A woman from Chicago has been charged with federal involvement in her boyfriend’s murder of her mother, whose body was found in a suitcase hidden in a shocking past crime.
Heather Mack pleaded guilty to being part of a plot to kill her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in 2014. The couple, who were in Bali for a vacation, planned to access a $1.5 million trust fund by using her mother’s credit card to fly in her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer. Schaefer was accused of murdering Wiese-Mack with a fruit bowl, while prosecutors alleged that Mack was the “driving force” behind the killing and that they then hid her body in a suitcase.
The public became aware of the alleged killers when images of the suitcase, stained with blood and apparently too small to contain an adult woman’s body, were circulated in the media.
Mack served a seven-year prison sentence in Indonesia for her involvement in the crime, and during that time, she gave birth to a child. Upon her deportation to the US in 2021, she was immediately arrested in Chicago and charged with federal crimes.
Presently, prosecutors are deliberating on the appropriate sentence for her in the US.
Read more from The Associated Press:
Federal prosecutors in Chicago are recommending a 28-year prison sentence for an American woman who pleaded guilty to helping kill her mother and stuffing the body in a suitcase during a luxury vacation at a Bali resort nearly a decade ago.
The government also is seeking five years of supervised release for Mack, a fine of $250,000 and restitution of $262,708. In a filing Wednesday, prosecutors said the recommended sentence “is warranted and sufficient, but not greater than necessary to serve a just and appropriate punishment for Mack’s heinous crime.”
Her boyfriend, Schaefer, was convicted of the murder and is currently serving an 18-year sentence in an Indonesian prison, while facing additional charges upon his return to the US. Mack’s six-year-old daughter is under the care of a relative following her mother’s arrest.
