“Suitcase Killer” Heather Mack was handed a 26-year sentence behind bars in Chicago court Wednesday — nearly a decade after she helped bludgeon her mother to death during a luxury vacation in Bali.
US District Judge Matthew Kennelly sentenced Mack, 28, for conspiring to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack with her then-boyfriend in 2014 to get her hands on a $1.5 million trust fund.
She had already served seven years in Indonesia after being convicted in 2015 of covering her mother’s mouth to muffle her cries while Tommy Schaefer beat Wiese-Mack with a fruit bowl in a hotel room.
Mack was 18 and pregnant with Schaefer’s baby at the time.
Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, orange slip-on shoes and glasses, Mack appeared expressionless as her family delivered emotional victim impact statements and asked that she be slapped with the maximum sentence, saying Mack has never shown remorse.
She only broke down when it was her turn to speak, telling her family she accepted responsibility for the heinous crime.
“It breaks my heart hearing you cry,” she told Debbi Curran, her aunt and Wiese-Mack’s sister, through tears.
“There’s no excuse for trying to harm her. I miss and love my mother.”
Mack’s attorney estimates that she will be imprisoned for roughly 20 years, accounting for the credit she was given for the two-plus years she spent in custody in Chicago after completing her jail term in Indonesia.
Federal prosecutors had recommended a 28-year prison sentence, while Mack’s lawyers sought a 15-year term and credit for her seven years of time served.
“This was a brutal, premeditated crime,” Kennelly said before sentencing Mack. He also ordered her to pay $262,708 in restitution and a $50,000 fine.
“Ms. Von Wiese could have been the worst parent in the history of humanity. She didn’t deserve to die.”
Mack pleaded guilty in a federal court in June for her role in her mother’s cold-blooded murder during a luxury vacation to Bali in 2014.
Mack pleaded guilty in June to a single count of conspiracy to kill a US national.
In August 2014, Mack, who was 18 at the time and pregnant, was vacationing with then-boyfriend Schaefer and her socialite mother at Bali’s luxury St. Regis resort when the pair attacked Wiese-Mack as part of a twisted plot months in the making to inherit the $1.5 million trust fund, prosecutors said.
The couple then stuffed the woman’s body into a tiny suitcase and placed it in the trunk of a taxi.
After the cabbie called the police, Mack and Schaefer were arrested a few miles away.
Mack, who lived with her mother in suburban Chicago’s Oak Park, was sentenced to 10 years for being an accessory to murder but was released early for good behavior in 2021 and swiftly deported to the US.
Her 9-year-old daughter, Stella, was born in an Indonesian jail but is now in the custody of a relative.
Schaefer was convicted of murder and he is serving an 18-year sentence in Indonesia. He is charged in the same US indictment.
His mother, Kia Walker, was in the courtroom Wednesday for Mack’s sentencing.
With Post wires