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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. A terrified taxi driver races through the streets of Bali. The cab screeches to a halt and the driver runs into the police station. The words are rushing out of his mouth.
The police calm the man down, and he points them to the trunk of his cab. Police officers open the trunk, their eyes on a mysterious suitcase. As they open the suitcase, their hearts stop. It's a badly beaten, half-naked, dead lady stuffed inside a suitcase. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 120, The Heather Mack Story. ♪
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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You can also help support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this week's story. On the morning of August 12, 2014, travelers staying at the St. Regis Bali Resort in Nusa Dua, Bali were preparing to start their days. The five-star Marriott Resort attracts travelers from all over the world looking to stay in luxury.
The resort is centrally located and overlooks the most beautiful beaches in this part of Bali. The St. Regis Bali Resort offers its guests fancy rooms, private villas, high-class dining, and direct access to its white sandy beaches or saltwater lagoons. Reservations here can range anywhere from $500 a night all the way up to $7,000.
St. Regis guarantees its guests an exceptional stay regardless of the room type, making it a trendy spot in this part of Bali. August 14, 2014 started like any other day at the hotel. Guests arrived to begin their stays while other guests checked out.
At the front of the hotel, taxis lined up across the driveway, prepared to take guests to the airport or into town. A typical sight for most busy hotels that attract a lot of tourists. But for one particular taxi cab driver, this was anything but your typical morning.
While sitting outside the St. Regis, a young couple flagged him down for a ride. Once they had the driver's attention, they put a suitcase in the back trunk and two other bags in the back seat. They told the taxi cab driver that they would be right back. Then they turned around and went back inside the hotel.
The taxi driver thought maybe the couple simply forgot something, went back to their room to go get it, and then would come down in a few minutes. But the minutes grew into hours and still no sign of the couple. After about two hours of waiting, the driver became annoyed. What's taking them so long? It's a busy morning and a long line of hotel guests are waiting to get a taxi.
Not only do hotel guests have to wait, but he's also losing money by just waiting for this couple to come back. So growing more and more impatient with the situation, the taxi cab driver decided to walk into the hotel and try to find the couple. He saw them walk out of the hotel with the suitcases, so he figured that they were staying at the St. Regis.
The driver spoke with a couple of the hotel's employees and found out who the suitcases belonged to and the couple's room number. The hotel employees went to check on the couple, but they were gone. The room was completely empty. Even more annoyed by the situation, the taxi cab driver went back out to his taxi. As he stood by the side of his car trying to figure out what to do with the bags, he saw something unusual.
He thought he saw something coming out of the trunk. When he got closer to the trunk, he saw red liquid leaking from something inside. Blood. He popped the trunk and saw a suitcase leaking more blood.
The taxi driver quickly shut his trunk and ran to the driver's side door. He opened the door, got inside, and drove to the local police station. He had no idea what was inside the suitcase, and he didn't want to find out. So instead of opening it, he let the police do it instead.
As soon as he arrived at the police station, he told officers that he noticed blood leaking from the trunk while standing in front of the St. Regis. And then, when he opened the trunk, there was a bloody suitcase inside. He told the officers that a couple held him down in front of the St. Regis and put the suitcase in the trunk and then put two other bags in the back seat. After putting the bags inside his car, he said they turned around and went back inside the hotel.
The police officers tell the driver to go wait in an interview room at the station while they open his trunk. When they opened it, they saw a hard shell gray piece of luggage. Inside the bag, they made a horrific discovery. Inside was the body of a badly beaten adult female wrapped in a bloody bed sheet. She was left half naked with massive wounds to her head.
The victim was identified as 62-year-old Sheila Vaughn Weissmack. Now that name might sound familiar because Sheila was the former wife of the famous jazz musician and composer James L. Mack. James Mack was recognized for working with well-known jazz musicians and symphonies in Chicago, Illinois, as well as internationally.
Now, I say former wife because James Mack died in August 2009 while vacationing in Greece with his wife, Sheila, and their younger daughter. James was found dead inside their hotel room from a pulmonary embolism. He was only 76 years old. But that's not when James's health troubles began.
Before his sudden death in 2009, James Mack suffered a terrible foot injury while on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in the Mediterranean with Sheila. James didn't receive proper medical treatment because the ship was at sea. Unfortunately, the lack of appropriate medical treatment led to partial paralysis in James' foot.
