‘Suitcase killer’ who plotted her mother’s killing in Bali gets 26 years in US prison
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Heather Mack (centre) escorted by immigration guards to the immigration detention house in Jimbaran, Bali on Oct 29, 2021.
PHOTO: AFP
Illinois – A woman who plotted to kill her mother and then stuffed her body in a suitcase in Bali
Judge Matthew Kennelly of United States District Court in Illinois sentenced Heather Mack after she had pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiring to kill a US national.
The sentence, handed down in a Chicago courtroom, was just shy of the 28 years sought by federal prosecutors, who had also recommended in a sentencing memo that Mack’s release be followed by five years of supervised release and that she pay restitution of more than US$260,000 (S$349,076).
“This was a brutal and premeditated crime,” Judge Kennelly said in court on Jan 17, according to local news outlets.
Mack’s case drew international attention after she was accused of plotting to kill her mother, Mrs Sheila von Wiese-Mack, the wealthy widow of a Chicago composer.
Mack was convicted in Indonesia of crimes related to the death, and she spent seven years in jail there before she was released and returned to Chicago in 2021 to face federal charges.
Mack will get credit for the time she has spent in jail in Chicago since November 2021 but not for the years she spent imprisoned in Indonesia, prosecutors said.
Lawyers for Mack did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the sentencing. Prosecutors declined to comment.
In 2014, when Mack was 18, she arranged for Tommy Schaefer, her boyfriend at the time, to travel to Bali, according to prosecutors. After Schaefer arrived there, prosecutors said, the couple exchanged text messages about how and when to murder Mrs von Wiese-Mack.
On Aug 12, 2014, Schaefer went to a hotel room where Mrs von Wiese-Mack was staying and beat her to death while Mack was present, according to prosecutors and court documents. The couple then tried to clean up the room and stuffed the body into a suitcase, according to court documents. The couple fled the hotel and left the suitcase with the body in a taxi, prosecutors said.
An autopsy found that Mrs von Wiese-Mack’s cause of death was from the blunt force of blows, which fractured her nasal bone and jawbone, according to court documents.
Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years and remains in prison in Indonesia.
Prosecutors said in the sentencing memo that Mrs von Wiese-Mack had worried that Mack would kill her some day, and that police reports detailed a history of episodes in which Mack had attacked her mother. Mack and Schaefer had been “extremely calculating about the murder”, and had made plans to receive money from Mrs von Wiese-Mack’s estate after her death, according to court documents.
“The fact that Mack was the person responsible for planning and carrying out the murder of her own mother, and her lack of remorse, including her extensive efforts to conceal her crime, is terrifying and indicate that Mack is still capable of committing the most heinous acts when she feels it is to her benefit,” prosecutors wrote.
“Mack is devoid of empathy and remorse.” NYTIMES
