BLACKSBURG, Va. — A 13-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom was stabbed to death by a Virginia Tech student, and another freshman already charged with hiding the body was more deeply involved, authorities said Tuesday. A neighbor said the seventh-grader told friends she would sneak out to meet her “boyfriend” David, an 18-year-old she met online through the Kik messaging app.

Nicole Madison Lovell was killed on Wednesday, the same day she vanished, by David Eisenhauer, a freshman at Virginia Tech now jailed on charges of kidnapping and murder, Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary Pettitt said Tuesday.

The prosecutor also announced that Eisenhauer’s classmate, Natalie Keepers, will face a more serious charge of being an accessory “before the fact” to first-degree murder, in addition to helping to dispose of the body. The new charge could mean a life sentence if convicted.

Eisenhauer said “I believe the truth will set me free” after he was arrested on Saturday, a police document says.

Nicole’s mother discovered her missing last Wednesday morning, setting off an intense hunt for the girl, who suffered from bullying at school and online over her weight and a tracheotomy scar, and needed daily medication after surviving a liver transplant, lymphoma and a drug-resistant bacterial infection as a 5-year-old.

Police quickly zeroed in on Eisenhauer, and then found Nicole’s body on Saturday, hidden off a North Carolina road, two hours south of campus.

Stacy Snider, a neighbor whose 8-year-old twins played with Nicole, told The Associated Press that before she vanished, Nicole showed her girls Eisenhauer’s picture along with a thread of texts they had shared, and said she would be sneaking out that night to meet him.

“She was talking about this boyfriend she had that was 18 and went to college, and his name was David. And showed some text messages off of a Kik and pictures. And that’s what the girls told the police officers when they asked.”

Snider said she learned all this from her girls only after Nicole vanished. “I would have told her mother. But we didn’t know nothing about it until she came up missing, unfortunately,” she said.

Her fate devastated her mother, Tammy Weeks, who also spoke at Tuesday’s news conference, describing the health problems her daughter battled and the joys in her short life.

“Her favorite color was blue. Nicole was a very lovable person. Nicole touched many people throughout her short life,” Weeks read from a statement before her sobs became uncontrollable and she was ushered away.