Sentencing is scheduled for an American heiress who pleaded guilty to helping kill her mother and stuffing the body in a suitcase during a luxury vacation in Bali nearly a decade ago.
Federal prosecutors are recommending a 28-year sentence for Heather Mack, significantly more than defense attorneys expect when she is sentenced in Chicago on Wednesday for conspiring to murder Sheila von Wiese-Mack.
The government is also seeking five years of supervised release for the 28-year-old – who has already pleaded guilty – as well as a $250,000 fine and $262,708 in restitution.
Mack's wealthy mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack – married to the late composer James L. Mack, who died during a family trip in 2006 – was killed in 2014, stuffed into a suitcase and left in a taxi.
Mack and her then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer were later convicted of the crime in Indonesia but have not yet been sentenced in the United States.
Her obvious motive was money, hoping Mack would inherit the millions her already wealthy mother received after James' death.
Federal prosecutors are recommending a 28-year prison sentence for Heather Mack, significantly more time behind bars than defense attorneys are expected to demand at their sentencing on Wednesday
Mack and her former boyfriend – Stella's father – were found guilty in 2015 of plotting together to kill Mack's mother, socialite Sheila von Wiese-Mack (pictured left), during a family trip to a luxury resort in Bali and then her body to stuff a suitcase into it (right)
In a filing last week, prosecutors said the recommended sentence was “justified and sufficient, but no greater than necessary, to serve a just and appropriate sentence for Mack's heinous crime.”
Mack pleaded guilty last June to conspiring with her then-boyfriend to murder Wiese-Mack in order to gain access to a $1.5 million trust fund. Prosecutors said Mack, then 18 and pregnant, covered her mother's mouth in a hotel room while Tommy Schaefer bashed Wiese-Mack with a fruit bowl.
The case gained international attention, among other things, through photos of the suitcase in which Wiese-Mack was stored, which appeared to be too small to contain the body of an adult woman.
Prosecutors said Mack and Schaefer planned the murder for months. They also said they had video evidence that showed Mack and Schaefer trying to get the suitcase with Wiese-Mack's body inside into an Indonesian taxi.
Mack, who lived with her mother in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, served seven years of her 10-year Indonesian prison sentence. She was deported in 2021 and US agents arrested her immediately after her plane landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
Mack's then 6-year-old daughter was with her when she was arrested. After a custody dispute, the girl was later placed with a relative.
Mack's lawyers are asking for a 15-year prison sentence – albeit with credit for seven years in Indonesian prison for her 2015 conviction for aiding and abetting Wiese-Mack's murder. Regardless, she would automatically receive credit for the more than two years in prison she spent in Chicago since her return to the United States.
“It is particularly unnecessary for taxpayers to spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to confine Ms. Mack within the BOP for an extended period of time,” attorney Michael Leonard said in a recent court filing, referring to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The plea agreement calls for a maximum sentence of 28 years. As part of the agreement, two additional charges against Mack would be dropped at the end of the sentencing process.
Schaefer was convicted of murder and remains in Indonesia, where he is serving an 18-year prison sentence. He is charged in the same U.S. indictment.
As of last June, she had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder abroad and obstruction of justice – a stance she resumed on June 15.
Mack's wealthy mother von Wiese-Mack – married to the late James L. Mack, a renowned composer – was killed by the two and stuffed into a suitcase before being left in a taxi on the island of Bali in 2014. The couple was discovered and arrested at that time
Tommy Schaefer, who is currently serving an 18-year sentence in Indonesian prison, has a child with Mack – born after the pair were convicted in 2015 – and was the one who brutally killed von Wiese-Mack with a metal bowl fought to get hold of her millions
Mack is seen in an immigration car after being released from Kerobokan Prison in Bali, Indonesia on October 29. She was released 34 months early for good behavior after being found guilty of plotting to assassinate von WIese-Mack
Less than a week after she was released from Bali for good behavior, Mack was arrested on a three-count federal indictment after she landed at Chicago O'Hare Airport on Nov. 3. Mack was accompanied at the time by their six-year-old daughter, who was born in prison
During the couple's 2015 trial in Indonesia, Mack gave birth to their daughter, Stella. She was allowed to live with the child during her detention abroad, but her daughter now lives with one of her mother's relatives
Her sentencing in Chicago, meanwhile, is scheduled for Wednesday, nearly a decade after the case first made headlines because Mack planned to kill von Wiese-Mack – and then stuffed her body into a suitcase that she and her boyfriend left in a taxi had left behind.
