Prosecutors seek 28-year sentence for Heather Mack in mom’s Bali slaying, stuffing into suitcase
Federal prosecutors in Chicago have imposed a 28-year prison sentence on an American woman who pleaded guilty to helping kill her mother and stuffing the body in a suitcase during a luxury vacation at a Bali resort nearly a decade ago.
That’s significantly more time behind bars than Heather Mack’s attorneys are expected to ask for when she is sentenced next week for conspiring to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack.
The government is also seeking five years of supervised release for Mack, a $250,000 fine and $262,708 in restitution. In a filing Wednesday, prosecutors said the recommended sentence is “justified and sufficient, but not more severe than is necessary to serve a just and appropriate sentence for Mack’s heinous crime.”
Mack pleaded guilty last June to conspiring to kill Wiese-Mack along with her then-boyfriend in order to gain access to a $1.5 million trust fund. Prosecutors have said Mack, then 18 and pregnant, covered her mother’s mouth in a hotel room while Tommy Schaefer bludgeoned Wiese-Mack with a fruit bowl.
The case received international attention in part because of photos of the suitcase in which Wiese-Mack was placed, which appeared too small to contain the body of an adult woman.
Prosecutors say Mack and Schaefer planned the murder for months. They also said they had video evidence showing that both Mack and Schaefer tried to get the suitcase with Wiese-Mack’s body inside into an Indonesian taxi.
Mack, who lived with her mother in Oak Park in suburban Chicago, served seven years of her 10-year Indonesian 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-six-year-old daughter was with her when she was arrested. The girl was later placed with a relative after a custody battle.
Mack’s lawyers are seeking a 15-year prison sentence, but without deduction of the seven years she spent in Indonesian prison for her 2015 conviction for complicity in the murder of Wiese-Mack. In addition, she would automatically receive credit for the more than two years she has spent in custody in Chicago since her return to the US
“It is grossly unnecessary that taxpayers must fork out the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to keep Ms. Mack incarcerated 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 prison sentence of up to 28 years. As part of the plea deal, two other charges against Mack will 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 US indictment.
Prosecutors said in the filing Wednesday that “Mack was the driving force behind the conspiracy that resulted in the murder of her mother.”
“First, Von Wiese’s murder was Mack’s idea, and something she investigated as early as February 2014,” the filing said. “Mack then enlisted the help of co-defendant Schaefer. In February 2014, Schaefer confided to a mutual friend via Facebook Messenger that Mack wanted to kill her mother. Specifically, Schaefer confided to his associate that Mack had offered Schaefer $50,000 to find someone who could kill her mother.
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Williams reported from West Bloomfield, Michigan.