After the trip, James and Sheila sued the Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship Company. In the lawsuit, they argued that because the ship's doctors failed to treat James properly, he was left with partial paralysis. The lawsuit went back and forth in the courts for the next 10 years. Before the case was settled, James died in 2009. He died without finding out the outcome of the lawsuit.
In 2011, a settlement between Royal Caribbean and now James' former wife, Sheila, was reached. Because James was dead, Sheila was entitled to the payment. After everything was said and done, and the legal fees were paid, Royal Caribbean was ordered to pay Sheila $340,000, and another $500,000 was awarded to James Mack's estate.
Five years after James' death, Sheila was now dead. But why was she found half-naked and badly beaten inside a Bali taxi cab? And who could have done this to her?
Bali forensic expert Ida Bagasputo-Elite told reporters for People magazine that they found many signs of a struggle across her body. According to Elite, Sheila had massive bruising to her arms and some on her fingers had been broken, which indicated to forensic experts that Sheila put up a fight against her attacker.
Besides the defensive wounds, she was also hit in the face and head multiple times with a blunt object. Simply put, Sheila's killer beat her to death. After discovering Sheila's body, the Bali police quickly got to work on identifying possible suspects. The brutality of the crime and the attempt to cover it up suggested to investigators that this was a personal killing. Sheila likely knew her killer.
Within hours, the Bali police got a massive lead in the case. They learned from the St. Regis Hotel that Sheila booked a room with her daughter, 18-year-old Heather Mack. Sheila and Heather booked the room for 10 nights while they vacationed together in Bali. The plan was for the mother-daughter duo to spend some quality time together. The Bali police wanted to speak with Heather as soon as possible.
They knew talking to her would be their best shot at figuring out who could have done this to Sheila. But tracking down Heather wasn't as easy as they thought. When the police looked for Heather in their room at the St. Regis, she was nowhere to be found. The room was left almost empty. But they learned something interesting from the hotel employees. The staff told the police that a young man who was also staying with them
At first, the police thought, hmm, that's a little strange. Sheila and Heather are the only two guests registered in the room, so who is this mystery guy? A manager for the St. Regis told the police that a second hotel room had been reserved with Sheila's credit card. With this new information, they decided to also search Sheila's cell phone and bank account records.
And that's when they made another intriguing discovery. They discovered that besides the second hotel room at the St. Regis, a business class airline ticket had recently been purchased using Sheila's credit card. It was a one-way ticket from Chicago to Bali. The ticket was in the name of 21-year-old Tommy Schaefer.
Bali police quickly find out that Tommy Schaefer is Heather's boyfriend. So now they're looking for two people, Heather and Tommy. Less than 48 hours after discovering Sheila's body stuffed inside a suitcase, the Bali police tracked down her daughter Heather and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer. They found the couple about a mile away from the St. Regis in a budget hotel near the international airport in Bali.
Hotel employees told the police that they were suspicious of the couple immediately after checking in without any luggage or bags. They alerted the authorities after Tommy requested a voucher from the front desk to use the internet. The hunt for the couple was broadcast across the local news and the hotel staff made the connection and positively identified Tommy. The hotel then immediately contacted the police.
The police immediately began questioning the couple about Sheila's murder. Heather and Tommy deny having anything to do with Sheila's murder. In fact, they had quite the story to tell. Heather and Tommy tell Bali police an armed gang attacked them along with Sheila.
A gang killed Sheila and stuffed her body in a suitcase. And the reason why they left the St. Regis was because they were scared that they would become next, so they ran away. Well, the Bali police didn't exactly buy into this story. They had already seen CCTV footage taken of Sheila and Heather arguing in the hotel's lobby the day before Sheila was found dead.
Although it was unclear what exactly they were arguing about. According to the police, the video clearly shows that they're arguing. And they also had eyewitnesses who told the police that they saw Heather and Tommy put the suitcases in the taxi at the St. Regis. So they were both taken into custody without any formal criminal charges being filed.
Under Indonesian law, they can be held up to 24 hours before being named as suspects in the murder. But it wouldn't take the police long to pursue murder charges. On August 15, 2014, three days after finding Sheila's body, Indonesian police formally designated Heather and Tommy as prisoners connected to the murder.
Under Indonesian law, this meant that they were under arrest and that it was up to the state prosecution's office to decide whether or not to charge them. While authorities took Heather to jail, she dropped a bombshell. She told the police that they should be careful with her because she was pregnant with Tommy's baby.
Once in custody, the authorities ordered a forensic evaluation for Heather. They wanted to find out if maybe Heather was somehow mentally unstable. It could explain why she murdered her mother in such a violent way. But all of the forensic tests came back normal. They didn't find any signs of mental illness or any insight into a possible motive.
