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As parents raise their children, they strive to keep them safe, but as technology has evolved, protecting our children has become that much more difficult. This case highlights the fact that the very technology we may have placed in our children’s hands as a birthday or Christmas present can lead to danger. Parents can no longer only fear their child meeting a stranger in the park, but rather, the stranger they could be meeting as they sit behind a screen in the safety of their bedroom.
It was sometime during the early morning hours of Wednesday, January 27, 2016, when 13-year-old Nicole Lovell climbed out of her bedroom window of her Blacksburg, Virginia home with her cell phone & blue Minions blanket in tow. As the sun rose & the day got started, Nicole’s mom, Tammy Weeks, pushed her daughter’s bedroom door open & found that the nightstand pushed up against the door.
Confused, Tammy recalled the previous night when she considered knocking on the shared wall of Nicole’s bedroom as a signal to come in & sleep with her as she so often did, but decided not. Immediately concerned at not finding Nicole in her room, Tammy began continuously calling & texting her cell phone, but each time, it went straight to voicemail & her texts also went unanswered.
Tammy contacted the police to report Nicole missing & began scouring the area in search of her. Soon, a neighborhood mom contacted Tammy with information. She explained that Nicole had been recently playing with her daughters when she mentioned that she was going on a date. Fully aware that her teenage daughter spent much of her free time online, Tammy was panicked by the thought that maybe Nicole left to see someone she met online.
Soon, the FBI joined regional & state law enforcement in the search for Nicole as they canvassed the area, more than 1200 searchers assisting in finding the 13-year-old. Volunteers even provided infrared drones in hopes of locating her.
Adding to Tammy’s fear was the fact that Nicole had been born with a damaged liver which required that she undergo a transplant before her first birthday & Tammy was sure that her daughter would never leave for an extended period of time without taking her necessary medications with her. Each day, she was required to take her anti-rejection medications in order to survive.
Nicole’s surgery left behind scars on her stomach & neck, something that classmates would frequently tease her about as she got older. This caused Nicole to dread going to school & she would often ask her mom for a note that would excuse her from gym class in order to avoid the teasing that was sure to come if she participated.
Nicole’s social media posts proved that she felt very isolated, longing for love, sometimes even plagued with suicidal thoughts. Sadly, the young girl was convinced that no one cared about her. On top of the stress at school, Nicole also had a complicated relationship with her father, David Lovell. David had faced prison time related to drug charges & had frequent run-ins with the law. Nicole desperately wanted love & attention from her father.
David & Tammy never married & after Nicole was born, David left. As a single mother, Tammy turned to her parents for help in watching Nicole when she went to work. As Nicole got older & more independent, she was given a smartphone & spent many unsupervised hours online.
As the day of Nicole’s disappearance wore on & day turned to night, Tammy’s hope began to fade & she sat by the phone waiting, unable to sleep.
While investigators continued to search for Nicole, they also found a handwritten note in her bedroom with the usernames & passwords to her various accounts written on her bedroom wall. Forensic experts with the FBI began tracing Nicole’s account information & quickly learned that she frequently used a popular chat app among teens called Kik. It gained popularity since it allows children to communicate anonymously without their parents’ knowledge.
When Tammy realized that Nicole was utilizing this app, she told her she needed to uninstall it. With this knowledge, the FBI called an emergency disclosure request to Kik so they could see Nicole’s personal account. With this, they discovered that in the last two days before she’d vanished, she had been messaging with a person with a chilling username, Dr. Tombstone.
Using an IP address provided by Kik, investigators were able to trace the screen name to an 18-year-old named David Eisenhauer who was a freshman at Virginia Tech studying engineering. As they looked into David, investigators learned that during his time in high school he was a track star who was an absolutely stellar student & appeared to be an unlikely suspect. David was known among his highschool classmates as a straight-A student that could occasionally be cocky.
Within three days of Nicole vanishing, police picked David up from his dorm & brought him in for questioning. His college roommate, Jeremy Basdeo, was stunned when he walked in to find the door to his dorm room wide open & was denied access by both the Virginia State Police as well as the FBI. He was immediately reassured that they weren’t there for him, but rather, his roommate.
Jeremy recalled that on the night in question when Nicole vanished, he noticed that David put a pair of boots on which struck him as odd since it wasn’t raining very hard. He left & came back at 2 am. According to Jeremy, David often had a knife with him which he kept on his desk, but when the police arrived, there was no sign of it.
During questioning, David soon admitted that he’d spoken to Nicole outside her house on the night she disappeared. With this information, he was arrested & charged with abduction. While he spoke with police, they learned of another young woman, 19-year-old Natalie Keepers, who was also brought in for questioning as investigators believed that she was also somehow involved in whatever happened to Nicole.
