Inside The Brutal Murder of Sheila von Wiese

Heather Mack hired her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, to kill her mother, Sheila von Wiese, so she could inherit the fortune her father, James L. Mack, had left behind before his passing in 2006.

The Beginning

Heather was born in 1995 to James L. Mack and Sheila von Wiese. James was a notable jazz musician and composer who worked on more than 60 albums. He lost his life in 2006, he was on a vacation to Greece when he suffered a pulmonary embolism and died in his hotel room.

Before his death, in 2001 James was on a Royal Caribbean Mediterranean cruise when he sustained an injury on his foot. Due to medical negligence, the injury was complicated subsequently leading to him being partially paralyzed. He filed a lawsuit against the Royal Caribbean. This lawsuit was settled in 2011, and Sheila was awarded $340,667, and another $500,000 to the estate of James Mack.

The relationship between Heather and her mother, Sheila was always constrained, but things got even worse when she started dating Tommy Shaefer. According to police records, officers were called to the family home 86 times between January 2004 and June 2013. In some of the emergency responses, the police found out that Heather was very aggressive towards her mother.

The relationship between Heather and Schaeffer made Sheila uneasy and she wanted it to end. This made her sell the family house in Oak Park, Cook County, Illinois, and move with Heather to the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago.

Sheila's effort to break up the relationship her daughter had with Tommy was ineffective. She got pregnant twice and Sheila forced her to remove the pregnancies.

Just days before Sheila booked a flight for a trip to Bali, Indonesia, she suspected that Heather was pregnant again and had her do blood work to confirm the pregnancy. They were awaiting the result when they embarked on the journey to Bali.

Tragedy in Bali

Sheila and her daughter, Heather flew first class to Bali in August 2014. Unknown to Sheila, Heather had other plans. She had stolen her mother's credit card and booked a business-class flight to Bali for Schaeffer to come over.

Security footage from the St. Regis hotel, where Sheila and Heather were staying on the night of August 7, 2014, captured Sheila arguing with Schaefer in the lobby. Later, in the hotel room, Schaeffer fatally struck Sheila with a metal object. He and Heather then crammed Sheila Von Wiese Mack's corpse into a suitcase.

They loaded the suitcase containing the body into the trunk of a taxi outside the St Regis. The couple never came back, so a security guard checked the suitcase and saw blood. He told the taxi driver to drive to the police station.

Following the discovery of the body in the suitcase, authorities apprehended Mack and Schaeffer at a nearby motel. The couple claimed to the police that Sheila had been murdered by assailants, but they managed to flee the scene.

Trial and Sentencing

On August 20, it was established that Heather was pregnant. The pair were held in Bali where Schaefer confessed to killing Sheila and Heather admitted to helping him stuff the body in a suitcase.

They were charged with premeditated murder on January 14, 2015. Schaefer claimed he had attacked Sheila because she had threatened to kill their unborn child.

In April 2015, Heather Mack received a 10-year prison sentence, while Tommy Schaeffer was sentenced to 18 years. The judges cited leniency towards Heather because she had recently given birth to a baby.

Heather Mack was granted a total of 34 months of remission from her prison sentence, which included a six-month Independence Day remission granted by President Joko Widodo in August 2021. As a result, she was released from prison on October 29, 2021.

Upon her release, she wanted to keep staying in Indonesia as she considered it to be safer for her and her child. The Indonesian immigration authority countered this, and Heather was deported.

Heather was arrested when she entered the United States and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to kill a U.S. citizen. Earlier this year on January 17, 2024, she was sentenced to 26 years in prison.