The allegations are beyond chilling: two Virginia
Tech freshmen charged with the premeditated kidnapping and killing of a
13-year-old girl who, authorities say, communicated with her murderer
online.
But the way they chatted — on a wildly
popular messaging app called Kik — has increasingly become a source of
concern for law enforcement.
The death of Nicole Madison Lovell,
a liver transplant and cancer survivor from Blacksburg, Va., has put
Kik — widely used by American teenagers but not as well known to adults
as Snapchat or Instagram — in the spotlight at a time when law
enforcement officials say it has been linked to a growing number of
abuse cases. Neighbors say that the day before she died, Nicole showed
them Kik messages she had exchanged with an 18-year-old man she was to
meet that night.
Kik is cooperating in the
investigation. Its officials say they responded to “multiple emergency
requests” from the F.B.I. for information that helped lead to the
arrests of the students, David Eisenhauer, 18, and Natalie Marie
Keepers, 19, both aspiring engineers from Maryland. And experts in
Internet crime caution that the app is just one of many digital
platforms abused by all manner of criminals, from small-time drug
dealers to terrorists.