted Nicole, but her daughter didn't respond, and the calls went directly to voicemail, so Tammy contacted the police.

Shortly thereafter, one of the moms in the neighborhood whose daughters played with Nicole told Tammy something shocking: Nicole had mentioned going out on a date with an older boy named David, and even showed her friend photos of him.

Tammy's heart sank, and she wondered if that boy had been someone whom Nicole had met on the internet. She was active online, like so many kids her age.

Additionally, Nicole had a liver transplant before she turned one, and she had to take daily medication to stay alive. Nicole would never have just up and left the house for that long without bringing her medication with her, as it was critical for her to have it.

Facebook - pictured above is Nicole

The transplant left Nicole with scars on her neck and stomach, and she sadly got bullied at school because of it, so she didn't like going.

Online, Nicole posted about being lonely and wanting to be loved, and not having her dad in her life certainly played into that. Nicole had written down the passwords and usernames for all of her social media accounts on the wall of her bedroom, which gave the police a head start as they searched for her.

While investigating all of this information, they came to learn that Nicole had been talking to someone with the username Dr_Tombstone on Kik, an app that allows people to anonymously chat with one another.

The FBI stepped in and managed to track down the IP address Kik gave to them for Dr_Tombstone, which was tied to an 18-year-old college freshman named David Eisenhauer.

David had been talking to Nicole for months on the app, and he definitely didn't seem like someone who would be involved in Nicole's disappearance.

He was smart and charismatic. He was a track star in high school who only earned As. He was studying engineering at Virginia Tech. Three days after Nicole vanished, police picked him up at his dorm.

He admitted he had talked to Nicole outside her house that night and was arrested on an abduction charge. His statements led police to Natalie Keepers, a 19-year-old Virginia Tech freshman, who was arrested too.

Nicole's body was then found about 90 miles away in Surry County, North Carolina, quite close to the house of David's grandparents.

On the night Nicole went missing, David had Googled "how to get rid of bodies," "knockout drugs," and "how to burn a body" on his laptop. Natalie gave police a recorded statement, and on the Monday before Nicole disappeared, David talked about getting Nicole into a car, and that by Tuesday there was a plan.

They bought a shovel, went to dinner, and David dropped Natalie at her dorm. David then picked Nicole up, drove her into the woods, and stabbed her. An autopsy revealed that Nicole's cause of death was a stab wound to the neck.

The next day, the two bought cleaning supplies at Walmart and disposed of Nicole's body together. Prosecutors showed jurors video footage from the store of the shovel purchase and a photo of the bloodstained shovel from David's car.

David's trial began in February 2018. His attorney, John Lichtenstein, argued that a bloody palm print on the shovel was Natalie's, not David's.

On the fourth day of testimony, David changed his plea to no contest on all three charges: first-degree murder, abduction, and concealing a body.

The judge found him guilty. Prosecutors read one of the last Kik exchanges between David and Nicole into the record. "Who will hurt me? Who's they? Why are you scaring me?" Nicole wrote.

Natalie went to trial in September 2018 on a charge of accessory before the fact to murder, having already pleaded guilty to helping conceal the body.

Prosecutor Mary Pettitt told jurors that she and David planned the killing over several weeks and considered shooting or poisoning Nicole, or making it look like a suicide.

Natalie's lawyers said she thought David was joking and never believed he would really do it. Prosecutors read messages Natalie sent David after the killing, telling him he deserved a good night's sleep. The jury took just over an hour to convict her.

David was sentenced to 50 years and Natalie to 40, with no eligibility for parole. David feared Nicole was about to expose their relationship and out him as a child predator when he wanted to stop seeing her.

The night Nicole went missing, David promised to take her out on a date, but instead, he took her life because he wanted to protect his reputation.