A new twist has occurred in one of Bali’s weirdest tourist-related murder cases, with the release from prison of Heather Mack – an American tourist implicated in 2014 (at the age of 18) along with her boyfriend, in the murder of her mother, whose corpse was discovered stuffed into a suitcase in the boot of a taxi near Ubud.
Heather Mack is due to be deported back to the US in the next day or two.
Heather Mack’s mother, Sheila von Weise Mack, 62, had gone to Bali on holiday, accompanied by her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend Tommy Schaefer.
Sheila ended up bashed to death and stuffed into a suitcase at Starwood’s prestigious St Regis Bali Resort, a short drive from Ubud Art Village.
Heather Mack and Schaefer (who was aged 21 at the time), were later found by police sleeping together in a hotel room in Kuta. The couple initially claimed they had been abducted by a gang of armed desperadoes who had killed Mack’s mother. The couple said they had managed to escape from the gang and had booked into a Kuta hotel.
Police disbelieved them. So did the court. At a trial in 2014, Schaefer was found guilty of murdering Mack’s mother by bashing her with an ashtray and vase after an argument and stuffing her body into the suitcase. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Mack was sentenced to 10 years as an accessory. She has now been released after serving seven years.
In a sensational aftermath in 2017, the Chicago Tribune reported how a US federal judge in Chicago sentenced a cousin of Schaefer named Robert Bibbs to nine years in prison for helping coach Schaefer and Mack, via texts and Facebook messages, to carry out the murder in return for a share of the victim’s multi-million-dollar estate.
Adding to the complexity, Mack was pregnant to Schaefer at the time of the murder (August 2014) and the two now have a daughter, named Stella, who was born in Bali’s notorious Kerobokan Prison and initially raised there.
Under Indonesian law, the infant Stella was allowed to live with her mother in Mack’s cell in Kerobokan Female Prison until the child turned two years old. Mack then gave custody of her young daughter to an Australian woman pending her release from prison.
In Bali, the case aroused much interest. It also generated massive publicity in Chicago, where the couple and the victim are all from. The victim, Mack’s mother, was wealthy and Mack’s father was a noted Chicago jazz musician, the late James Mack.
Last week, Heather Mack told the New York Post she planned to return to Chicago, adding: “I really miss my mom, and everything in Chicago will remind me of her. I’m sure it will be very confronting because I think of her every day and deeply regret what happened.”
During Mack’s prison term, after she turned 21, she issued a rambling statement in the form of a three-part series of YouTube videos.
Remarkably, Mack’s strange “confession” videos are still there on the YouTube platform. Anyone wishing to view them (the whole three videos take less than six minutes in total) can do so below and draw their own conclusions.
Their presence is remarkable because Mack later retracted assertions in the videos posted to YouTube. Mack and her lawyer released a statement in 2017 saying that the assertions she made in videos were false and recorded under pressure. The statement said Mack was reading words written by Schaefer (who remains in prison in Bali).
In June 2018, Mack gave up her claim to her mother’s estate. The financial terms of the settlement agreement remain confidential, but court records filed in the US make it clear Heather Mack will not receive “any property, benefit, or other interest,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
Instead, the beneficiary is Mack’s daughter, Stella, now aged six.
An ABC news report on the latest installment of this convoluted case is accessible on the ABC site here.
Written by Peter Needham
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