In the middle of a luxury vacation in Bali, Heather Mack and her boyfriend killed her mother and stuffed her into a suitcase.
The Indonesian police revealed the killing. Mack, who was 18 and pregnant, was arrested.
“This was a brutal and premeditated crime,” Judge Matthew Keneally said before sentencing the 29-year-old woman to 26 years in prison in a Chicago courtroom on Wednesday.
In June, Heather Mack admitted that she and her then-boyfriend planned to kill her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack.
The goal was to access more than $1.5 million that the mother had in a fund. AP writes. This corresponds to approximately NOK 15.8 million.
Beaten to death
According to US authorities, the killing had been planned for several months.
It happened while Mac and his mother were on vacation. She wrote: She secretly booked a ticket to Bali for her boyfriend using her mother's credit card CBS. At night, while the mother was sleeping, she allegedly smuggled him into a hotel room in a Bali resort.
Prosecutors believe Mack covered her mother's mouth while her boyfriend repeatedly hit her with the metal handle of a fruit bowl. They are said to have put the mother's body in a bag and placed it in the trunk of a taxi.
Apologize
Heather Mack has already served several years on this case. In 2015, she was sentenced to ten years in prison in Indonesia, before being extradited to the United States in 2021.
Her then-six-year-old daughter was with her when she was arrested at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. She is now being raised by another relative, CBS wrote.
Mack's then-boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, was sentenced to 18 years in prison and remains in Indonesia.
The mother's siblings Bill Weese and Debbie Curran were present in court.
– My heart breaks when I hear you crying. There is no excuse for trying to hurt her. “I miss and love my mother,” Heather Mack told her aunt Debbie before her sentencing.
Uncle Bill asked the judge to sentence her to life in prison.
– If it were up to me, Heather would spend the rest of her life behind bars, he said in court.
Mack's defenders claimed that she was physically and psychologically abused by her mother for several years.
– The authorities want us to believe that Heather Mack was just growing up into a teenager who suddenly, at the age of 15-16, started attacking her mother. Doesn't it seem extraordinary to people, that it could happen without any provocation at all? One of them, Jeffrey Steinback, said in court.
Aunt Debbie Curran says according to CBS that her sister and daughter struggled with their relationship for several years.
She said in court that she saw the trip to Bali as an opportunity to get a fresh start.
“Coffee trailblazer. Certified pop culture lover. Infuriatingly humble gamer.”
