(Christiansburg, Va.) — A judge in a Montgomery County handed down a 40 year sentence for Natalie Keepers Tuesday.

Keepers had been convicted on charges including accessory before the fact to the first-degree murder of 13 year old Nicole Lovell and concealing her body.  The judge said the sentences would be consecutive, but he suspended five years.  After Keepers gets out of jail, she will have 10 additional years of supervision.

David Eisenhauer and Keepers were both freshmen engineering students at the time of the killing and Lovell was a Blacksburg middle school student.  Eisenhauer is serving a 50-year sentence after pleading no contest earlier this year to first-degree murder.

Prosecutors said Eisenhauer met Lovell online and talked to her for months before meeting her in person.  They said he killed her because he feared she would expose their relationship.

“I have cried for your family every night. I’m so sorry, I wish I could have stopped it,” Keepers said. “I never intended for this to happen.”  after pleading no contest earlier this year to first-degree murder.

Prosecutors said Eisenhauer met Lovell online and talked to her for months before meeting her in person.

During interrogations Keepers told police she and Eisenhauer talked about various ways to kill the girl and admitted she later helped dump her body in North Carolina after Eisenhauer stabbed her. She insisted that she wasn’t present for the actual killing, but Eisenhauer’s lawyers suggested she was there and could have been the one who killed Lovell.