Heather Mack news updates: Suitcase killer to plead guilty over murder of socialite mom Sheila von Wiese-Mack

In 2014, Heather Mack and Tommy Schaefer were both charged with premeditated murder and faced the death penalty by firing squad in Indonesia.

While Schaefer ultimately pleaded guilty, Mack did not. Schaefer testified at trial that he killed the 62-year-old because she attacked him when she found out her daughter was pregnant. Meanwhile, Mack was allegedly motivated by a desire to be free from her controlling mother.

In March 2015, in the middle of her trial, Mack gave birth to the couple’s daughter Stella (who she raised in prison for the first two years of her life when she was placed in the care of an Australian woman living in Indonesia who Mack had befriended behind bars).

Both Mack and Schaefer were convicted of premeditated murder and – after prosecutors asked for the death penalty be taken off the table – Mack was sentenced to 10 years in prison while Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in April 2015.

In 2017, Schaefer’s cousin Ryan Bibbs, then 24, was also convicted of conspiracy to kill von Wiese-Mack and sentenced to nine years in prison after it emerged that he had coached the two killers in different murder methods.

Before carrying out the brutal murder, the young lovers exchanged messages describing themselves as the notorious criminal duo Bonnie and Clyde and in which prosecutors say show how they plotted and conspired to kill their 62-year-old victim.

In the messages, revealed in US federal court documents earlier this year, the couple plotted methods of murder, egged each other on and spoke about how “rich” they would be when Mack inherited her mother’s wealth after she was dead.

On the day that Mack and her mother von Wiese-Mack set off on their trip, Schaefer allegedly sent his girlfriend a text saying: “I can’t wait to be rich… Its crazy af Like Money Nothing rules the world.”

The next day, Mack replied telling him the “trips going as planned baby … faith”.

When Schaefer told her he had “a lot of faith” in her but “that a lot of things aren’t in her control”, Mack replied with chilling messages describing how she had been “watching” her “witch” mother.

Referring to herself as “bonnie” of Bonnie and Clyde, she urged her boyfriend not to “underestimate me”.

“I also know what is in my control … I know what makes people tick … the witch … I know what make [sic] her tick … I’m with her so much … I know her habbit [sic]… how she acts … what she does at certain times … its like breaking out of jail … It takes several years of watching … I have been watching her routine … and I know what I do control … Im sneaky … Im smart … and I watch … trust bonnie … Dn’t make everyone else mistake and under estimate me,” she wrote, per the court documents.

Other text messages revealed Schaefer encouraging Mack to smother her mother to death.

Heather Mack was the daughter of socialite von Wiese-Mack and famed musician James L Mack and had a privileged upbringing in the Oak Park suburb of Chicago.

But, following James L Mack’s 2006 death, von Wiese-Mack called the police to their home dozens of times due to incidents of domestic violence.

Oak Park Police records reveal at least 35 interactions with officers since 2008 including accusations that Mack broke her mother’s arm, bit and punched her.

In 2012, she was convicted of battery in juvenile court for an attack on her mother.

In 2013 – just over one year before her murder – von Wiese-Mack confided in a detective that she feared Mack was going to kill her.

After years of fighting for her freedom – and blaming her mother for her own senseless killing – Heather Mack, 27, has now revealed her intentions to change her plea at a hearing in Illinois court on Thursday.

Speaking to The New York Post last week, Mack said she believed she had served her time in Indonesian prison and didn’t think she should be facing charges in the US.

“I have served nearly 10 years in prison. I felt that I had done my time, so I was gung-ho for trial,” she said.

“Now, after sitting for so long, I know what I have to do.

“I’m going to be a felon in America, and that is fine. I understand from [the US government’s] perspective that, if I don’t plead guilty and they didn’t indict me, I wouldn’t be a felon.”

She added: “I could become a police officer and work for the government… I could carry a firearm on the street.”

The exact terms of the plea deal remain unclear, but Mack said she is looking at a sentence of zero to 25 years, including time served.

A judge declined to ease bond conditions Thursday and release a Chicago woman who is charged with conspiracy in the 2014 death of her wealthy mother during a luxury vacation in Bali.

The decision means Heather Mack, 27, will remain in custody without bond while awaiting a July trial in federal court in Chicago.

Mack was arrested in Chicago in November 2021 after serving more than seven years in an Indonesian prison for murder. The body of her socialite mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, was stuffed in a suitcase and left in a taxi outside a hotel on the island of Bali.

In August 2014, wealthy Illinois socialite Sheila von Wiese-Mack took her troubled 18-year-old daughter on vacation to the 5-star St. Regis hotel in Bali.

After they arrived at the luxury resort, Mack used her mother’s credit card to buy a $12,000 business-class ticket for her then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer to join them and a single night’s stay at the hotel.

In the early hours of the morning on 12 August 2014 – hours after Schaefer arrived – Mack, von Wiese-Mack and Schaefer were captured on hotel surveillance footage arguing in the lobby of the hotel.

Sometime after that, Schaefer bludgeoned von Wiese-Mack to death with the metal handle of a fruit stand.

Schaefer and Mack then stuffed her body into a suitcase and wheeled it down into the hotel lobby.

They hailed a taxi, loaded the suitcase into the trunk of the car and tried to check out of the luxury resort.

But, because von Weise-Mack had told the hotel not to let her daughter use her credit card, they were prevented from doing so and fled the scene.

The taxi driver – suspicious of the bloodied suitcase wrapped in hotel sheets – called the police who made the grim discovery of what was inside. The couple was soon tracked down to a budget motel and arrested on suspicion of murder.

“Suitcase killer” Heather Mack is expected to appear in court today where she will plead guilty in Chicago court today over the 2014 murder of her socialite mother in Bali.

In August 2014, Mack, then 18 and pregnant, and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, then 21, bludgeoned Sheila von Weise-Mack, 62, to death with a metal fruit stand while on vacation at the luxury 5-star St. Regis resort on the Indonesian island.

The couple, who described themselves as “Bonnie and Clyde” in chilling text messages, then stuffed her body in a suitcase and left it in the trunk of a taxi.

They were both convicted of premeditated murder in Indonesia – narrowly escaping firing squad.

After serving seven years in a Bali jail (where her daughter was born), Mack was extradited to the US where she was arrested on arrival in Chicago and hit with fresh charges of conspiracy to murder in a foreign country in November 2021.

Since then, she has been behind bars fighting the charges.

On Thursday, Mack is expected to appear for a plea hearing in Illinois court where she has revealed her intentions to take a plea bargain.

It’s a chilling case that has spanned two different continents and rumbled on for the best part of eight years.

Now finally, some sort of conclusion is about to be reached as Chicago woman Heather Mack is expected to plead guilty this week to her part in her mother’s heinous 2014 murder.

Infamously dubbed the “Suitcase killer”, Mack, then 18 and pregnant, and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, then 21, bludgeoned her socialite mother Sheila von Weise-Mack, 62, to death and stuffed her body in a suitcase while on vacation at a luxury 5-star resort in Bali.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp delves into the case here:

Follow all the latest updates as Heather Mack appears in court in connection to 2014 murder.