Heiress Heather Mack sentenced for mother’s murder at Bali resort

Heather Mack was just 18 years old in 2014 and set to inherit A$2.2 million from her 62-year-old mum, Sheila Von Wiese.

The pair had a troubled relationship which Von Wiese had tried to heal by sweeping them off for a mother-daughter getaway at a luxury resort on the Indonesian island.

Claims of abuse had been flung from both sides, with Mack and Von Wiese coming to blows in frequent, violent fights at their six-bedroom mansion in Chicago, a court was told.

Witnesses said Von Wiese had told friends she feared for her life.

In August 2014, the pair checked into the glamorous St Regis resort hotel in Nusa Dua, Bali, having flown there first class.

Mack had stolen her mother’s credit card and booked a business class flight for her 21-year-old boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer.

Von Wiese’s fears materialised on August 12, 2014, when Mack covered her mother’s mouth while Schaefer bludgeoned her with an iron fruit bowl stand.

Von Wiese died “a painful death” at the resort, struggling for breath and inhaling her own blood, the court heard.

Mack and Schaefer had spent the previous 40 minutes texting back and forth, debating which of them would kill her and how.

“Let me just creep up. And whack her,” Schaefer suggested, adding that once Von Wiese was dead they would tell authorities that she was drunk and suffered a fatal fall.

Mack had texted her excitement at the prospect of seeing her mother dead. “I literally can’t wait,” she wrote.

After stuffing Von Wiese’s 5ft 8in corpse into a suitcase, the pair hauled it into the boot of a taxi, told the driver they needed to check out of the hotel and would return shortly, and fled. Blood smears on the suitcase alerted the taxi driver to the crime.

On Thursday, nearly a decade after the murder, Mack, now in her late 20s, was handed a 26-year sentence.

Her defence team argued she was the victim of an abusive mother, but US District Judge Matthew Kennelly said: “Ms Von Wiese could have been the worst parent in the history of humanity. She didn’t deserve to die.”

The court also heard Mack herself had been physically, emotionally and financially abusive and killed Von Wiese to gain access to her multimillion dollar trust fund.

Bill Wiese, the victim’s brother, called Mack a “master manipulator” and a “monster”, warning her words could not be trusted.

“She has lied so many times about her life and her mother’s murder that I’ve stopped counting,” he said.

In court, Mack spoke fondly of her mother, saying: “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her.”

“I miss her smile, her ‘I love yous’ and mostly her holding me,” she added.

Mack had been in custody in the US since October 2021, when she was deported from Bali after serving seven years of a 10-year prison sentence for conspiracy to murder. Under a plea deal with US federal prosecutors, Mack pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to kill a US national.

Mack was pregnant by Schaefer at the time of the murder and gave birth while in prison in Bali.

Schaefer is still in Bali serving a 15-year sentence. His cousin, Ryan Bibbs, 32, is serving nine years in a US prison as a co-conspirator after encouraging the murder plot.

Mack had asked for a lenient sentence of just eight more years in the US so she could look forward to parenting her daughter, Stella, now aged eight.

However, in a statement read on behalf of the girl’s legal guardian, Lisa Hellman, the court was told: “Stella does not want to talk to Heather … she does not want to be raised by Heather. She has vocalised this to her therapist multiple times.”

Stella was an “amazing, empathetic, kind and brave young girl — not because of Heather Mack, but in spite of her,” Ms Hellman said.

As for the money, in 2018 a US judge decreed Mack will not receive “any property, benefit or other interest” from her late mother’s estate.

Instead, Stella was named the beneficiary.