Mack was eighteen and pregnant at the time, and prosecutors allege she helped him stuff the body into the suitcase and wheel it downstairs, where they called a taxi and loaded it into the trunk.
The pair fled when the driver suspected something bad was afoot and were soon arrested at a nearby budget hotel and taken to court.
Both were convicted the following year when U.S. prosecutors filed their own case accusing Mack of conspiring with Schaefer before their trip to Bali to steal her mother's credit card and use it to set him up in a crime Fly out in a business class seat worth $12,000.
In text messages sent during the trial, Schaefer urged his teenage lover to suffocate von Wiese-Mack so they could claim her estate, which he said was worth up to $11 million.
He ended up doing the job himself – in gruesome fashion – beating the political strategist with the metal bowl until she choked on her own blood after suffering a broken nose.
Schaefer later testified that Sheila racially abused him and tried to strangle him during an argument about the pregnancy.
In reality, the doting lovers had been planning to kill her for months and had already tried to kill her by overdose but failed, the prosecution was able to prove.
Speaking to the Post 20 months after she was handcuffed in front of her daughter by federal agents after getting off the plane at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, Mack explained how excited she was to get married to integrate into society while serving their US prison sentence.
“I'll be a felon in America, and that's okay.” I understand [the US government’s] If I didn't plead guilty and they didn't charge me, I wouldn't be a felon. “I could become a police officer and work for the government.”
She even added, “I could carry a gun on the street.”
Mack's son Stella, whom she gave birth to in an Indonesian prison while serving a foreign sentence, is pictured here with her father, Tommy Schaefer. Mack said Stella, now 7, doesn't know why both her mother and father are incarcerated and she wants to keep it that way
Mack is pictured shortly after her release from a Bali prison in October, following which steps were taken to have her face trial in the US
Mack was pregnant at the time of the murder and gave birth to her daughter Stella (pictured left) in prison. Mack's then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer (pictured with Stella in his arms, right), who is also the father of her child, is serving an 18-year sentence for murder
Mack was charged with two counts of conspiracy to murder her mother and a third count of corrupt destruction, mutilation and concealment of evidence – a charge of “forcing the body of Sheila A. von Wiese into a suitcase,” prosecutors said.
Von Wiese-Mack's siblings have testified that they feared for their safety if Mack was released after lawyers claimed Mack was forced into the murder plot to escape their mother's control.
Mack reportedly had a strained and often violent relationship with her mother before her mother's death. Police responded to the family's home in Oak Park, Illinois, several times, according to the Associated Press.
Hotel cameras show the three arguing in the lobby of the St. Regis on August 12, 2014, the night of his arrival.
Meanwhile, Stella lives in Colorado with Lisa Hellman, a teacher and niece of the late von Wiese.
Under Indonesian law, Stella was allowed to live in her mother's cell until she was two years old, when Mack gave custody of her to Suartama, an Australian native who she befriended during her trial.
Behind bars in Bali, Mack – who enjoyed a privileged upbringing in Chicago's upscale Oak Park suburb and grew up in a $1.5 million mansion – is said to have left her life of crime behind, going to church, organizing fashion shows and doing the same to other inmates taught to dance.
In a 2019 interview with , she said she felt “more Indonesian than American,” could speak their language and had no desire to return to the United States.
“My daughter is more Indonesian than American. “She has a good life here,” Mack said. Her verdict will be announced Wednesday in the Windy City.