[ad_1]
A Chicago judge declined to ease bond conditions and release Heather Mack, who is charged with conspiracy in the 2017 killing of her socialite mother in Bali.
The decision means 27-year-old Mack will remain in custody without bond until her July trial in Chicago.
Mack was arrested upon her return to Chicago in November 2021 after serving more than seven years in an Indonesian prison for her role in the killing.
Mack’s wealthy mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, was killed and stuffed in a suitcase before being left in a taxi on the island of Bali in 2014.
Heather Mack circa 2015 with her prison-born child Stella, who is now in the custody of Heather’s maternal cousin
Mack and her former boyfriend were convicted of plotting together to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack (with her left) at a luxury resort on Bali then stuffing her body in a suitcase (right)
Bill Wiese and Debbi Curran, the brother and sister of Sheila von Wiese-Mack are seen leaving the Derksen United States Federal Court House in Downtown Chicago, Illinois on Wed., November 10th, 2021
Estelle Schaefer, 6 daughter of “Suitcase killer” Heather Mack and Tommy Schaefer was deported to the US along with her mother last year after Heather’s release from prison
On Thursday, US District Judge Matthew Kennelly denied Mack bail as she awaits a July trial in Chicago, where she has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder
Mack and her then-boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, were convicted in Indonesia, though US prosecutors filed their own case, which accuses Mack of conspiring with Schaefer prior to their Bali trip.
Defense attorney Michael Leonard said his client has behaved well while in custody and would not pose a flight risk, nor would she be a public threat, should she be released on bond.
Leonard used Mack’s ‘loving’ relationship with her seven-year-old daughter Stella as evidence to bolster his argument. The child was born shortly after Mack and Schaefer were convicted in 2015.
However, US District Judge Matthew Kennelly refused to release Mack, saying that there are ‘plenty of reasons to believe she would pose a danger to others.’
Leonard said he and his client were ‘disappointed’ that Kennelly denied her bail but understood that judge’s decision due to the serious nature of the allegations against Mack.
Prior to her mother’s death, Mack reportedly had a fraught and often violent relationship with her mother. According to the Associated Press, police responded many times to the family’s Oak Park, Illinois house.
Von Wiese-Mack’s siblings spoke at the hearing, testifying that they feared for their safety if Mack should be released.
Debbi Curran, von Wiese-Mack’s younger sister whose own daughter is now raising Stella, called her niece a ‘master manipulator.’
As Curran spoke, Mack wiped away tears.
In 2017, Robert Bibbs was sentenced to nine years in US prison for advising Mack and Schaefer about how to kill von Weise-Mack. Their apparent motive was to inherit money from Mack’s mother, who was the widow of jazz and classical composer James L. Mack.
Schaefer currently remains in prison in Indonesia. He is serving an 18-year sentence. Mack was originally sentenced to 10 years but was released early for good behavior.
In the US, Mack pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and obstruction of justice.
She previously claimed that she had hidden in a bathroom when Schaefer bludgeoned von Wiese-Mack to death with a fruit bowl inside a room at the Regis hotel in Bali. Mack was eighteen and pregnant at the time.
But prosecutors say she helped him cram the body into a suitcase and wheel it downstairs where they hailed a cab and loaded it into the trunk. The pair ran away when the driver became suspicious but was arrested shortly afterward at a nearby budget hotel and put on trial.
Mack gave birth to daughter Stella during the couple’s 2015 trial in Indonesia
Mack said Stella, now seven, does not know why both her mother and father are imprisoned, and she wants to keep it that way. A younger Stella is pictured here with her father, Tommy Schaefer
Mack enjoyed a privileged upbringing in Chicago’s upscale Oak Park suburb, growing up in a $1.5m mansion with political researcher mom Sheila and her father James L. Mack, a renowned jazz composer, who died in 2006 while the family vacationed in Greece.
During her incarceration Mack recalled how von Wiese-Mack had left her husband’s body in the morgue to go sailing in Santorini, triggering a simmering hatred that intensified when her mother tried to stop her dating Schaefer in high school.
When Mack dropped out and became pregnant von Wiese-Mack flew her daughter to Bali to try to convince her to terminate the baby. But she stole her mom’s credit card instead and used it to fly out Schaefer in a $12,000 business class seat, her trial was told.
In text messages presented in court, Schaefer urged his teen lover to suffocate Sheila so they could claim her estate, which he believed was worth up to $11million.
He ended up doing the job himself in a gruesome fashion – battering the political strategist with a metal bowl until she suffocated from a broken nose.
Schaefer testified that Sheila had racially abused him and tried to strangle him during an argument about the pregnancy.
In reality, the besotted lovers had plotted to kill her for months and had already tried but failed to kill her by overdose.
[ad_2]
Source link
