Heather Mack was sentenced to 26 years in federal prison Wednesday for the murder of her mother during a trip to Bali nearly 10 years ago.

Before she was sentenced, Mack took the stand and told U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly that she was “responsible for my decisions.”

“I made my decision,” said Mack, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit. “I can’t sit here and blame them for those decisions.”

Mack said she still misses and still loves her mother. “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.”

The sentence comes almost a decade after the world learned in August 2014 that the body of 62-year-old Oak Park socialite Sheila von Wiese-Mack had been found stuffed inside a suitcase on the exotic island of Bali — and that her 18-year-old daughter faced a potential firing squad for her murder.

What followed was a yearslong international legal drama involving an aggressive FBI investigation, civil litigation that reached from the Daley Center to Indonesia, a bizarre YouTube confession, a trial interrupted by the birth of Mack’s child, and questions about whether Mack would ever face consequences for her crime in the United States.

Those questions continued until November 2021, when a plane carrying Mack and her child neared O’Hare International Airport and a secret 2017 indictment against Mack and her former boyfriend Tommy Schaefer was finally unsealed.

In the end, Mack pleaded guilty in June to conspiring to kill a U.S. national rather than face a second trial. Now, her sentencing offers potential closure for von Wiese-Mack’s family, for Mack and for her child.

However, it is also a sign of things to come for Schaefer, who remains locked up overseas for von Wiese-Mack’s murder.

Before handing down Mack’s sentence, Kennelly heard from von Wiese-Mack’s brother, Bill Wiese. He spoke for about 20 minutes, calling Mack a “monster” and a “master manipulator” who is “so accustomed to lying that she doesn’t even know what is true.”

“The world knows justice was not done in Indonesia and is watching now,” Bill Wiese told the judge. “I pray that this court finally gives Sheila the justice that she so rightly deserves.”

Mack, wearing glasses and an orange jail jumpsuit, betrayed no reaction from her seat at the defense table.

The bizarre and gruesome circumstances of von Wiese-Mack’s killing attracted tabloid-style coverage around the world, with some outlets dubbing von Wiese-Mack’s death the “Bali Suitcase Murder.” Mack’s exploits as a young, attractive and notorious killer in an Indonesian jail fueled the coverage further.

Still, the story began in Chicago, where Mack grew up as the child of von Wiese-Mack and James Mack, a well-regarded jazz and classical music composer. Mack adored her father by all accounts, and has fond memories of spending time with him as a young child.

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A bizarre accident on a cruise ship later rendered James Mack paralyzed below the waist. Mack’s defense attorneys recounted last week how he died right in front of his 10-year-old daughter during a family vacation to Greece.

Mack has, at times, blamed her mother for her father’s death, including in a YouTube video in which Mack took responsibility for her mother’s murder. Regardless, Mack and her mother developed an unquestionably contentious — and violent — relationship. Oak Park police said they were called 86 times in 10 years to the Mack home before von Wiese-Mack’s killing. 

Federal prosecutors recently recounted how Mack allegedly bit her mother, shoved her to the ground so hard that von Wiese-Mack broke her arm, and at one point went around their home breaking plates and picture frames over household chores.

Meanwhile, as early as February 2014, prosecutors allege Mack had broached the idea of killing her mother with her boyfriend, Schaefer.

“So that b---- heather is crazy huh,” Schaefer wrote in a Facebook chat that month. He added, “she asked me to find someone to kill her mom for 50k.”

The feds say Mack ultimately enlisted Schaefer — and pulled his cousin, Robert Bibbs, into the conspiracy — secretly booking a $12,000 plane ticket for Schaefer so he could rendezvous with Mack while she vacationed with her mother in Bali in August 2014.

Von Wiese-Mack planned the trip to the exotic island in an effort to repair the fractured relationship with her daughter. Meanwhile, Schaefer and Bibbs thought they were in for a windfall through von Wiese-Mack’s estate.

Over the course of nearly 40 minutes on the morning of Aug. 12, 2014, prosecutors say Mack and Schaefer exchanged tense, excited text messages as they prepared to murder von Wiese-Mack. They allegedly used the phrase “saying hi” as code for the killing, and they referred to each other as Bonnie and Clyde.

“I promise you heather; All u have to do g; Is get her weak,” Schaefer wrote. “… Ur Bonnie; Do it.” 

“Too dangerous to not do it; G you have to come in; Yoy have to be in here; Yes Tommy,” Mack told him.

“I got u baby; I got u,” Schaefer promised. 

“Okay just knock her out; Itll be so much easier,” Mack told him. 

Soon after, prosecutors say von Wiese-Mack “was brutally beaten after being taken by surprise as she lay in her hotel bed.” Mack’s plea agreement alleges that Schaefer “repeatedly beat Von Wiese in the head and face” and that she “died shortly thereafter.”

Prosecutors also allege that Mack “covered Von Wiese’s mouth during the murder,” but Mack did not admit to it when she pleaded guilty.

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Bibbs wound up getting nine years in prison for coaching and encouraging the couple. He is on track for release in February 2025, records show.

Mack did admit that she and Schaefer stuffed her mother’s body into a suitcase, which they then wheeled to the hotel lobby and placed in the trunk of a taxi. Then they fled, checking into a different hotel and trying to tell people that an armed gang had kidnapped her mother and robbed them. 

The story got them nowhere. The couple faced trial in Indonesia in 2015. Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison for beating von Wiese-Mack to death, and Mack was sentenced to 10 years for helping. Mack gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Stella, during their trial, and she was allowed to raise her in prison until the age of 2.

Stella was then cared for by a woman who befriended Mack in Indonesia, Oshar Suartama. But late in 2021, Mack and Stella were deported together back to the United States after Mack finished serving seven years and two months of her sentence in Indonesia.

Mack was arrested at O’Hare Airport, and Stella was placed in the custody of an attorney who had represented Mack in Chicago. A bitter battle for custody of Stella then ensued, in which allegations swirled that people had struck media deals that would exploit the girl.

Mack and a close family friend, Diana Roque Ellis, were accused of reaching such a deal with a media company in August 2021. Mack testified in November 2022 that they had previously discussed it, but Mack said she was “no longer involved in a contract, and neither is Diana.”

Mack at times asked that Stella be placed with Ellis, Suartama, or even with Schaefer’s mother while Mack was behind bars in Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. But a Cook County judge ultimately placed Stella, now 8, in the custody of a maternal cousin of Mack’s — the daughter of von Wiese-Mack’s sister.

Ahead of Mack’s sentencing, prosecutors sought a $250,000 fine for Mack in addition to prison time. They argued that Mack still stood to profit from media deals as a “direct result of Mack’s conspiracy to murder her mother.”

They sought $262,708 in restitution for von Wiese-Mack’s estate. Its sole beneficiary, they pointed out, is Stella.

The feds argued that “the money generated as a result of this heinous crime” should go to the estate, and ultimately to help Mack’s daughter.

And it should not, they said, go to Mack.