Updated as of 1/19/2024 at 10:45 a.m. ET
A Chicago woman has been sentenced to 26 in federal prison in connection to helping her boyfriend kill her mother and hiding her body inside a suitcase in a decades-old slaughter.
Heather Mack, 28, pleaded guilty over the summer to conspiring to kill her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in Bali back in 2014. Her defense attorney told CBS she was genuinely, extremely remorseful over what happened, expressing that she’d always had a strained and emotionally abusive relationship with her mother. They petitioned the court for a sentence of 15 years, allowing her a credit for the seven years she spent in Indonesian prison, the report says.
However, that request was denied and prosecutors made a chilling argument as to why Mack should be locked up for longer.
Read more from The New York Times:
Prosecutors said in the sentencing memo that Ms. Von Wiese had worried that Ms. Mack would kill her some day, and that police reports detailed a history of episodes in which Ms. Mack had attacked her mother. Ms. Mack and Mr. Schaefer had been “extremely calculating about the murder,” and had made plans to receive money from Ms. Von Wiese’s estate after her death, according to court documents.
The sentence she received was just two years less of what prosecutors had aimed for and she is also ordered to pay restitution of $262,708 and a fine of $50,000. Her sentence is to be followed by following prison five years of supervised release.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly handed down the sentence saying it was a “brutal and premeditated” crime. Honestly, that’s an understatement.
What Happened?
Back in 2014, Sheila von Wiese-Mack took her daughter who was 18 at the time, on vacation in Bali. Police say Mack stole her mother’s credit card to fly in her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer. Prosecutors claim the two made a scheme to access a $1.5 million trust fund and accused Schaefer of beating Wiese-Mack to death with a fruit bowl. Prosecutors claimed the two stuffed her body into a suitcase but say Mack was the “driving force” behind the killing.
The nation had their eyes on the alleged killer couple after photos of the suitcase circulated the media, featuring the luggage smeared with blood and seeming too small to fit the body of an adult woman.
Mack spent seven years in Indonesian prison on charges stemming from the incident, per The AP’s report. She also had a child behind bars, which she was pregnant with around the time of the murder. When she was deported to the US in 2021, she was arrested once she landed in Chicago and charged with federal counts.
As for her boyfriend, Schaefer was found guilty of murder and remains in Indonesian prison serving an 18-year sentence, the report says. Once deported back to the US, he faces additional charges. Mack’s daughter, now 6 years old, was placed in custody of a relative upon her mother’s arrest.