An American woman nicknamed “the suitcase killer” pleaded guilty in the United States on Friday to complicity in the murder of her mother, who was killed in Bali in 2014 and whose body was hidden in her luggage, the Justice Department said.
• Also read: Early release of the “suitcase murderer”
• Also read: Body found in suitcase in Bali
Heather Mack, 27, was arrested on her return to the United States in 2021 after serving seven years in Indonesian prison for the crime. She faces another 28 years, her sentence will be set on December 18th.
In August 2015, when she was just 19, she and boyfriend Tommy Schaefer plotted to kill her mother, Sheila von Wiese Mack, a Chicago jet set character she was vacationing with, at a luxury hotel on the island of Bali.
After exchanging messages about ways to kill her, she called her partner using her mother’s credit card. On August 12, he entered the victim’s room and beat and killed her while his daughter remained hidden in the bathroom.
The couple had hidden the six-year-old’s body in a suitcase and were arrested the day after the attack. The local judiciary put her on trial in 2015.
At trial, Tommy Schaefer admitted to the murder but claimed he defended himself during a heated argument with his partner’s mother, unhappy her daughter was pregnant. He had been sentenced to 18 years in prison and the young woman to ten years.
Tommy Schaefer remains imprisoned in Indonesia. Heather Mack, who gave birth to a baby girl early in her incarceration, was released in 2021 for good behavior but arrested as soon as she returned to American soil.
AFP
In this case, the American authorities prosecuted and convicted a third protagonist: Tommy Schaefer’s cousin, Robert Ryan Bibbs, was found guilty of advising the couple on their murderous enterprise and sentenced to nine years in prison in 2017.