(Washington) An American, nicknamed “the suitcase killer”, pleaded guilty Friday in the United States to her role in the murder of her mother, killed in 2014 in Bali and whose body had been concealed in luggage, has announced the Department of Justice.
Heather Mack, 27, was arrested in 2021 on her return to the United States after spending seven years in prison in Indonesia for this crime. She faces an additional 28 years and will be fixed on December 18 on her sentence.
In August 2015, when she was just 19, she plotted with her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, to kill her mother Sheila von Wiese Mack, a figure in the jet set from Chicago with whom she was vacationing in a luxury hotel on the island of Bali.
After exchanging messages about ways to kill her, she summoned her mate, using her mother’s credit card. On August 12, he entered their victim’s room and beat and killed her, while his daughter remained hidden in the bathroom.
The couple had concealed the body of the sexagenarian in a suitcase and had been arrested the day after the assassination. Local justice tried them in 2015.
During the trial, Tommy Schaefer had admitted the homicide but claimed that he had defended himself during a violent argument with the mother of his partner, unhappy that her daughter was pregnant. He had been sentenced to 18 years in prison, the young woman of ten years.
Tommy Schaefer remains detained in Indonesia. Heather Mack, who gave birth to a baby girl at the start of her detention, was released for good behavior in 2021, but arrested as soon as she returned to American soil.
In this case, the American authorities prosecuted and judged a third protagonist: the cousin of Tommy Schaefer, Robert Ryan Bibbs, was found guilty of having advised the couple in his murderous enterprise and sentenced in 2017 to nine years in prison.