Feds ask for 28 years for Heather Mack in mother’s 2014 slaying in Bali, citing lack of remorse, efforts to capitalize on ‘vicious’ crime

Heather Mack and her mother were all smiles in August 2014 as they posed for a photograph in the first-class cabin on a flight to Indonesia, a trip that was supposed to rekindle their fractured relationship.

Five days later, Sheila Von Wiese Mack was found murdered and stuffed in a suitcase at the Bali resort where they’d been staying, the victim of a “vicious” and premediated plot by her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend to kill her and live lavishly off the inheritance, federal prosecutors say.

Now, a decade after the gruesome crime, which sparked international media attention and led police on a trail back to suburban Chicago, the Mack case is approaching a closing chapter as she faces another sentencing hearing — this one in the U.S.

Federal prosecutors have asked for 28 years in prison for Mack, writing in a filing late Wednesday that she has shown little remorse and has continued to try to capitalize on her own infamy through tell-all book and entertainment deals.

“Mack’s income potential is quite high,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie Ursini and Frank Rangoussis, a special prosecutor with the Department of Justice, wrote in the 47-page filing. “The story of her crime is world famous, and she has likely already entered into a media contract that is expected to earn Mack a significant amount of money. The money generated as a result of this heinous crime should go to the victim’s estate rather than the defendant.”

A 28-year sentence would keep Mack locked up for about 16 more years, if the judge gives her credit for time already served for her mother’s murder in Indonesia. In addition, prosecutors have asked for the maximum $250,000 fine and about $260,000 in restitution to her mother’s estate.

Lawyers for Mack, meanwhile, have asked for the minimum sentence of 15 years in prison. With good-time credit, the sentence requested by Mack’s defense team would mean she could be released in approximately four years.

Mack, 28, pleaded guilty earlier this last year to one count of conspiracy to kill a U.S. citizen on foreign soil. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly is scheduled to sentence her on Wednesday.

While she is eligible for a life sentence, the written plea agreement includes a provision saying that Mack 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 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.

In their filing late Wednesday, which included the 2014 photo of Mack and her mother, 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,” Ursini and Rangoussis wrote. “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.”

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 cell phones 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, Tommy Schaefer, who was convicted of beating von Weise Mack to death with a heavy fruit bowl stand.

Mack’s attorneys acknowledged, however, that the abuse between Mack and her mother often went both ways, as documented in dozens of incidents, some involving police intervention, over the years leading up to the slaying.

“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.

They wrote that Mack intends to make her remorse “clear” in her own words at her sentencing.

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.

“A limited sentence of incarceration for Ms. Mack will go a long way toward ensuring that Stella is not collaterally damaged,” the attorneys wrote, adding that imposing conditions such as house arrest instead of prison would allow mother and daughter “to live and grow together.”

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 gruesome 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.

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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