Heather Mack is scheduled to be sentenced in a federal courtroom Wednesday, marking the end of a sensational legal saga that began nearly a decade ago when she helped murder her mother and stuff her body in a suitcase at a Bali resort.
Mack, 28, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to murder a U.S. citizen on foreign soil, faces a wide range of potential punishments for the August 2014 slaying of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, a gruesome crime that sparked international media attention and led police on a trail back to suburban Chicago.
Mack’s attorneys have asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly for the minimum term of 15 years in prison, which could see her released in as little as four years if she’s given credit for the time she’s already served in Indonesia and at the federal jail in Chicago.
Prosecutors, though, have asked for 28 years in prison for Mack, writing in a filing last week that she has shown little remorse and has continued to try to capitalize on her own infamy through tell-all book and entertainment deals. Such as sentence would keep Mack, originally from Oak Park, locked up for about 16 more years.
In addition, prosecutors have asked for the maximum $250,000 fine and about $260,000 in restitution to her mother’s estate.
While Mack is eligible for a life sentence, her written plea agreement with prosecutors includes a provision saying she could not withdraw her plea if Kennelly agrees to sentence her to 28 years in prison or less. Kennelly is not obligated to go along with that; if he goes above a 28-year sentence, Mack could withdraw her guilty plea.
Mack was convicted in Indonesia in 2015 of helping her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer with the murder and served about seven years in prison, only to be arrested by the FBI when she landed at O’Hare International Airport in 2021 on a federal indictment that had been filed under seal while she was overseas.
Also charged with the same counts was Schaefer, who is still in prison in Bali. Mack’s plea agreement does not include any requirement for her to cooperate and testify against Schaefer.
Mack’s sentencing will likely finally bring her legal saga to an end. Her attorneys have said she has changed dramatically in the past 10 years and intends to make her remorse “clear” in her own words at the hearing Wednesday.
[ The timeline of the Heather Mack case ]
Meanwhile, Mack’s self-described godmother, Diana Roque Ellis, wrote a letter to Kennelly posted on the court docket over the weekend in which she pleaded for leniency, saying she’s “seen no trace of this horrifically diabolical girl that Sheila had endlessly detailed throughout the years” and who has been demonized by the media.
“What I have come to know is a surprisingly rational, even keeled, fair-minded, well spoken, intelligent, lovely young woman who is (surprisingly again) essentially cheerful, good-natured, sympathetic and kind,” Ellis wrote.
Ellis also called out her slain friend, saying the abusive relationship between von Wiese-Mack and her daughter went both ways.
“It was mystifying as to how Sheila was always lovely, gracious and kind to me and her other friends and yet so unremittingly caustic to Heather,” Ellis wrote. “There would be brief interludes of ‘lovey-dovey‘ peace only to be followed by more fierce rancor and hurled invectives. Unfortunately, I recognized early on that neither Heather nor Sheila were both getting out of this downward spiral of crazy behavior alive.”
In their filing last week, prosecutors noted…
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