Chicago suitcase killer who murdered mom on 5-star vacation to paradise wants credit for time served overseas
U.S. prosecutors in Chicago are seeking 28 years in prison and maximum fines for a woman who brutally killed her mother at a luxury resort in Bali a decade ago and served time there before pleading guilty to federal charges in Illinois.
Heather Mack, 28, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to kill a United States national in June for her mother's slaying in 2014.
An Indonesian court found her guilty of holding Sheila von Wiese's mouth shut as her boyfriend at the time, Tommy Schaefer, beat her to death.
The pair then stuffed her body into a bloody suitcase at the St. Regis hotel and left it in a taxi.
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"The murder of von Wiese at the hands of the defendant and Schaefer was vicious," federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo earlier this week. "The evidence indicates von Wiese struggled to stay alive, meaning that, in the last moments of her life, she realized that her daughter, and only child, was responsible for her death.
"Von Wiese had been worried that Mack would one day kill her, and it is hard to fathom the physical and emotional pain von Wiese endured in the final moments of her life."
Mack's lawyers are seeking a sentence of 15 years maximum with time served credit for her Indonesian incarceration, arguing it would be "unwarranted" to keep her in prison longer after co-conspirator Robert Bibbs received a nine-year sentence for helping to plot the murder.
Schaefer, Bibbs' cousin, is also accused of taking part in the murder in an effort to get "rich" off the money they thought they would have inherited from von Wiese.
Prosecutors recovered text messages between Mack and Schaefer in which they coordinated the murder and fantasized about how to spend the money.
"I can't wait to be rich," Schaefer wrote days before the murder. "I seriously can't wait…I'm like thinking of lavish lifestyles."
"Lmao," Mack replied.
Read the government sentencing memorandum for Heather Mack
A moment before the murder, Mack again texted Schaefer, telling him to "[g]ive her a minute to be off guard" before beating her to death with a metal handle in her hotel room, according to court filings.
An autopsy found defensive wounds on von Wiese's body and determined she died of blunt force trauma that fractured her nose and jaw and obstructed her airway.
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The couple then hid the bloody sheets and replaced them with a clean set, stuffed von Wiese into a suitcase and threw it in the trunk of a taxi outside the hotel lobby, according to prosecutors.
When the taxi driver refused their fare, they left the suitcase in the trunk and went to a different hotel, where they checked in under fake names. Indonesian police arrested them the next morning.
Mack was released after serving seven years of her 10-year Indonesian sentence and deported to the U.S., where police arrested her as soon as she arrived. Schaefer is still in prison overseas.