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 "This guy lived under me?" said freshman Faraz Alam, 18, who lives
in the same residence hall as one of the students charged. "It could
have happened to any of my friends."
First-year students David Eisenhauer, 18, and Natalie Keepers, 19,
appeared in court on Monday in nearby Christiansburg but did not
enter a plea and were being held in jail without bond.
Lawyers for both students declined to comment.
Keepers, handcuffed and dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, appeared
to cry softly as a judge read her charges.
Blacksburg, Virginia, police said Eisenhauer, a member of the cross
country team at Virginia Tech, kidnapped and killed the girl, Nicole
Lovell, and Keepers helped him dispose of the body.
But most other details in the case remain unknown. Lovell's remains
were found in North Carolina, about 90 miles south of her home in
Blacksburg, on Saturday, four days after she was reported missing.
 Police have not said how she died on or about Jan. 27. An arrest
warrant, however, said a gun was not used to kill her.
The result of an autopsy performed Monday was not expected until
just before the next court hearing on March 28, the prosecutor's
office said.
The charges seem at odds with details emerging about the pair.
Eisenhauer was a three-time state champion in high school track
events, according to a now-deleted page from the Virginia Tech cross
country team's online roster.
"He was an excellent student," James LeMon, principal at the high
school in Columbia, Maryland, said in a telephone interview. "He had
a lot of friends here."
Keepers, also a good student, was involved in the theater program at
a high school roughly five miles away in the same town, Howard
County public schools spokesman John White said.
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She volunteered at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Laurel, Maryland,
said a person answering the phone at the church who declined further
comment.
If convicted, Eisenhauer could face 20 years to life in prison on
the murder charge and Keepers up to five years on the charges of
transporting and concealing a body. Police have not said how Keepers
got involved.
Keepers and Eisenhauer lived in residence halls just a few minutes
apart on the Virginia Tech campus, which has 31,000 full-time
students. The university has dealt with tragedy before - in 2007,
student Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 32 people there before taking his
own life.
Nicole Lovell's mother, Tammy Weeks, told the Washington Post that
investigators said her daughter may have met Eisenhauer on social
media recently.
Weeks declined an interview with Reuters. Blacksburg police have
said Eisenhauer and Lovell became acquainted before her
disappearance, but a spokesman would not elaborate.
(Additional reporting by Amy Tennery and Gina Cherelus in New York;
editing by Grant McCool)
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