Woman Who Helped Kill Mother, Stuff Body In Suitcase Pleads Guilty

 A Chicago woman pleaded guilty to helping kill her mother in 2014 while on vacation on Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali.

Heather Mack, who was 18 and pregnant at the time of her mother’s murder, was convicted of the crime in Indonesia in 2015 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, NBC News reported. After serving seven years for the crime, she was deported back to the U.S. and immediately arrested by U.S. authorities.

Mack covered her mother’s mouth while her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, beat Sheila von Wiese-Mack to death with a fruit bowl, prosecutors said. Mack has since given birth to Schaefer’s baby, while Schaefer remains in Indonesia serving an 18-year sentence for the murder. He is also charged in the U.S. for the crime.

She had previously pleaded not guilty but changed her plea on Friday to guilty on one count of conspiracy to kill a U.S. national. Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, Mack reportedly spoke calmly while replying to the judge.

Mack and her mother were said to have a troubled relationship, with police getting called to their Oak Park, Illinois, home numerous times, the Associated Press reported. On the day of Wiese-Mack’s murder, Mack and Schaefer were seen on hotel surveillance cameras arguing with Mack’s mother in the hotel lobby just before the crime.

She reportedly carried out the murder to gain access to a $1.5 million trust fund.

Robert Bibbs, Schaefer’s cousin, pleaded guilty in 2016 to helping plan the murder in exchange for $50,000 from Mack’s inheritance. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.

 

Before Mack was convicted in Indonesia, she gave birth to her and Schaefer’s daughter, Stella. The girl spent the first two years of her life living in a jail cell with her mother before Mack gave custody to an Australian woman until she would be released from prison. Stella was six years old when Mack was arrested in the U.S. She is now in the care of a relative after a custody battle, NBC reported.

In 2021, after Mack was arrested in the U.S., her attorney Brian Claypool told the AP that the charges were “clearly a witch hunt” brought about by public pressure after Mack was released from the Indonesian prison.

Initial reporting on the crime garnered international attention due in part to pictures of the suitcase that held Wiese-Mack’s body, which appeared too small to hold the body of an adult woman.