Former Oak Park resident Heather Mack was sentenced Wednesday to 26 years in federal prison for conspiring to kill her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack.
The sentence, which came down Wednesday in Chicago, follows her lawyers asking for a minimum sentence of 15 years and federal prosecutors calling for 28 years in a plea agreement.
Mack will not get credit for the seven years she spent in prison in Indonesia, according to CBS News. She was deported to the United States from Indonesia in 2021 and has since been held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago. She will receive credit for two years spent in custody awaiting trial, according to ABC News.
Mack pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill her mother and was eligible for up to life in prison during sentencing, according to CBS News. But if she had been sentenced more than 28 years, she could have withdrawn her plea.
Mack’s defense attorneys argued for the lower sentence not only as a way to save public resources, but also to avoid further strain on Mack’s relationship with her eight-year-old daughter, Stella, according to CBS News.
Lisa Hellmann, Stella’s court-appointed legal guardian, however, said Stella does not want Mack to raise her.
In the plea, she admitted to plotting the beating murder with her former boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer. The couple concealed von Wiese-Mack’s body in a suitcase and placed it in the trunk of a taxi, later running off, according to CBS News.
The murder, which took place in 2014 in Bali, was thought to have been a way for Mack and Schaefer to gain access to the proceeds of von Wiese-Mack’s $1.5 million estate. Schaefer is still serving an 18-year sentence in Indonesia.
Mack’s uncle, Bill Wiese, said in a victim impact statement during Mack’s sentencing that he would want Mack to spend the rest of her life in prison, according to CBS News. He said she has never shown remorse for her actions.
Mack’s attorneys said her mother abused her, according to CBS News, but also acknowledge Mack’s role in that abusive relationship. Wiese also said the cycle of alleged abuse between Mack and her mother was instigated by Mack, according to CBS News.
One of Mack’s lawyers, Michael Leonard, also said Mack witnessed her father as an aggressor of domestic violence, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. After his death, Mack’s mother refused to return home immediately from her and Mack’s vacation in Greece, according to the article.
The victim’s sister, Debbi Curran, also provided a statement which was read in court during the sentencing Wednesday, according to CBS News. Curran said she is haunted by the murder, imagining it when she sees a suitcase.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Rangoussis said von Wiese-Mack died a painful death, according to CBS News, and that stuffing her body in a suitcase would have been “no easy task.”