When Heather was detained, she told the police that she was pregnant with an ectopic pregnancy, which might not show up on your typical over-the-counter pregnancy test. So authorities performed an ultrasound and urine test. Initially, the Bali police thought that maybe Heather was making up being pregnant so that they wouldn't take her to jail.
But both ultrasound and the urine tests confirmed that she was telling the truth. She was, in fact, pregnant with Tommy's baby. The story about an 18-year-old girl and her boyfriend killing her mother while on vacation and then stuffing her body in a suitcase quickly made international news.
Overnight, people worldwide knew the names Heather Mack and Tommy Schaefer, and they became known as Bollies Bonnie and Clyde after a possible motive for the murder surfaced.
The media began speculating that Heather and Tommy killed Sheila because she wouldn't let them be together. Or she wasn't happy about the pregnancy. So the only way to be together and to have this baby together was to kill Sheila. In the days following their designations as prisoners, the authorities started to uncover more and more about Sheila and her daughter Heather's relationship.
They found out that between January 2004 and June 2013, the police were called to the family's home in Chicago 86 times. Most of the calls were to break up fights between Sheila and Heather, but some of the calls were much more intense. Heather was accused of locking her mom in a closet for hours.
She was also accused of stealing thousands of dollars from her. According to Chicago police reports, Heather would often bite and hit her mom. In February 2011, the Oak Park police arrested Heather after pushing Sheila down the stairs so hard that Sheila's arm broke. Sheila told the police that after her daughter shoved her down the stairs, she then pulled the cords out of the phone to prevent her from calling 911.
But most of these calls didn't end up in arrest. Although Heather was verbally and physically abusive towards her mom, Sheila was almost always reluctant to file criminal charges against her daughter. Instead, she would often just call the police for her safety. But then when it came time to arrest Heather or press charges, Sheila almost always declined.
In one particular police report taken in late 2012, Sheila refused to let police officers take a photograph of bruising to her arm that she claimed came from Heather biting her. She told the officers she knew her daughter needed help, but didn't think that throwing her in jail was the right kind of help that she needed.
Local authorities in Chicago tried to convince Sheila to hospitalize Heather for her behavior. But Sheila wouldn't agree to that either. In many of the police reports, the officers wrote that no action was taken because, quote, both parties agreed to get along, end quote.
According to the forensic pathologist in Bali, Sheila died from asphyxiation after a blunt force blow to her nose that blocked her airway. The pathologist also noted that another injury was found on Sheila's back that smashed one of her vertebrae. He also found several injuries to her left arm that were consistent with trying to defend herself from the blows.
Sheila's body was flown back to the U.S. for a second autopsy at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The American forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy agreed with the findings made in Bali. Sheila died from asphyxiation after having her nose broken. She also had several significant injuries to her face and head alongside those defensive wounds on her arms.
The American forensic pathologist agreed with Bali's authorities that Sheila was likely killed sometime between 3 o'clock a.m. and 8 a.m. on Tuesday. This was right after the St. Regis Hotel security cameras captured Sheila and Heather arguing in the hotel lobby. So they believed that after they argued, they went back to the hotel room where she was killed.
In a public statement recorded by the Sydney Morning Herald, Bali police chief said, There is enough evidence, including CCTV footage, fingerprints, and items found at the murder scene, which all point to them as the perpetrators.
The CCTV footage referred to has two videos. The first video is taken from inside the hotel lobby and shows Heather and her mom arguing. Now, I know you're wondering, how can you tell if two people are arguing simply by watching a video without sound? Well, the images captured on the footage corroborates what eyewitnesses told the police.
A handful of hotel employees told authorities that they were in the hotel lobby at that time and that they overheard Sheila and Heather arguing at that exact moment when the video was taken.
Then the second CCTV footage the police referred to is the video taken outside of the hotel. Security cameras outside of the St. Regis captured Tommy and Heather loading the suitcases inside the taxi when Sheila's body was found. The video then captured the couple turning around and going back inside the hotel. This video completely aligns with what the taxi driver's story was from that morning.
Now, what about the fingerprints? The Bali police announced that Heather and Tommy's fingerprints were lifted from several key pieces of evidence, including the suitcase that contained Sheila's body. A bloody vase was found inside Sheila and Heather's hotel room, the room where the police believed the murder took place.
