Va. girl's murder highlights dangers of teens' unmonitored social activity

VIRGINIA -- A bail hearing will be held on Thursday for one of the two Virginia Tech students charged in the stabbing death of 13-year-old Nicole Lovell.

Like most teenagers, Lovell was active on social media. Investigators said that's where she may have been lured by her killer.

In her 13 years, Nicole Lovell endured life-threatening illnesses. Liver transplant surgery left her scarred and medicine caused her to gain weight said her step-mother, Terri Lovell.

"She would send me messages about the little girls picking on her at school, you know, saying she was fat," she said. "She would cry, didn't want to go to school."

So the 7th grader sought a better life online. Against her father's wishes, she created numerous social media personas.

"She was able at 13 years old to set up profiles on Facebook that we had no idea about," he said. "And a minor should not be able to do that."

In this invisible world online that these kids are in, "We have no idea who they're talking to," he said.

One person police believe she was talking to was her accused killer, 18-year-old David Eisenhauer, possibly on the messaging app, Kik.

Kik allows its users to remain anonymous and send photos that aren't saved on the phone -- leaving no trace.

"Every phone, every social media site for that matter, has some sort of parental control, whether its blocking software or if its time limits that are set, and all those are great, but technology doesn't solve all the problems," said Ju'riese Colon, who is with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Experts say parents need to take an aggressive role in knowing what their kids are doing online and who they're talking to -- monitoring all social media activity, and even getting copies of every email and text.

The Lovells said they wish they'd done more.

"This is awful, this is tragic, and it all could have been prevented,"Nicole's father said.

In a statement, Kik said it helped the FBI in Lovell's case, saying it cooperates with law enforcement to combat child predators anywhere in the world.