Chicago native Heather Mack, who along with her boyfriend killed her mother during a vacation to a five-star resort in Indonesia’s luxurious island of Bali and then left her dead body in a suitcase stuffed in the trunk of a taxi, received a 26-year federal prison sentence Wednesday for plotting the crime.
She was already convicted of murder in Indonesia and served seven years there before being deported to the U.S.
Mack, 28, pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charges and her lawyers had asked for a sentence of no more than 15 years, with credit deducted for her time in the overseas prison. Prosecutors wanted 28 years.
The federal judge handed down a sentence of 26 years during her sentencing hearing Wednesday afternoon, FOX 32 Chicago reported. Mack and her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, plotted the murder in text messages before they ambushed Sheila von Wiese during a Bali vacation in 2014 in her room at the St. Regis hotel.
Heather Mack of Chicago is mobbed by reporters as she arrives in court for her sentencing hearing at a district court in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, April 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati, File)
Mack flew to the island getaway with her mother. Schaefer came later, on a different flight, without the victim’s knowledge.
Then Mack held her mother’s mouth shut to muffle the screams as Schaefer beat her to death with the metal handle of a fruit bowl.
They tried to clean up the crime scene and even changed the hotel linens before stuffing von Wiese into a suitcase that was later discovered in the trunk of a taxi outside that had refused to give the couple a ride.
The body of Sheila von Wiese Mack was found Aug. 12, 2014, stuffed into a bloody suitcase in the trunk of a taxi in front of the five-star St. Regis hotel. (Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP via Getty Images)
“The murder of von Wiese at the hands of the defendant and Schaefer was vicious,” federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo last wee. “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.”
Prosecutors recovered text messages between Mack and Schaefer in which they coordinated the murder and fantasized about how to spend the money they thought she would inherit after her mother’s death.
AMERICAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF KILLING MOTHER ON BALI VACATION, HIDING BODY IN SUITCASE PLEADS GUILTY
A police officer escorts suspect Heather Mack, 19, center, during an investigation at a police office in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali Aug. 13, 2014, after an American tourist’s battered body was found in a suitcase at an exclusive hotel on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali. (Sonny Tumbelaka /AFP via Getty Images)
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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.
