Two years after she returned to the United States only to be locked up again for her role in her mother’s 2014 murder in Bali, Heather Mack asked a judge Monday to give her a sentence that could keep her imprisoned for another four years.
Mack’s defense attorneys filed a 37-page memo asking U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly to sentence her to eight years in prison — in addition to the seven years the 28-year-old spent behind bars in Indonesia.
Such a sentence could keep Mack locked up until around 2028, but that would mean she’d walk free in her early 30s.
Mack in June admitted she played a part in the murder of her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack. Mack pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill a U.S. national, setting the stage for a Jan. 17 sentencing hearing before Kennelly.
Despite a plea deal that capped her sentence at 28 years, Mack still faces a wide variety of outcomes when she is sentenced.
That’s because it’s not clear whether Kennelly will give her credit for the seven years she spent in an Indonesian prison, where her former boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, was also held. Prosecutors are due to make their own sentencing recommendation Wednesday.
The memo from Mack lawyer Michael Leonard claims that domestic violence played a major role in Mack’s life. Despite fond memories of her father, jazz composer James Mack, Leonard wrote that Mack “witnessed him as the aggressor during instances of domestic violence from as far back as she can recall.”
Following an injury on a cruise ship that left James Mack paralyzed from the waist down, Leonard wrote that “the dynamic just essentially reversed itself.”
“Ms. Mack recalls that her mother would often place her father’s wheelchair out of his reach, leaving him unnecessarily bedridden and confined to his room and to other spaces,” Leonard wrote.
Later, on a vacation in Greece, Leonard wrote that James Mack “died right in front of young Heather Mack.” Mack, who was 10 at the time, told her mother she wanted to return home, but von Wiese Mack chose to continue the trip, Leonard said.
Oak Park police said they were called 86 times in 10 years to the Mack home before von Wiese-Mack’s murder. The mother allegedly told police that Mack bit her repeatedly and punched her in an already broken ankle.
Meanwhile, Leonard claimed that Mack was also abused by Schaefer, including at the Indonesian prison where they were held.
Leonard denied that Mack received “celebrity status” at that prison, which he said was “infested with cockroaches, snakes and rats.”
Finally, Leonard wrote that Mack “painfully regrets the way that she treated her own mother, and of course regrets and is extraordinarily remorseful for her own pivotal role” in von Wiese-Mack’s murder.
Von Wiese-Mack’s body was found in a suitcase left outside the St. Regis Bali Resort on Aug. 12, 2014. Federal prosecutors have long said she was bludgeoned to death with the metal handle of a fruit stand so Mack, Schaefer, and Schaefer’s cousin could enrich themselves with the proceeds of von Wiese-Mack’s $1.5 million estate.
Mack’s plea agreement alleges that “Schaefer repeatedly beat [von Wiese-Mack] in the head and face” and that she “died shortly thereafter.”
Mack and Schaefer already faced a previous prosecution in Indonesia over von Wiese-Mack’s murder. Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison overseas for beating von Wiese-Mack to death, and Mack was sentenced to 10 years for helping. Mack gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Stella, during their 2015 trial.
Still, signs long pointed to a separate prosecution in the United States if the pair ever returned. For Mack, that day came in late 2021, after she served seven years and two months in Indonesia. She was deported with Stella and, as expected, an indictment was unsealed in U.S. District Court as their plane neared O’Hare Airport.
It charged Mack and Schaefer with conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Schaefer remains locked up overseas.
A maternal cousin of Mack’s was named guardian of Stella, now 8, last year.
