An American who spent 11 years in prison for the infamous “suitcase murder” in Bali has been released and deported by Indonesia.
Indonesia freed and deported an American man on Tuesday after spending 11 years in prison planned murder of his girlfriend’s mother at the time on the tourist island of Bali.
Tommy Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison for killing Sheila von Wiese-Mack, Heather Mack’s mother, in 2014 while on a luxury vacation in a case known as They fear “killing the suitcase.”
Schaefer was deported to the United States from Bali International Airport on Tuesday evening after serving his sentence and receiving a good-conduct waiver, Felucia Sengky Ratna, head of the Bali Regional Office of the Directorate General of Immigration, said in a statement.
Schaefer will appear in federal court in Chicago on Thursday to be arraigned, CBS News Chicago reports. A 2017 indictment filed in 2021 charged Schaefer and Mack with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country, conspiracy to commit the murder of a US alien, and obstruction.
The badly beaten body of 62-year-old von Wiese-Mack, a Chicago tycoon, was found inside the trunk of a taxi parked in upscale St. Regis Bali Resort in August 2014.
Heather Mack, who was nearly 19 and several weeks pregnant at the time of the murder, and her 21-year-old boyfriend, Schaefer, were arrested on the island a day after the body was found.
AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati, File
Mack served seven years of a 10-year sentence in a Bali prison for helping to kill his mother and was deported in October 2021.
He was like that too he was sentenced to 26 years in prison in Chicago in January 2024, after pleading guilty to helping kill his mother and packing the body in a suitcase while they were visiting, reports CBS News Chicago.
“This was a brutal and organized crime,” US District Judge Matthew Kennelly said in sentencing.
Before he was sentenced, Mack apologized for killing his mother, saying “There is no excuse for trying to hurt her.”
Although his defense attorneys argued that Mack was emotionally and physically abused for years before his murder, he said, “It didn’t matter what my relationship was with my mother.”
Prosecutors argue that Mack has shown little remorse for killing his mother, and has even sought to profit from his crime by trying to sell his story to the media.
“The chances of Mack getting money are very high. The story of his crime is world famous, and he may have entered into a media contract that is expected to earn Mack a significant amount of money. The money generated as a result of this heinous crime should go to the victim’s estate rather than the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing recommendation.
