American who spent 11 years in prison for notorious “suitcase murder” in Bali is freed and deported by Indonesia

Indonesia freed and deported an American man Tuesday after he spent 11 years in prison for the premeditated murder of his then-girlfriend’s mother on the tourist island of Bali.

Tommy Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the 2014 murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, the mother of Heather Mack, during a luxury vacation in a case also known as the Bali “suitcase murder.”

Schaefer was deported back to the United States from Bali International Airport on Tuesday evening after serving his sentence and receiving a number of remissions for good behavior, said Felucia Sengky Ratna, head of the Bali Regional Office of the Directorate General of Immigration, in a statement.

The badly battered body of the 62-year-old von Wiese-Mack, a wealthy Chicago socialite, was found inside the trunk of a taxi parked at the upscale St. Regis Bali Resort in August 2014.

Heather Mack, who was almost 19 and a few weeks pregnant at the time of the killing, and her then-21-year-old boyfriend, Schaefer, were arrested on the island a day after the body was found.

Mack served seven years of a 10-year prison sentence in Bali for helping to kill her mother and was deported in October 2021.

She was also sentenced to 26 years in prison in Chicago in January 2024, after she pleaded guilty to helping kill her mother and stuffing the body in a suitcase during their vacation, CBS News Chicago reported.

“This was a brutal and premeditated crime,” U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly said in handing down the sentence.  

Before she was sentenced, Mack apologized for killing her mother, saying there was “No excuse for trying to harm her.”

While her own defense attorneys had argued Mack suffered emotional and physical abuse from her mother for years before the murder, she said, “It does not matter what my relationship was with my mother.”

Prosecutors argued that Mack showed little remorse for killing her mother, and has even sought to profit from her crime by trying to sell her story to the media.

“Mack’s income potential is quite high. The story of her crime is world famous, and she has likely already 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.