If you haven’t heard about it already, a huge criminal case is currently in progress, and has swept the news and internet media alike.
At midnight on January 27, 2016, 13-year-old Nicole Lovell disappeared from her Blacksburg, Va. home. On January 30, her body was found in the woods of Surrey County, N.C. Two people are currently being held responsible for the crime, 18-year-old Virginia Tech freshman David Eisenhauer and 19-year-old Virginia Tech sophomore Natalie Keepers. Specific details of the case are sparse, but the general timeline of events has been made public over the last couple months. Nicole Lovell is pictured below.
Eisenhauer and Lovell had been associating with each other over social media, leading up to Lovell’s murder. Kik, an anonymous messaging app, was the primary social media platform that was used between the two. Lovell’s friend, Natasha Bryant, claimed that Lovell had spoken about Eisenhauer, talking about marrying him and running away together. Bryant says she told Lovell to stop talking to older men online. According to authorities, Lovell was lured out of her room by David (pictured below), who had promised her a date.
On the night of Lovell’s disappearance, her mother found Lovell’s nightstand blocking the door, her window ajar and her “Minions” blanket gone. Early on January 30, a few days after Lovell’s disappearance, Eisenhauer was arrested at his dorm room, held without bail and charged with abduction and first-degree murder. Lovell’s body was found in N.C. later that day. On January 31, sophomore Natalie Keepers (pictured below) was arrested and charged with accessory to murder and improper disposal of a dead body. Eisenhauer and Keepers worked together to murder Lovell. Lovell’s remains were taken to the medical examiner in Roanoke, Va. on January 31. Montgomery County commonwealth attorney Mary Pettitt said the cause of death was determined to be stabbing.
Keepers admitted to the murder, and told investigators that at the time she was excited to be part of something so secretive. On the night of the murder, Keepers allegedly helped Eisenhauer put Lovell’s remains into the trunk of his Lexus, and the two students went to buy cleaning supplies at Walmart with her body still in the trunk. Once again, specific details and information about evidence have not yet been disclosed to the public.
More specific details about the case can be found on various reporting sites, but a glaring concern seen in this case is the huge role that social media played in Lovell’s devastating murder. Reports say that Lovell was last active on Facebook on the morning of January 26, very soon before her departure from her home. Commonwealth attorney Mary Pettitt said in court, that Lovell and Eisenhauer communicated with each other via social media at 12:39 a.m. on January 27, the day of her disappearance and likely her murder. The specific social media platform has not been disclosed. However, friends of Lovell’s have stated that Lovell showed them conversations with Eisenhauer on Kik. Kik is an anonymous messaging application where users can only be found by username, not phone number or email, hence its anonymity. Nevertheless, there are applications that make it possible to search for users by age, gender and other classifiers, making Kik a possibly threatening entity. Kik is currently working with the FBI to disclose information that will be helpful to law enforcement regarding this case.
Kik isn’t the only social media platform involved with Lovell’s murder. Lovell was active on Facebook. She was part of several teen dating groups on the site. One group in particular was titled “Teen Dating and Flirting”, and had an upwards of 18,000 members, Lovell included. Prior to her disappearance, she posted a picture of herself with the caption “Cute or nah?” The photo allegedly garnered around 300 comments that were mostly unkind. Justice for Children Without Voices, in the wake of the crime, reported the group for nudity and it was later deactivated by Facebook per this request. Furthermore, Keepers told investigators that she and Eisenhauer spoke over Facebook regarding the crime. It's also likely that Eisenhauer associated with Lovell via Facebook.
So the disturbing question stands — what would've happened if social media were out of the picture? Lovell’s murder was more than devastating, and happened because of Eisenhauer’s predatory actions. Without social media, Eisenhauer and Lovell likely would never have come in contact. This case more than ever, raises the issue of how to protect young children like Lovell against predators whose hunting grounds are online. Both Kik and Facebook, as well as other social media outlets such as Twitter and Yik Yak, can serve to be dangerous as anonymity is made incredibly simple on almost all social platforms. It's difficult to keep children off of all social media — creating online accounts is easy to do and easier to hide. Parents should educate their children about the possibilities of online predators, and perhaps mandatory seminars about online safety should be enacted in elementary schools, much like sexual education classes.
Social media has changed the way the world works. Hundreds of sources on every topic are readily available for use due to the internet, and information can be shared to massive amounts of people instantly. For example, on February 26, 2015, a picture of a dress now known as “The Dress” was circulated around the world within a time span of 24 hours. One picture became known around the world in the course of a day, and is now classified by Wikipedia as a “viral phenomenon." The Dress taught the world that one bit of information can effortlessly become international due to the cosmic interconnectedness that we know as social media.
As time progresses, the world of social media will expand. With this expansion comes more dark corners of the internet that pose a threat to our society. Specifically regarding organized crime, social media is a blessing and a curse to law enforcement. Evidence can be efficiently discovered since social media is making “leaving no trace” increasingly impossible. Text message and Facebook conversations between Eisenhauer and Keepers have given police huge leads in the case. On the other hand, the growth of anonymous social media sites such as Kik are giving criminals like Eisenhauer more places to hide and covertly organize criminal activities.
The case of Nicole Lovell is tragic, and people are awaiting more details of what happened the night of Lovell’s murder. The hearing was supposed to be held on March 28, 2016, but has been postponed per the defense’s request. A new hearing date has not yet been set. As this is an ongoing case, there will certainly be new developments in the next month. An aspect of this case that will remain the same is social media’s role as an outlet for Eisenhauer and Keepers to commit the murder of an innocent girl who fell victim to her unfortunate involvement with social media. Lovell is not the only one whose life ended at the hands of someone met online, and her death is yet another prime example of the true dangers children and adults alike face. Social media is now extremely apparent in daily life, and education about being safe online should be a priority in domestic and educational settings for children and teens.
