CHICAGO (AP) – The daughter of an American woman whose body was found stuffed inside a suitcase at an Indonesian resort island is scheduled to appear in Chicago federal court to change her plea to guilty on charges she helped kill her mother in Bali nine years ago.
Heather Mack was convicted in Indonesia in 2015 of being an accessory to Sheila von Wiese-Mack’s murder with her then-boyfriend in a bid to gain access to a USD1.5 million trust fund. Mack, then 18 and pregnant, covered her mother’s mouth in a hotel room while Tommy Schaefer bludgeoned Wiese-Mack with a fruit bowl, prosecutors said.
The change-of-plea hearing is the latest chapter in a story that garnered international attention in part because of photographs of the suitcase, which seemed too small to hold an adult woman’s body. Mack’s Chicago trial on conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and obstruction of justice had been set for August 1.
Mack, who lived with her mother in suburban Chicago’s Oak Park, served seven years of her 10-year Indonesian sentence. She was then deported in 2021 and United States agents arrested her immediately after she landed at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