Like David, Natalie was a freshman at Virginia Tech who was also studying engineering with the goal of following in her father’s footsteps who worked at NASA. Because investigators believed that Natalie was somehow involved with Nicole’s abduction, she was also arrested.
Despite the fact that Nicole had yet to be located, police now had two suspects in custody. However, they soon made a gruesome discovery when Nicole’s nude body was found 90 miles away in North Carolina. The young girl had been stabbed fourteen times & she had a lethal wound to her neck.
If David Eisenhauer was responsible for Nicole’s murder, it proved that monsters came in all forms. He appeared to be a wholesome boy who was hiding a deep, dark side of himself.
Utilizing an online gaming site, police became aware of Bryce Dustin who had a close relationship with David to the point that he viewed him as a younger brother. The two met when they started chatting on a gaming site & though they never met in person, their online friendship spanned six years. Oftentimes, David would go to Bryce for advice, mostly about girls & relationships.
Bryce recalled David mentioning one girl in particular who he now believes was Nicole. David mentioned that the girl was underage but wanted to be with him. According to David, she threatened that if she couldn’t be with him, she was going to expose him. Bryce advised David to make Nicole think that he was going to be his boyfriend, but told him to be inattentive toward her until his disinterest drove her away.
Meanwhile, three years earlier & 2,500 miles away from Virginia where Tammy Weeks was grieving the brutal murder of her daughter, parents in Spokane, Washington had been notified that their 15-year-old daughter was being targeted by a 30-year-old man & the two were planning on running away that very night, June 7, 2013. They planned for her to leave her iPad behind & drive away together in the man’s car.
Brandy & Branden Syrotchen lived with their four children, two boys & two girls. Brandy was teaching at a local church while Branden was studying for a PhD in psychology. They were very hands-on parents & had a tight-knit family. According to their now 18-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, her parents were sometimes a little overly strict to the extent that she felt they were preventing her from doing things other kids her age were allowed to do.
Despite the fact that the Syrotchen children were closely monitored by their parents, Elizabeth was fully aware that they didn’t know the extent of their online activity & had no idea that the Kik app or other dating sites existed. However, in 2013 their radars did go up when they noticed a then 15-year-old Elizabeth begin to act differently. She started going to bed earlier than usual & seemed especially distracted & more withdrawn from the family. She wasn’t as engaged in family activities, with her friends or at church.
Becoming increasingly concerned, Brandy told her daughter that she needed to take her cell phone from her to review her online activity & Elizabeth refused to hand her phone over. Then they received a phone call from Elizabeth’s best friend’s mom that flipped their world upside down.
They were speechless when told that their 15-year-old was in a relationship with a 30-year-old. The man arranged to arrive at their house at 3 am to pick Elizabeth up that very day. With that, Brandy & Branden took her phone, finally got her passwords & discovered the full truth about how Elizabeth had been communicating with Jason Richards who lived in the Seattle area.
Brandy & Branden couldn’t believe the messages they were seeing on their daughter’s phone. Jason wrote, When I see you, baby, I am grabbing you. Pulling you close to me. And holding you tightly. Elizabeth responded, No kiss? And Jason replied, Baby, I’m gonna kiss you deeply.
They learned that when Elizabeth first started communicating with Jason, she lied & said that she was 18, but later admitted that she was actually 15. Brandy & Branden soon had a bombshell dropped on them when they realized that Elizabeth & Jason had already met up in person & had been intimate. Using apps such as Kik & Facebook, they discussed leaving the country & running away together.
As Brandy & Branden read through their daughter’s text messages, they learned that Jason would be driving the 280 miles from Seattle to Spokane within the next few hours in order to pick Elizabeth up. With this knowledge, they locked Elizabeth in her room with no access to a phone or internet & contacted the police. Branden told them that Jason Richards was coming to their house that very night with the intention of kidnapping their 15-year-old.
Brandy & Branden were told that without hard evidence of a crime, police had to stay on the sidelines. They refused to sit by & do nothing so they took matters into their own hands. Jason messaged Elizabeth’s phone from his car & Brandy, now impersonating her daughter, began communicating with him to lead the man to their house. She was forced to communicate with a pedophile & read the messages intended for her child as he wrote, Oh baby I can’t wait to see you, get you in my arms, lay in the same bed together, wake up in the morning. Brandy had no choice but to respond to these messages in a way that Elizabeth would as to not raise suspicion, feeling sicker with each new message.
Brandy sat holding her daughter’s iPad as Jason got closer to their home & guided him to the alley behind their home where Branden & his friends had set up a sting operation. Branden waited in his car on one side of the alley, his phone in hand, getting updates from Brandy while his friend Damon waited in his car on the other side of the street. Branden’s friend Phil, who had been trained in the Special Forces, brought his 12-gauge shotgun along as a precautionary measure, unsure of how Jason was going to react.