Fingerprints were also found on a bloody glass ashtray and a bloody fruit bowl in the room. So, the police believed that these were the murder weapons. After five months of investigating, Indonesian prosecutors formally charged Heather and Tommy with premeditated murder. Throughout their entire investigation, Heather and Tommy were in police custody and considered prisoners under Indonesian law.
Once someone is designated a prisoner, they're taken into custody for the police to finish their investigation. Once they complete the investigation, they turn it over to the prosecutor's office to decide whether or not to file charges. Now, the same thing happens here in the U.S., but this is a lot faster.
Under the Indonesian legal system, the prosecutors didn't have to bring formal charges against Heather and Tommy for five long months, all while they remained in police custody. Keep in mind that Heather was almost six months pregnant with a baby girl. If found guilty of Sheila's murder, they both faced the death penalty, which under Indonesian law meant a firing squad.
Less than 24 hours after formal murder charges were filed, Heather sued her uncle, William Weiss, to get access to her mom's $1.56 million estate to help pay for her defense in Bali. The lawsuit was filed in Cook County, Illinois, where the estate was founded. Three months before her death, Sheila set up a special trust fund for, quote, "'health, support, education, and maintenance for Heather.'"
Under the terms of the trust, in the event of Sheila's death, Heather's uncle, William Weiss, would be in charge of the trust until Heather turned 30. Once she turned 30, she could do whatever she wanted with the money.
But just because Heather was the trust fund beneficiary doesn't mean that she automatically gets access to the money. She was considered the prime suspect in her mother's murder. Even if you're the beneficiary to an estate, you don't get it if you murdered the person who set it up.
So when Sheila was murdered, her brother and Heather's uncle, William Weiss, said, no, I'm going to put this $1.56 million in a safe place. And let's let the trial play out and see what happens to Heather.
But the Cook County judge disagreed with the uncle. On January 16, 2015, this judge ruled that Heather should have access to the estate in order to pay for her defense. Heather's attorney also tried to persuade the court to allow Heather to use some of the money for medical and legal fees related to her unborn baby.
She asked the court for another $126,000 to cover these expenses. However, unlike the first request that allowed Heather to use the money for her own defense, the Cook County Court denied this request and said, no, the money can only be used for Heather's defense, not any expenses related to her unborn child.
The trials against Heather and Tommy started in January 2015, while Heather was almost seven months pregnant. They were tried separately in two different district courts in Bali. The trials were set to be heard in front of a three-judge panel, not a jury. While in custody, they had only seen each other briefly before being transferred to the custody of the prosecutors.
The prosecution argued that Heather and Tommy began plotting the murder way before setting foot in Bali. According to cell phone records, Heather sent Tommy a text message that asked him to hire a hitman to kill her mom for $50,000. The prosecution alleged that they wanted Sheila dead because she disapproved of their relationship.
At one point, Sheila demanded that her daughter break up with Tommy and she wasn't allowed to see him anymore. The original plan, according to prosecutors, was to hire a hitman to kill Sheila for $50,000 before the trip to Bali. But once that plan didn't pan out, they came up with a backup plan.
Sheila and Heather arrived in Bali on August 4th, 2014, and stayed in Kuta before going to the St. Regis Hotel, where they planned to stay until August 14th. Prosecutors allege that while on the trip, Heather used her mom's credit card without her knowledge and purchased a one-way business class ticket from Chicago to Bali for her boyfriend, Tommy.
She then used the same credit card again and booked a second room at the St. Regis Hotel for him. To Sheila's total surprise, Tommy arrived at the St. Regis on August 12th, and that's what sparked the fight in the hotel lobby.
According to witnesses who saw the fight, Sheila came down to the lobby around 3.30 a.m. in a complete panic because she couldn't find Heather. Heather suddenly appeared in the lobby standing side by side with Tommy. The manager of the St. Regis testified that Sheila became, quote, surprised and angry when she found out that Heather had used her credit card to book Tommy a room there.
Witnesses said Sheila refused to pay for the room and told Heather that she was going to pursue fraud charges for her credit card company if Tommy didn't pay for the room himself. According to the prosecution's narrative, this was the last time Sheila was last seen alive. This is August 12th. After fighting in the lobby, Heather and Tommy exchanged more text messages between each other about murdering Sheila.
like a plan to smother her with a pillow and then dump her body on the beach to make it look like a suicide. Sometime in the early morning hours of August 12th is when the prosecution said that they believed Heather and Tommy murdered Sheila. Prosecutors believed that Tommy was the actual killer, while Heather was the one who told him to do it.
