Cook County Judge Neil Cohen ruled Friday that Heather Mack, 19, can access a $1.56 million trust fund to hire a defense attorney as she fights charges in Indonesia that she assisted in the premeditated murder of her mother, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Three months before Sheila von Wiese-Mack’s violent death while vacationing on the resort island of Bali, she created a trust to be used for the “health, support, education and maintenance” of Mack, her only child, the report says.
Cohen cleared the way for the victim’s pregnant teenage daughter to draw on the fund as she contests the charges against her, the Tribune writes.
Mack and her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, 21, of Oak Park, Ill., face a possible sentence of death by firing squad if convicted, the report says. The judge ruled that Schaefer would not be allowed access to the trust fund.
In August the body of von Wiese-Mack, 62, was found in a suitcase abandoned outside a luxury hotel in Bali. Authorities allege that Schaefer and Mack plotted the killing because Mack’s mother opposed their relationship.
Read more at the Chicago Tribune.