At 3 am, Branden & his friends suddenly saw headlights appear at one end of the alley. As Branden & Damon cornered Jason within the alley in their cars, Phil approached Jason’s car with his shotgun raised. He instructed the man not to move & to place his hands on the steering wheel. Phil indicated that if Jason was to abruptly exit the car, he was prepared to shoot him. They immediately contacted the police who arrived only minutes later & arrested Jason. Inside his SUV they found cell phones & a pair of hunting knives.
As detectives sat down with Jason Richards, they learned that he was a divorced coffee distributor from the Seattle area. Just like in Nicole Lovell’s case with David Eisenhaur, on the surface, Jason came off as a nice & successful man who looked like the guy next door.
As he sat down with investigators, Jason attempted to spin his relationship with Elizabeth into a love story where he fell in love. He said that after a week & a half of chatting online, the two expressed their love of one another. He initially insisted that he had no idea that she was only fifteen & only just learned that fact at the time of his arrest.
Detective Elise Robertson knew the man was lying & asked to see his Facebook page where she found hundreds of messages between himself & Elizabeth. These messages proved that he knew she was only fifteen when he drove over to pick her up that early morning.
When faced with the black & white proof, he told her that by the time he learned her true age he was already in love with her & didn’t know what to do. The first time they met, he parked in a lot near Elizabeth’s house & she lied, telling her parents she was going for a jog.
Elizabeth indicated that when she met Jason face-to-face for the first time, it was a reality check & not just someone she was talking with online. During their first meetup, Jason took her to a hotel, got down on one knee & proposed marriage. Afterwards, they were intimate. Weeks later, he drove into town a second time & each time, they had sex.
Richards ended up pleading guilty to child rape & communication with a minor for immoral purposes. His lawyer argued that his client had autism which can be a mitigating factor for several crimes in Washington State & to Brandy & Branden’s dismay, Richards was sentenced to only three years. He was released in 2017 with restrictions, including a restraining order against Elizabeth.
Brandy & Branden want other parents to be aware of the fact that internet predators are lurking on apps like Kik.
Meanwhile, back in Virginia, Nicole Lovell’s family were grief-stricken with her violent death. David Eisenhauer indicated that he started chatting with Nicole on an anonymous chat app & they eventually transitioned to using Kik. According to David, the first time he ever met Nicole was on the night she vanished & he claimed that after he quickly saw just how young she was, he left. When he left, she was alive & well.
However, as investigators looked into Nicole’s Kik account, it was clear they’d spoken far longer than David was leading them to believe & they’d also met in person before the night she vanished & had most likely been intimate.
David, who was a freshman in college, began chatting online with Nicole, a seventh grader, for months before they met at least one time in person. According to prosecutors, David confided in Natalie that he may have had sex with Nicole while they were at a party, but because he was blackout drunk & later woke up in a ditch, he couldn’t be sure, but he was concerned that she could be pregnant. After Nicole’s body was located, it was determined that she had not been pregnant.
As David continued speaking with investigators, he admitted that he had not been alone on the night Nicole disappeared as he brought along fellow Virginia Tech classmate, Natalie Keepers. With this, Natalie was called into the station for an interview. During their recorded interview, Natalie told investigators a shocking story that began the day before Nicole’s murder.
David & Natalie sat in a fast-food chain restaurant in order to plot Nicole’s murder & afterwards, they drove by Nicole’s house.
Natalie explained that by the Monday before Nicole vanished, they had the general plan that they needed to somehow get Nicole into the car. According to Natalie, David was fearful that Nicole was going to expose their relationship so he started to brainstorm ideas as to how he could kill her. By Tuesday, they had a much more solid plan & they headed out to purchase a shovel, they went out to dinner & then David dropped Natalie off at her dorm room. Meanwhile, David had pre-arranged a date with Nicole.
According to Natalie, after Nicole climbed out of her window, she got into David’s car & he drove her to the woods where he stabbed her to death. The next day, both he & Natalie headed to Walmart to purchase cleaning supplies & the two worked together to dispose of Nicole’s body which they placed into the trunk of David’s Lexus.
Natalie told investigators that they could find Nicole’s body on the road near where David’s grandparents lived. It was after her confession that both Natalie & David were arrested.
A little over two years after Nicole was murdered, David Eisenhauer went on trial for her murder. During the trial, Nicole’s devastated family sat by & listened to the prosecutor as they detailed the young girl’s final moments as she waited for her secret date.
On the night of Tuesday, January 26, 2016, Nicole gave her mom a kiss goodnight & told her she was headed to bed. Tammy Weeks tearfully explained that the next time she saw her daughter was when she was in her coffin. Once inside her room, Nicole blocked her bedroom door by pushing her dresser in front of the door & climbed out into the dark, snowy night, leaving the safety & warmth of her home. She walked over to David’s waiting car. During the trial, Tammy detailed the horror of realizing her daughter was gone when she awoke in the morning.
