The Post can exclusively reveal that “Suitcase Killer” Heather Mack will plead guilty in the US to her part in the brutal 2014 murder of her socialite mother during a luxury vacation in Bali.
Mack, 27, has a change of plea hearing scheduled for June 15 — six week before her trial is set to begin on Aug. 1 in Chicago.
“We were offered a good plea. First, it was 15 to 35 [years]; now they are saying zero to 25 years, including time served,” she told The Post.
Mack spent seven years of a 10-year sentence in Indonesia for her role in the murder of her mother, Sheila von Wiese Mack, before being released in 2021.
In August 2014, Mack and her then-boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, 21, bludgeoned her mother to death with a fruit bowl, crushed her body into a suitcase, and loaded it into the trunk of a taxi at Bali’s St Regis resort.
After the cab driver alerted police, the couple was arrested at a budget hotel a few miles away.
Mack was 18 and pregnant with her and Schaefer’s daughter, Stella, now 8, when the slaying occurred.
The teenager was on the vacation with her mother — who, Mack alleges, hoped to persuade her to end her pregnancy.
Mack used Sheila’s credit card to buy a $12,000 business-class ticket and fly Schaefer from Chicago to Bali.
Hotel cameras show the three arguing in the lobby of the St. Regis on Aug. 12, 2014, the night he arrived.
After Sheila went to bed, Mack and Schaefer spent hours plotting her murder.
Mack allegedly wanted to be free of her mother’s control, while Schaefer is said to have wanted Mack’s $1.5 million inheritance.
In texts presented in court, Schaefer encouraged Mack to suffocate Sheila in her sleep, but the girl couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Schaefer remains in prison in Bali, serving an 18-year sentence.
In 2017, his cousin Robert Ryan Bibbs was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for his involvement in the murder conspiracy.
“I have served nearly ten years in prison. I felt that I had done my time, so I was gung-ho for trial. Now, after sitting for so long, I know what I have to do,” Mack said of her decision to accept a plea deal.
“I’m going to be a felon in America, and that is fine. I understand from [the US government’s] perspective that, if I don’t plead guilty and they didn’t indict me, I wouldn’t be a felon. I could become a police officer and work for the government … I could carry a firearm on the street,” she added.
Mack’s attorney Michael Leonard said it is impossible to predict what sentence Mack is likely to be dealt.
“The hope is that the judge will seriously consider the time she has already served and all the underlying circumstances of her life and her relationship with her mom,” Leonard said. “Any federal criminal case requires a constant reassessment of risk and reward. Balancing risk in terms of a potential sentence and trying to minimize the risk to yourself.”
In November 2021, Mack was deported from Indonesia with her daughter, Stella, and immediately arrested by the FBI at O’Hare Airport.
She was indicted on federal charges of conspiring to kill overseas.
Mack faces two counts of conspiring to kill her mother and a third count of corruptly destroying, mutilating, and concealing evidence “by forcing the body of Sheila A. Von Wiese into a suitcase.”
She has been in custody at Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center since her arrest.
Stella, who was born in the Bali prison and spent the first two years of her life there before moving to a foster home, was formally placed into the care of Chicago attorney Vanessa Favia upon her mother’s US arrest.
A protracted guardianship battle over the girl ensued, involving several friends and relatives.
Stella now lives in Colorado with Lisa Hellman, a teacher who is the niece of Sheila.
Andrea Dixon is an international journalist writing a book about Heather Mack. ondz@ymail.com
