The former Virginia Tech student who helped her friend kidnap and murder a 13-year-old girl called her co-defendant a “sociopath” and herself a “sociopath in training,” police said Friday.
David Eisenhauer, 18, and Natalie Keepers, 19, who are charged with the abduction and slaying of Nicole Lovell, exchanged chilling text messages about the logistics of hiding the young teen’s dead body, new testimony in their trial in Virginia revealed.
“Always go overkill, especially when your life is on the line,” Eisenhauer texted his accomplice, Keepers, in reference to having scrubbed and sanitized Lovell’s corpse with cleaning supplies they purchased together at Walmart.
In other gruesome text exchanges, the pair discussed the best way to murder Lovell. They considered drugging her, making it look like a suicide and knocking her unconscious and leaving her to freeze to death.
But Eisenhauer and Keepers, both former engineering students at Virginia Tech, eventually settled on an “official plan” to “grab her from behind, cover her mouth and slit her throat,” Blacksburg Police Detective Ryan Hite testified Friday, while Lovell’s family sat in the court room and fought back tears, CBS reported.

Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge Robert Jr. found probable cause to send Eisenhauer and Keepers’ case to a grand jury during Friday’s hearing.
Eisenhauer is accused of kidnapping Lovell, a seventh grader who sneaked out of her house on the night of Jan. 27 to meet up with the older teen whom she met online and considered to be her boyfriend. Lovell’s remains were found three days later in a remote area across the North Carolina border.
Prosecutors have stated that Keepers, who is charged with being an accessory to the murder, helped Eisenhauer hatch an elaborate plan for the slaying and then assisted in disposing of the body.

The two scouted out a secluded spot to toss Lovell’s corpse, bought cleaning supplies and shovels from separate Walmarts, and drove past the girl’s apartment to keep an eye on her, Montgomery County Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary Pettitt has said.
Keepers cooperated with investigators and took them to the site where they disposed of Lovell’s body, pointing out tire tracks from Eisenhauer’s car and their footprints in the blood-spattered snow. She also pointed out locations where they disposed of Nicole’s clothes and backpack, Detective Hite testified, according to CBS.

Self proclaimed ‘Sociopath and Sociopath-in-training’: Eisenhauer and Keepers

Police found a blanket emblazoned with “Minions” cartoons belonging to Lovell —which she brought with her when she snuck out her window to meet Eisenhauer — inside Keepers’ Virginia Tech dorm room, police testified.
Eisenhauer was more tight-lipped than Keepers, according to Friday’s testimony. During his interview with police, he told them cops should focus on finding Lovell’s body “rather than interrogate the last person to see her alive. I’m calling a lawyer. I’m done.” He told police he met Lovell outside her house on the night of Jan. 27, but he hadn’t realized how young she was and that the teen never got in his car.