It was after 3:30 in the morning when Sheila von Wiese-Mack appeared in the lobby of the five-star Bali resort in a panic, frantic because her teenage daughter was missing.
As the security staff prepared to search the beachfront resort, the girl suddenly appeared in the lobby, sparking an argument between the mother and daughter that a manager said intensified when von Wiese-Mack learned a second room had been reserved with her credit card.
The manager said she was “surprised and became angry” upon learning her daughter’s boyfriend checked in less than three hours earlier. Von Wiese-Mack refused to pay for his room and, before the two walked back to their suite, another hotel employee said he heard the mother tell her daughter she planned to pursue credit card fraud charges when they returned home to Chicago.
That Aug. 12 morning was the last time Sheila von Wiese-Mack was seen in public alive.
The encounter, as well as the grisly discovery hours later of her brutalized body in a blood-smeared suitcase, is among many haunting details chronicled in a 200-plus-page document recently made public in Cook County court. The filing is a certified English translation of the written findings of a three-judge panel that oversaw Indonesian criminal trial proceedings in the case.
The panel returned guilty verdicts against the daughter and her boyfriend in April.
Heather Mack, 19, is serving a 10-year prison term for “deliberately aiding in the commission of a premeditated murder,” according to the translated Denpasar District Court record. Her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, 21, of Oak Park, received an 18-year sentence. He admitted repeatedly striking the 62-year-old victim on her face with the steel handle of a fruit bowl but claimed it was in self-defense after she began choking him.
The report, titled “Directory of the Decision of the High Court of the Republic of Indonesia,” includes detailed summaries of testimony from nearly two dozen witnesses, including the two defendants, as well as legal documents used to charge the couple.
Police arrested them that next morning at a nearby budget motel, where they had checked in using their real names and the slain woman’s credit card, after staff recognized them from a newspaper article, according to the public record.
The lengthy document does not, though, contain verbatim witness testimonies or provide copies of the actual text messages prosecutors allege the young couple traded while planning von Wiese-Mack’s death.
For example, according to authorities, Mack in one text message asked Schaefer to find a hit man for $50,000 to kill her mother. Later, in the final hours of the mother’s life, the couple traded more texts in which they plotted to smother her with a pillow and make her death appear as if she committed suicide on the beach, prosecutors alleged.
Still, the translation offers the most complete timeline of a crime that for nearly a year has garnered international intrigue.
It also confirms what the victim’s family and friends have long said — that von Wiese-Mack had no clue Schaefer would arrive in Bali during a vacation that was supposed to mark a fresh start for the mother and daughter.
Police in their former hometown of Oak Park reported dozens of domestic disturbances in the years leading up to the paradise vacation. Just months earlier, however, von Wiese-Mack named her only child the sole beneficiary of a $1.56 million trust. The woman tapped her brother, William, as trustee until her daughter’s 30th birthday.
Lawyers for William Wiese sought an English translation of the overseas proceedings as they prepare for a possible hearing in Cook County about whether Mack is entitled to the trust. An Illinois law known as the slayer statute bars a person who is guilty of intentionally and unjustifiably causing the death of another person from profiting from their crime.
The young couple’s daughter, Stella, born nearly four months ago during the trial, is next in line for the money.
According to the transcript, Schaefer arrived at the resort after midnight the morning of the murder and stayed in a hotel room Mack said she booked for him with her mother’s credit card. Mack testified that her mother gave her permission and that she booked the room on her iPhone because the hotel’s Internet connection was too slow.
Her testimony belied that offered by hotel staff, who quoted von Wiese-Mack’s reaction in the lobby after they showed her a photocopy of Schaefer’s passport picture and identified him as the person in the second room.
“That thief Tommy Schaefer is here,” she said, surprised, then asked how he planned to pay for the luxury room.
Mack told her mother he was in Bali to study and, when the mother grew more upset, her daughter repeatedly asked if they could go back to their suite to talk about it further. Their encounter in the resort lobby came after Mack returned from a walk on the beach with Schaefer, the couple testified.
While at the beach, Schaefer said the two discussed how they would tell his girlfriend’s mother she was pregnant. The two later traded several texts throughout the morning after they both returned to their rooms. Schaefer said he went to the women’s room after 8 a.m. at Mack’s request because she was afraid and asked him to bring “something heavy.” Schaefer said he believed Mack “was in danger” and brought a decorative glass fruit basket for protection.
The young couple testified that von Wiese-Mack flew into rage upon learning of the pregnancy and tried to find a knife in the suite to kill the unborn baby, court documents said. They said she called Mack a “prostitute” and Schaefer, who is black, a racial slur. Schaefer then beat her to death, he testified.
But in emails von Wiese-Mack wrote to friends before and during the Bali trip, the mother said she was already aware of Mack’s pregnancy. And the defendants’ portrayal of her stands in contrast to the woman described in police reports in Chicago and Oak Park who repeatedly declined to pursue charges and never fought back during altercations with her daughter, including one that left the older woman with a broken arm.
Heather Mack also testified that she hid in the bathroom, then emerged minutes later as Schaefer tried to resuscitate her mother. The defendants said they tried to call police and the U.S. Consulate and, in a panic, came up with the plan to transport the body in a suitcase to the consulate.
Hotel surveillance footage shows the couple moving back and forth between their rooms and the lobby, where Mack asked for duct tape and retrieved a luggage cart, according to staff testimony. It was around noon that they attempted to leave the hotel, refusing staff assistance to load their luggage into a taxi, when a manager at the reception desk said she stopped them to inquire about their hotel bill.
The woman said the largest suitcase, wrapped in a hotel sheet with duct tape helping to keep it closed, appeared to be spotted with blood. When she inquired, the woman testified, Mack said it was a makeup stain.
“Does this mean we can’t go?” Mack asked when stopped, according to the manager. The young couple took three smaller suitcases out of the taxi and said they’d return for the larger one, warning staff not to touch it while they were gone. They never returned, and staff testified that surveillance cameras captured the couple scaling a wall, crossing a road and hailing another taxi.
The three-judge panel found that Mack’s crime was deliberate and premeditated. Still, the panel wrote, Mack is worthy of leniency given her remorse and need to care for her baby, which “will be very difficult to provide if the defendant has to be imprisoned for too long.”
Lawyers in the trust case declined to comment on the importance of the transcript. They return to Cook County court in August. Meanwhile, Mack’s baby remains with her in prison, but one of her lawyers recently said she may let a Bali woman who is helping her with baby supplies and other aid to temporarily raise the child until Mack is freed.
The transcribed pages also contain a log of the physical evidence police gathered in their investigation. Included in the inventory was a blood-covered white Victoria’s Secret shirt, size small, with the word “Angel” on the front.
Mack testified that the blood got on her shirt when she gave her slain mother a final hug.
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