They believed that after that argument, Heather approached Tommy about killing her mom. She said, this is it. We've talked about doing this. Let's kill her now. Tommy repeatedly struck Sheila over her head and face using that bloody fruit bowl and that bloody vase from inside the hotel room.
During the fight, she tried to fight back, which explains the defensive wounds to her hands and arms. But she couldn't fight back. Finally, after being struck so hard that her nose broke, she couldn't breathe.
Hotel security cameras captured both of them walking back and forth between their rooms and the hotel lobby. At one point, Tommy asked the front desk staff for a luggage cart and duct tape on one of the trips. After killing her, they wrapped her body in some of the hotel's bedsheets using duct tape. They then took her body and stuffed it inside of one of her suitcases.
Around 12 o'clock noon, they tried checking out of the hotel. Before they checked out, hotel employees asked if they needed any help with the luggage, to which they answered no. On the way out to the taxis, a front desk manager asked about the bloodstains on one of the larger suitcases. Heather told the manager that it was simply a makeup stain. They then put the suitcase containing Sheila's body in the taxi's trunk.
They also set two other bags in the back seat. Then before going back into the hotel, they repeatedly told the hotel employees, do not touch the bags until they came back. Hotel security cameras captured them exiting the hotel through a different door and then scaling a wall behind it, crossing a road, and then hailing a taxi across the street.
Heather and Tommy were then arrested the next day at a nearby budget hotel where they used their real names and Sheila's stolen credit card. When it came time for Heather and Tommy to tell their story, their version was slightly different.
Heather testified in court that her mom got angry when she saw her and Tommy walk into the hotel lobby. She said she told her mom that Tommy was in Bali to study, but she didn't believe her and she got angry. She asked her mom if they could go back to the room to talk about it. She didn't want to talk about it. Sheila wanted Tommy to leave.
Tommy testified that they went to the beach earlier that night to talk about how could they tell her mom that, well, that they were pregnant. They were expecting a baby together. They knew how she felt about Tommy, so they wanted to discuss what would be the best way to break the news. Cell phone records showed that they exchanged several text messages throughout the morning.
According to Tommy, he went to Sheila's room after Heather sent him a text that she was scared and she told him to, quote, bring something heavy. So believing that Heather was in trouble, he picked up a fruit bowl from his room and took it with him to Sheila and Heather's room. Both Heather and Tommy testified that Sheila, quote, flew into a rage after finding out about the pregnancy.
According to both of them, Sheila grabbed a knife from inside the hotel room and threatened to kill the unborn baby. They said she called Heather a prostitute and called Tommy a racial slur. Tommy, for reference, is black.
Heather and Tommy then said that Sheila put her arms around Tommy's neck and started choking him. They said she choked him for about 30 seconds. Then Tommy acted in self-defense. He said he took the fruit bowl he brought with him and struck Sheila over the head with it only to get her to stop choking him.
He said he hit her until he believed that she was unconscious, but not dead. He said he wasn't trying to kill her. He only wanted her to stop attacking him. Heather testified that she went to the bathroom while Tommy struck Sheila to go and hide. But she came out several minutes later to find Tommy trying to resuscitate her.
According to both of them, they did try to call the police as well as the U.S. consulate, but in a panic, they came up with the idea of putting Sheila's body in a suitcase. Once inside the suitcase, they planned to drive her body to the U.S. consulate themselves. However, hotel security cameras showed the couple dropping the suitcase in a taxi and then leaving the hotel.
A few weeks into testimony, the trials were suspended so that Heather could give birth. On March 17, 2015, Heather gave birth to a healthy baby girl in a hospital across the street from the jail. She was given the name Stella Schaefer. The trials resumed a few days later, only to be suspended again when Stella came down with jaundice. Two weeks later, the trials resumed.
This time seemed to give prosecutors some time to think about how they wanted to proceed. When the trials started again, prosecutors requested that the death penalty be taken off the table if the three-judge panel convicted them. I mentioned earlier in the episode that a death sentence in Bali would mean execution by firing squad.
Now, it's unclear why exactly the prosecution decided to ask the court for some leniency. Some people speculate that maybe it's because of their ages. Heather was only 18 years old at the time and Tommy was only 21. Or maybe it's because of the baby. Some people thought that maybe the prosecutors didn't want to execute a new mom and a new dad.
Whatever the reason for the prosecution's decision, they recommended a sentence of 15 years in prison for Heather and 18 years in prison for Tommy if they were convicted. Defense attorneys for Heather and Tommy also asked the court for leniency, citing that there was no evidence of premeditation and that they killed Sheila out of self-defense.