Security footage from a store later depicted David & Natalie purchasing the shovel on Tuesday & photos were shown of that same shovel, now bloodied, which was located in David’s car. A Walmart employee read the list of items that Natalie & David had purchased after Nicole had been murdered: Top Job cleaner, bleach, disinfectant wipes & two pairs of cleaning gloves. While they were inside Walmart, Nicole’s body remained in the trunk of David’s car.
After Nicole’s body had been located, investigators found Natalie at her boyfriend’s house & searched the premises, finding cleaning supplies & Nicole’s Minions blanket. Meanwhile, Natalie sent a warning text to David that read, POLICE.
According to David’s lawyer, it had been Natalie who was responsible for killing Nicole & indicated that the bloody handprint found on the shovel was proof. However, on the fourth day of testimonies, David suddenly changed his plea from not guilty to no contest, meaning, accepting the conviction without admitting guilt.
Prosecutors read one of the last messages from Kik that David & Nicole exchanged before she was murdered. David wrote, I can’t stress enough that you don’t tell anyone about me because they will find a way to hurt you. Nicole responded, Who will hurt me? Who’s they? Why are you scaring me?
The judge accepted David’s revised plea & ruled him guilty.
Seven months later, Nicole’s family was tasked with sitting through Natalie’s trial which began in September 2018. Natalie had been charged with accessory to murder & had already pleaded guilty to assisting David in concealing Nicole’s body. Prosecutors indicated that it was David who had killed Nicole but Natalie was responsible for assisting him in planning out the murder & helping him dispose of the young girl’s body.
The jury heard how Natalie & David discussed the various methods in which they could kill Nicole as they considered shooting her, poisoning her or staging her death to look like a suicide. Natalie acknowledges that she knew it was wrong & described David as someone who morphed into a sociopath who lacked all emotion. She believed that he viewed her as his sociopath-in-training.
Natalie’s attorney’s called in a neuropsychologist who examined her & determined that she had seven mental disorders, including borderline personality disorder & a disorder that resembles schizophrenia. Dr. Jonathan Mack explained that in this case, the person’s sense of reality would be altered as well as their ability to relate to others. According to Dr. Mack, Natalie’s mental state could have made her interview with investigators unreliable as she would be very gullible & easily influenced.
According to Natalie’s defense team, she never believed that David would actually kill Nicole & she insisted that she thought he was only joking. However, prosecutors read Natalie’s Kik messages to David after the murder when she told him that he deserved a good night’s sleep.
Natalie had initially been charged as an accessory after the fact which is treated differently than someone who assists before or during the crime since after the fact doesn’t contribute to the crime itself. Because of this, the crime is subject to a much less harsh punishment than accessory before the fact. In Virginia, accessory before the fact is generally punished as if they did the killing themselves even if they weren’t present at the time of the crime. In America, there are generally no rules in regards to a duty to help others or report crimes & the knowledge of a crime is not a crime. However, knowingly assisting a criminal is usually a crime. For Natalie, she was originally charged with improper disposal of a body & being an accessory after the fact, but her charges were later upgraded to accessory before the fact.
After an hour of deliberation, the jury found Natalie Keepers guilty & she was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Meanwhile, David was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Neither has the eligibility for parole. Both apologized to Nicole’s family as Natalie explained that she never intended this to happen & she wishes she could have stopped David. David said that nothing will ever undo what has been done & for that he is forever sorry.
Despite the satisfaction of both guilty verdicts, no one could wrap their heads around what led two intelligent, college kids to take the lives of an innocent 13-year-old girl.
It is Tammy Weeks’ hope that something positive will come of her daughter’s death & others will learn from what happened to Nicole & realize the potential danger that social media has on society. The internet & digital technology has many positives, but parents are urged to protect their children from potential harm that could be lurking online. It’s important to keep an open line of communication about who your children are allowed to communicate with online & how. If something makes them upset, uncomfortable or scared, they should be encouraged to speak with a trusted adult.
Privacy settings can be utilized, children should learn to keep their personal information private & webcams should be covered when not in use. Age appropriate apps & websites should be identified & children should be supervised with periodical check-ins of their profiles & posts. Electronic devices should be kept in a common, open area & adults should watch for changes in a child’s behavior including changes in use of electronic devices, attempts to conceal online activity, withdrawn behavior, anxiety, depression or angry outbursts.
References:
- CBS News: Nicole Lovell murder: Was a Virginia teen lured to her death through a smartphone app?
- Unicef: How to keep your child safe online
- Criminal Division U.S. Department of Justice: Keeping children safe online
- CNN: Nicole Lovell’s death was plotted at a restaurant, official says
- CNN: Nicole Lovell case lesson: Beware the company you keep
- Yakima Herald-Republic: Former Riverside Christian athlete David Eisenhauer sentenced to murder of 13-year-old girl
