‘Suitcase killer’ Heather Mack sentenced to 26 years for mother’s Bali murder: Updates
Mack, now 28, appeared in federal court in Illinois, where she was given a 26-year prison sentence for the Bali murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack
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“Suitcase killer” Heather Mack was back in court in Illinois on Wednesday to be sentenced over the 2014 murder of her mother at a luxury Bali resort.
Mack, 28, was sentenced to 26 years in prison.
In the courtroom, she was confronted by her family members who told the judge she should not be granted any leniency over Sheila von Wiese-Mack’s murder.
Prosecutors sought a 28-year sentence while Mack’s attorneys are asking for 15 years with credit for seven years spent in an Indonesian prison.
The tragic case began in August 2014 when Illinois socialite von Wiese-Mack, 62, took her then-18-year-old pregnant daughter on vacation to the St. Regis resort.
Mack’s boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, 21, flew out to the island and the pair bludgeoned von Wiese-Mack to death, stuffed her body in a suitcase and left it in the trunk of a taxi.
Both Mack and Schaefer were convicted of murder in Indonesia in 2015.
Mack served 7 years in prison before being deported and arrested as soon as she stepped foot on US soil.
After two years in federal prison awaiting trial, Mack reached a plea deal in June, pleading guilty to conspiracy to kill a US national.
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‘Suitcase killer’ Heather Mack is sentenced to 26 years in US prison for Bali murder
Potential conflicting argument
As a reporter pointed out, Mack’s attorney’s argument seems to stray from some of her plea deal admissions.
In the plea agreement, for example, it says: “As part of the agreement, Mack communicated to Schaefer that she intended to share the proceeds of Von Wiese's estate with Schaefer once Von Wiese was dead.”
Up next: Heather Mack
Mr Steinback concluded, “Heather’s got about nine years, four months of uninterrupted prison time, served either under 23.5-hour lockdown for the most part, or in a place where you’d rather be locked down 23.5 hours. … That’s got to mean something.”
Now, Heather Mack is about to speak to the court.
Mack speaks: ‘I’m responsible for my decisions’
Mack claimed responsibility for ‘her decisions’ and dismissed her turbulent relationship with her mother: “There’s no excuse for trying to harm her.”
“I made my decision. I can’t sit here and blame them for those decisions,” she said. She pointed out how much she misses her mom: “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. I miss her smile. Her ‘I love yous’ and mostly her holding me.”
Despite Mack’s statements, her defence attorney just described Mack as having a “toxic relationship” with her mother. The lawyer said that it is “human nature” to “deify” someone lost in a “tragic and horrible way” and to “completely eradicate any of the good” exhibited by the perpetrator.
The judge is about to rule
“We can speculate what exactly happened. I don’t know why we need to. It was a brutal premeditated crime and there was a concerted effort to cover it up...That’s kind of enough,” the judge said.
Mack sentenced to 26 years in US prison for Bali murder
After murdering her mother at a luxury Bali resort and stuffing her body in a suitcase, Mack has now been sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Heather Mack, a 28-year-old from Illinois, pleaded guilty back in June to conspiring to murder her socialite mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack at the five-star St. Regis resort in Bali back in 2014.
Mack reached a plea deal with prosecutors in federal court in Illinois, pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to kill a US national so that she and her then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer could gain access to a $1.5m trust fund.
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‘Suitcase killer’ Heather Mack is sentenced to 26 years in US prison for Bali murder
Mack was 18 when she conspired with her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer to murder her socialite mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack at the luxury five-star St Regis resort in Bali in 2014
Not just prison time
The judge ordered Mack to pay more than $260,000 in restitution to her mother’s estate and pay a $50,000 fine.
ICYMI: A dramatic day in court
Before the judge handed down the sentence, the court heard heartbreaking impact statements from von Wiese-Mack’s family where they begged for the harshest possible sentence, described her as a “monster” and spoke of the trauma they experience when they are reminded of what the 62-year-old endured in her final moments.
Bill Wiese, Von Wiese-Mack’s brother – Heather Mack’s uncle, branded his niece a “monster”, “master manipulator” and “morally reprehensible”.
“If it were up to me, Heather would spend the rest of her life behind bars. She has lied so many times about her life and her mother’s murder that I’ve stopped counting,” he told the court.
Recap: What was Mack on trial?
On 12 August 2014, Mack, then 18, and her then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, 21, bludgeoned von Wiese-Mack to death with the metal handle of a fruit stand at the luxury 5-star St. Regis resort in Bali.
They then stuffed her body into a suitcase, hailed a taxi and loaded it into the trunk of the car.
When they were unable to check out of the luxury resort – using her mother’s credit card – the couple fled the scene, leaving the bloodstained suitcase behind.
They were soon tracked down to a budget motel and arrested on suspicion of murder.
At the time of the murder, Mack – the daughter of socialite von Wiese-Mack and famed musician James L Mack – was pregnant with Schaefer’s child.
Prosecutors revealed that she had flown her lover out on a $12,000 business-class ticket just hours earlier charged to her mother’s credit card. Chilling text messages also showed how the couple likened themselves to the notorious duo Bonnie & Clyde and plotted methods of murder with the help of Schaefer’s cousin Ryan Bibbs.
They were both convicted of premeditated murder in Indonesia and narrowly avoided facing the firing squad. Mack’s baby Stella was born in Bali prison and was allowed to stay with her there for the first two years of her life. She is now being raised by von Wiese-Mack’s niece in Colorado.
Bibbs was also convicted of conspiracy to kill von Wiese-Mack and sentenced to nine years in prison.
After Mack served seven years in an Indonesian jail, she was extradited to the US, where she was arrested on charges of conspiracy to murder in a foreign country in November 2021.
For almost two years, Mack has been held behind bars in Illinois awaiting trial.
Then in June, she pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to murder a US national under a plea agreement with prosecutors despite believing – by her own admission – that she has already done her time for her crime.
She is facing sentencing on 17 January 2024.
It’s a horror case that has transfixed the nation for the past eight years and raised several questions due to the sheer brutality of von Wiese-Mack’s demise: How could a daughter have plotted her own mother’s death? How could she have then stuffed her own mother’s corpse in a suitcase? And why did she do it?
But the bigger question – and one that has rarely been asked over the years – is could von Wiese-Mack’s murder have been prevented?
'I plead guilty, your honor’
Mack reached a plea deal in the case in June.
Under the terms of the agreement, prosecutors recommend that she faces a maximum sentence of 28 years in prison, with consideration given to the seven years that she’s already served in Indonesian jail.
On 17 January, she was sentenced to 26 years behind bars, meaning she won’t be released until she’s 43 years old.
Recap: What were prosecutors seeking?
Prosecutors were seeking a 28-year prison sentence for Heather Mack, after she reached a plea deal in June.
Sentencing happened in Chicago on Wednesday – almost a decade after Mack and her then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer murdered her mother.
Justice Department prosecutors are seeking the longest possible sentence of 28 years, five years of supervised release, a $250,000 fine and restitution of $262,708.
In a filing last week, 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”.
Mack’s defence is instead seeking a 15-year prison term, with credit for seven years spent in Indonesian prison.
“For the taxpayers to incur the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to incarcerate Ms. Mack for an extended period of time within the BOP is particularly unnecessary,” her attorney Michael Leonard said in a recent court filing.