Heather Mack sentencing: Suitcase killer' faces 28 years in US prison
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 prison sentence for Heather Mack (pictured center), considerably more time than defense lawyers are expected to ask when she is sentenced for conspiring to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack Wednesday in Chicago.
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 restitution of $262,708. Mack's wealthy mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack (pictured right) - married to late composer James L. Mack, who died during a family trip in 2006 - was killed, stuffed in a suitcase and left in a taxi in 2014.
Mack and her then-boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer (pictured), were later convicted of the crime in Indonesia, but have yet to be sentenced in the U.S. Their apparent motive was money, hoping Mack would inherit the millions her already well-off mother had come into after James's death. In a filing last week, prosecutors said the recommended sentence 'is warranted and sufficient, but not greater than necessary to serve a just and appropriate punishment for Mack's heinous crime.'
Mack pleaded guilty last June to one count of conspiring to kill Wiese-Mack with her then-boyfriend to gain access to a $1.5 million trust fund. Prosecutors have said that 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 gained international attention in part because of photographs of the suitcase Wiese-Mack was placed in, which seemed too small to hold an adult woman's body. Prosecutors have said Mack and Schaefer had planned the killing for months.
They also said they had video evidence that showed both Mack and Schaefer trying to get the suitcase with Wiese-Mack's body inside it into an Indonesian taxicab. Mack, who lived with her mother in suburban Chicago's Oak Park, served seven years of her 10-year Indonesian sentence. She was deported in 2021 and U.S. agents arrested her immediately after her plane landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Pictured: Sheila von Wiese-Mack.
Mack's then-6-year-old daughter was with her when she was arrested. The girl later was placed with a relative after a custody fight. Mack's lawyers are seeking a 15-year prison term - but with credit for seven years spent in the Indonesian prison for her 2015 conviction of being an accessory to Wiese-Mack´s murder.
Separately, she would automatically get credit for more than two years spent in custody in Chicago since her return to the U.S. 'For the taxpayers to incur the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to incarcerate Ms. Mack for an extended period of time within the BOP is particularly unnecessary,' attorney Michael Leonard said in a recent court filing, referring to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The plea agreement calls for a sentence of no more than 28 years. As part of the plea deal, two other 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 sentence. He is charged in the same U.S. indictment. Until this past June, she had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and obstruction of justice - a stance she walked back on on June 15.
Her sentencing in Chicago, meanwhile is slated for Wednesday, nearly ten years after the case first grabbed headlines due to Mack's plotting to kill von Wiese-Mack - and her subsequent stuffing her body in a suitcase she and her beau left in a taxi. Mack was eighteen and pregnant at the time, and prosecutors contend she helped him cram the body into the case and wheel it downstairs where they hailed a cab and loaded it into the trunk. The pair ran away when the driver became suspicious something foul was afoot, and were arrested shortly afterward at a nearby budget hotel and put on trial.
Both were convicted the next year, as U.S. prosecutors filed their own case that accused Mack of conspiring with Schaefer prior to their Bali trip, stealing her mom's credit card and using it to fly him out in a $12,000 business class seat. In text messages presented during those proceedings, Schaefer urged his teen lover to suffocate von Wiese-Mack so they could claim her estate, which he believed was worth up to $11million. He ended up doing the job himself - in gruesome fashion - battering the political strategist with the metal bowl until she suffocated on her own blood after sustaining a broken nose.
Schaefer later testified that Sheila had racially abused him and tried to strangle him during an argument about the pregnancy. In reality, the besotted lovers had plotted to kill her for months and had already tried but failed to kill her by overdose, prosecutors were able to prove. Speaking to the Post 20 months after she was cuffed by federal agents in front of her daughter after stepping off the plane at Chicago's O'Hare airport, Mack explained how she looked forward to assimilating into society after serving the duration of her U.S. sentence. 'I'm going to be a felon in America, and that is fine. I understand from [the U.S. government's] perspective that, if I don't plead guilty and they didn't indict 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 firearm on the street.'
Mack faced two counts of conspiring to kill her mother, as well as a third count of corruptly destroying, mutilating, and concealing evidence - a charge incurred for 'forcing the body of Sheila A. von Wiese into a suitcase,' according to prosecutors. Von Wiese-Mack's siblings have testified that they feared for their safety if Mack should be released, after attorneys claimed Mack was coerced into the murder plot to be free of her mother's control. Prior to her mother's death, Mack reportedly had a fraught and often violent relationship with her mother. According to the Associated Press, police responded many times to the family's Oak Park, Illinois house.
Hotel cameras show the three arguing in the lobby of the St. Regis on August 12, 2014, the night he arrived. Stella, meanwhile, lives in Colorado with Lisa Hellman, a teacher who is the niece of the late von Wiese. Under Indonesian law, Stella was allowed to live with her mother in her cell until she turned two when Mack gave custody of her to Australian native Suartama, whom she befriended during her trial. Behind bars in Bali, Mack - who enjoyed a privileged upbringing in Chicago's upscale Oak Park suburb, growing up in a $1.5 million mansion - was said to have left her life of crime behind, going to church, organizing fashion shows and teaching other inmates to dance.
In her a 2019 interview with DailyMail.com she said felt 'more Indonesian than American', could speak their language and had no desire to return to the U.S. 'My daughter is more Indonesian than American. She has a good life here,' Mack said. Her sentence will be handed down Wednesday in the Windy City. Read the full story: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12972483/Sentencing-Heather-Mack-suitcase-killer-today.html?ito=msngallery
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