A 21-year-old man became enraged after his girlfriend’s mother used the n-word against him, the girl told Indonesian police investigating the death at a hotel in Bali in August, where the three were guests, according to the Associated Press.
Heather Mack, 19, and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, 21, are being held as suspects in the killing of Chicago resident Sheila von Wiese-Mack, who was white, but have not been formally charged, the report says. Both Mack and Shaefer are of mixed race.
On Thursday Capt. Nengah Sadiarta, police detective chief for Denpasar, Bali’s capital, said that Mack told investigators that Schaefer became angry when von Wiese-Mack called him the n-word and that he killed von Wiese-Mack in her hotel room while Mack watched, the report says.
The pair were tracked down and arrested after hotel workers spotted blood on a suitcase that Mack and Schaefer had loaded into a taxi. The hotel workers told the driver to go to a police station, where officers opened the suitcase and found the body, the report says.
Mack’s father, James L. Mack, was a black jazz and classical composer who died in 2006. Sadiarta said Mack told police that von Weise-Mack used the n-word in reference to Schaefer. When Schaefer brought up her late husband’s race, von Weise-Mack used the n-word against him again but added that James Mack had also been rich.
Read more at CBS Chicago.