ArchiveFM

Was a teenage girl lured to her death with a few keystrokes on a smartphone app?
Duration
42m
Broadcast on
28 Sep 2016
Audio Format
other
Real people, real crimes, real life drama. Every time I seen her, she would be texting for Facebooking, and she was constantly on her phone. I'm Nicole Lovell, and I've been on it for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. You want this? Let's go! She's a happy-go-lucky kid. Oh, yes! She's mom, she's saying all the time. Look at me, just one, such, and baby-happy! Tonight, the search intensifies for a missing teen from Blacksburg. Take a good look. This is Nicole Lovell. She's 13, and was last seen in the lantern ridge area of Blacksburg between midnight and seven Wednesday morning. Her father posted this message to Facebook. Nicole, honey, if you say this, if you're out there, you can come to me. I'm not mad at you. I'm worried about you. Please, you're looking into whether an app popular with teens was used to lure the girl. That night, I was going to knock on the wall and tell her to come in and sleep with me like she usually does. And I didn't do it. It's with every heart that I have to announce that we've located the remains of 13-year-old Nicole Madison Lovell. 100 seacomb en route, 89 west, snowbird curve. So where was Nicole Lovell's body? Nicole was from what we understand in the trunk of the car, and they moved her right over here, got close to the edge and just... A very preliminary determination of the cause of death is stabbing. It's no longer a situation where you worry about your child meeting a stranger in the park. You really need to worry about the stranger your child's meeting on the phone that you gave them for Christmas. This is the new crime of our time. These kids don't realize that the person that they're supposedly talking to that claimed they're 15 or 16-year-olds actually may be the pedophile who's looking for someone to prey upon. And the danger is everywhere. We're on our way to Spokane, Washington, where there was an online predator story you're not going to believe. I was just going to write them a note telling them that I was running away, and that I would make contact with them soon. We realized that she's fooled, she's a word in. She was 15, and she was communicating with a 30-something-year-old, and he plans on getting her at 3 o'clock in the morning. Mom and Dad had other plans. They put Elizabeth and locked down with her brother and sister. Dad called his two buddies. I said, "Driver, turn the car off and throw the keys out the window. Put your hands on the steering wheel. Do not move or I will shoot you."
I'm Peter Van Sant. Tonight on 48 Hours, Killer App. [Music] [Music] Every morning, I come out here, sit with her for an hour. It's just been a nightmare. I still hope that she would come around the corner once she gets off the bus, where she'll come out of her room. [Music] The nightmare for Nicole Lovell's mother, Tammy Weeks, began on the morning of January 27th, 2016. I pushed the door open, and the night stand was up against the door. Some time in the middle of the night, the 13-year-old had climbed out of her bedroom window, taking along her phone and her favorite blue cartoon blanket. Did you call her cell phone? Oh, yeah, a bunch of times. And what would happen? It'd go straight to voicemail. I text message her, everybody was calling her, texting her. Tammy called police and began scouring the area.

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Was a teenage girl lured to her death with a few keystrokes on a smartphone app?