After weeks of testimony and two delays, the three-judge panel returned a verdict. Guilty. The three judges found them both guilty of murder and sentenced Heather to 10 years in prison and Tommy to 18 years. In their ruling, the judges agreed with the prosecutors that the murder was premeditated and deliberate.
However, they agreed with the defense that Heather was worthy of more leniency than Tommy because she had a new baby to care for, which in their words, quote, will be very difficult to provide if the defendant has to be imprisoned for too long, end quote. Heather's defense attorney filed an appeal in Bali within days of the verdict, saying,
She also filed an emergency motion back in Chicago seeking additional money from her mother's trust to help pay for legal expenses. The first time, the Cook County Court granted funds to help cover her criminal trial, which came out to be around $119,000, plus an additional couple thousand to cover Heather's food and medical expenses while in jail.
Now, her attorney asked the court for more money to help pay for the appeal. In the emergency motion, her attorney asked for an additional $200,000.
Heather's defense attorney told the court, quote, he will continue to request Mack in the appeal process only if his fee is paid quickly and in one payment, end quote. And the he in that quote is referring to the defense attorney.
But the Cook County judge overseeing the trust fund wasn't so quick to agree with the defense's motion. He told reporters that he, quote, wouldn't be blackmailed, end quote. Instead of automatically releasing the money, he wouldn't release it until there was a hearing to determine if she was entitled to the trust fund money now that she's been convicted of her mother's murder.
But of course, it's a different story about the money now because she's been convicted before when it was just a decision whether or not to grant her some money to help pay for her defense. Because before the conviction, she's still considered an innocent person. Now it's a completely different story. She's been convicted.
Now, under Illinois law, a person who intentionally and unjustifiably caused the death of another person cannot receive property as a result of the death of that person, which in this case is her mother. If you thought this story was over, think again.
Several months after the murder, in September 2015, police arrested Tommy's cousin, 24-year-old Robert Biggs in Chicago. Prosecutors argued that in the minutes following the murder, Tommy and his cousin Robert exchanged incriminating text messages. In the text, Tommy told Robert, quote, end quote.
For the next 10 minutes, they exchanged messages about the murder. According to prosecutors, Robert helped and even coached his cousin on how best to get away with the murder. They also argued that text messages showed Robert was aware that Heather had asked Tommy to go find that hitman to kill her mom for $50,000 a few weeks earlier.
Robert also advised and encouraged Tommy to go through with it. Chicago federal prosecutors charged him with one count of conspiracy to commit murder based on these text messages. Robert Biggs pleaded not guilty in federal court on October 29th, 2015.
But 14 months later, in December 2016, Robert accepted a deal with the prosecution where he agreed to plead guilty. In exchange, he received nine years in prison for his role in Sheila's murder.
Under Indonesian law, Heather's baby Stella was allowed to live with her in prison. So for the first two years of Stella's life on this earth, that's where she lived, in a Bali prison next to her mom.
But in March 2017, Heather turned Stella over to an Australian woman. This was a woman who befriended Heather while in prison shortly after she was arrested. Throughout the trial, this woman and her husband continued to support Heather. So in 2017, they agreed to take care of her daughter until she was released from prison. But that might not happen anytime soon.
After serving seven years of her sentence, Heather was released from prison in Bali in October 2021. But the moment she arrived back in the U.S., she was taken back into custody. Now 26 years old, Heather was arrested on conspiracy and obstruction charges related to her mother's murder. She's currently in a Chicago federal jail awaiting trial.
Tommy Schaefer is currently serving his 18-year prison sentence in Bali, and it's unclear when he will be released. Six-year-old Stella is still in the custody of that Australian woman who took her in at two years old. In 2018, a Chicago court made its final deposition on the trust fund money that Sheila initially set up for Heather.
Under this 2018 ruling, Stella is the only one entitled to the money, not Heather Mack. In August 2014, Heather and her boyfriend Tommy killed their mother so that they could be together. They thought they would get away with it by stuffing her body in a suitcase and running off. Instead, incriminating fingerprints belonging to Heather and Tommy were found on the suitcase and the murder weapon.
You can lie, but forensics always tells the truth. Heather and Tommy's love created a gruesome scene. An image of a dead mother stuffed in a suitcase left never to be found. What kind of love is this? This isn't love, at least not my kind. It's pure evil greed. The type of greedy-fueled murder that should only live in movies and not in real life.
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Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
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