Heather Mack to be sentenced in Chicago for mother’s slaying

Heather Mack is scheduled to be sentenced in a federal courtroom Wednesday, marking the end of a sensational legal saga that began nearly a decade ago when she helped murder her mother and stuff her body in a suitcase at a Bali resort.

Mack, 28, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to murder a U.S. citizen on foreign soil, faces a wide range of potential punishments for the August 2014 slaying of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, a gruesome crime that sparked international media attention and led police on a trail back to suburban Chicago.

Mack’s attorneys have asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly for the minimum term of 15 years in prison, which could see her released in as little as four years if she’s given credit for the time she’s already served in Indonesia and at the federal jail in Chicago.

Prosecutors, though, have asked for 28 years in prison for Mack, writing in a filing last week that she has shown little remorse and has continued to try to capitalize on her own infamy through tell-all book and entertainment deals. Such as sentence would keep Mack, originally from Oak Park, locked up for about 16 more years.

In addition, prosecutors have asked for the maximum $250,000 fine and about $260,000 in restitution to her mother’s estate.

While Mack is eligible for a life sentence, her written plea agreement with prosecutors includes a provision saying she could not withdraw her plea if Kennelly agrees to sentence her to 28 years in prison or less. Kennelly is not obligated to go along with that; if he goes above a 28-year sentence, Mack could withdraw her guilty plea.

Mack was convicted in Indonesia in 2015 of helping her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer with the murder and served about seven years in prison, only to be arrested by the FBI when she landed at O’Hare International Airport in 2021 on a federal indictment that had been filed under seal while she was overseas.

Also charged with the same counts was Schaefer, who is still in prison in Bali. Mack’s plea agreement does not include any requirement for her to cooperate and testify against Schaefer.

Mack’s sentencing will likely finally bring her legal saga to an end. Her attorneys have said she has changed dramatically in the past 10 years and intends to make her remorse “clear” in her own words at the hearing Wednesday.

[ The timeline of the Heather Mack case ]

Meanwhile, Mack’s self-described godmother, Diana Roque Ellis, wrote a letter to Kennelly posted on the court docket over the weekend in which she pleaded for leniency, saying she’s “seen no trace of this horrifically diabolical girl that Sheila had endlessly detailed throughout the years” and who has been demonized by the media.

“What I have come to know is a surprisingly rational, even keeled, fair-minded, well spoken, intelligent, lovely young woman who is (surprisingly again) essentially cheerful, good-natured, sympathetic and kind,” Ellis wrote.

Ellis also called out her slain friend, saying the abusive relationship between von Wiese-Mack and her daughter went both ways.

“It was mystifying as to how Sheila was always lovely, gracious and kind to me and her other friends and yet so unremittingly caustic to Heather,” Ellis wrote. “There would be brief interludes of ‘lovey-dovey‘ peace only to be followed by more fierce rancor and hurled invectives. Unfortunately, I recognized early on that neither Heather nor Sheila were both getting out of this downward spiral of crazy behavior alive.”

In their filing last week, prosecutors noted the particularly brutal nature of the crime, which was the culmination of years of physical and mental abuse inflicted by Mack. The trip to Bali had been von Wiese-Mack’s last-ditch attempt to rekindle their relationship, prosecutors wrote. Instead, Mack had already set the murder plot in motion.

“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,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie Ursini and Frank Rangoussis, a special prosecutor with the Department of Justice. “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.”

[ Attorneys for Heather Mack ask for minimum sentence, credit for time served in ‘Bali suitcase’ murder of mother a decade ago ]

Even after she was arrested and charged with murder, Mack continued to show no remorse, and was granted an almost celebrity status in prison in Indonesia, according to prosecutors. She was allowed to live with her daughter after her birth in 2015, was given access to cellphones interviews with media, and even allowed to attend parades and other events outside the prison walls.

Videos and photos taken of Mack during her time behind bars, show her “dressed and behaving as if she was in a nightclub, not a prison,” prosecutors wrote.

When the FBI came to interview the prison warden in 2016, Mack and Schaefer “barged into the meeting and yelled at the warden,” prosecutors revealed in the filing.

Mack denied she was trying to influence the interview, but prosecutors said the episode showed she had likely “used her status as a celebrity and the thousands of dollars from the trust (fund) to gain influence inside the prison.”

In asking for leniency, Mack’s attorneys, Michael Leonard and Jeffrey Steinback, wrote in their 37-page filing that she suffered abuse at the hands of her mother and father at a young age, and later was physically abused and mentally manipulated by her boyfriend, Schaefer, who was convicted of beating von Weise-Mack to death with a heavy fruit bowl stand.

“Ms. Mack painfully regrets the way that she treated her own mother, and of course regrets and is extraordinarily remorseful for her own pivotal role in Ms. von Weise’s murder,” the defense filing stated.

Mack’s attorneys also wrote that incarcerating Mack for a lengthy period of time would not only needlessly cost taxpayers millions of dollars, but also keep her from developing a strong bond with her young daughter, Stella, who was born while Mack was serving time in Indonesia and now being raised by a relative.

The allegations in von Wiese-Mack’s slaying are well known by now. Authorities alleged Mack conspired with Schaefer to kill her mother in order to gain access to a $1.5 million trust fund set up after her father’s death. Mack was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Indonesia for the crime but released early for good behavior.

In pleading guilty, Mack admitted to a horrific set of facts outlined in a lengthy plea agreement. Mack flew Schaefer to Bali using her mother’s credit card, and they texted each other repeatedly about their plan, right up until Mack and her mother were alone in their hotel room.

“i need your help,” Mack texted Schaefer, according to the plea agreement. “you could just put your hand over her and i could grab her body.”

“must knock her out,” Schaefer replied. “I’m finding something right now … I’ll do it.”

Not long afterward, Schaefer entered the hotel room and beat von Wiese-Mack to death with the metal handle of a fruit bowl. An autopsy determined she suffered multiple facial and skull fractures and also had defensive injuries, the plea stated.

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Together, Schaefer and Mack put the body in a suitcase, put the suitcase in the trunk of a taxi at the hotel. They tried to get away in the taxi, but the driver wouldn’t accept their fare; instead, they left the cab and abandoned the suitcase inside.

Mack has been held without bond at the Metropolitan Correctional Center since she was arrested by the FBI in November 2021 as she left a Delta Air Lines flight at O’Hare’s Terminal 5.

Schaefer, who admitted to fatally beating von Wiese-Mack, was sentenced to 18 years.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago had previously charged Schaefer’s cousin, Robert Bibbs, with helping in the murder plot. The FBI learned of Bibbs’ involvement after analyzing text messages found on Schaefer’s phone.

Bibbs, 33, is serving a nine-year prison sentence in Michigan for coaching the defendants on how to carry out the murder in return for a share of the anticipated multimillion-dollar estate. He is eligible for parole in 2025.

Mack’s daughter, now 8, has been placed with a relative in the U.S. after a lengthy and bitter custody battle in Cook County Circuit Court.

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