Body in a suitcase, Bonnie and Clyde fantasy and baby born in Bali prison:

t’s a chilling case that has spanned two different continents and rumbled on for the best part of eight years.

Now finally, some sort of conclusion has been reached as Chicago woman Heather Mack is about to be sentenced over her part in her mother’s heinous 2014 murder.

Infamously dubbed the “Suitcase killer”, Mack, then 18 and pregnant, and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, then 21, bludgeoned her socialite mother Sheila von Weise-Mack, 62, to death and stuffed her body in a suitcase while on vacation at a luxury 5-star resort in Bali.

After serving seven years in an Indonesian jail for murder, Mack was extradited to the US where she was arrested on arrival and hit with fresh charges of conspiracy to murder in November 2021.

After years of fighting for her freedom – and blaming her mother for her own senseless killing – Mack, now 27, pleaded guilty in federal court in Illinois in June to one count of conspiracy to kill a US national.

“I plead guilty, your honor,” she told US District Judge Matthew Kelley.

Under the terms of the agreement, prosecutors recommend she faces a maximum sentence of 28 years in prison, with consideration given to the time she’s already served in Indonesian prison.

However, Judge Kelley warned that he could ignore the sentencing guidelines.

“I have to make up my own mind,” he said.

Now, Mack is about to learn her fate at her sentencing on 17 January.

Speaking to The New York Post days before her change in plea, Mack said that she believed she had served her time in Indonesian prison and didn’t think she should be facing charges in the US.“I have served nearly 10 years in prison. I felt that I had done my time, so I was gung-ho for trial,” she said in June.

“Now, after sitting for so long, I know what I have to do. 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.”

She added: “I could become a police officer and work for the government… I could carry a firearm on the street.”

As Mack looks towards her future beyond her mother’s shocking murder, it’s still very much a case that shocks and horrifies America – a case involving a Bonnie and Clyde fantasy, a mother’s body stuffed in a suitcase and a baby born behind bars.

A deadly vacation

It was August 2014 when wealthy socialite von Wiese-Mack took her troubled 18-year-old daughter on vacation to the 5-star St. Regis hotel in Bali.

Mack was the daughter of socialite von Wiese-Mack and famed musician James L Mack and had a privileged upbringing in the Oak Park suburb of Chicago.

But, following Mack’s 2006 death, von Wiese-Mack called the police to their home dozens of times due to incidents of domestic violence.

Oak Park Police records reveal at least 35 interactions with officers since 2008 including accusations that Mack broke her mother’s arm, bit and punched her.

In 2013 – just over one year before her murder – von Wiese-Mack confided in a detective that she feared Mack was going to kill her.

But friends later said, despite being fearful of what her daughter might do, she decided to take her on holiday with her in the summer of 2014.

After they arrived at the luxury resort, Mack used her mother’s credit card to buy a $12,000 business-class ticket for Schaefer to join them and a single night’s stay at the hotel.

In the early hours of the morning on 12 August 2014 – hours after Schaefer arrived – Mack, von Wiese-Mack and Schaefer were captured on hotel surveillance footage arguing in the lobby of the hotel.