American who spent 11 years in prison for notorious

Indonesia released and deported an American on Tuesday after spending 11 years in prison for premeditated murder from 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, Heather Mack’s mother, 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 afternoon after serving his sentence and receiving a series of good behavior referrals, Felucia Sengky Ratna, head of the Bali Regional Office of the Directorate General of Immigration, said in a statement.

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

Heather Mack, who was almost 19 years old and a few weeks pregnant at the time of the murder, and her boyfriend Schaefer, then 21, 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 he pleaded guilty to helping kill his mother and stuffing her body in a suitcase while on vacation, News themezone Chicago reported.

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

Before being sentenced, Mack apologized for killing her mother and said there was “no excuse for trying to harm her.”

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

Prosecutors argued that Mack showed little remorse for killing his mother and even tried to profit from his crime by trying to sell his story to the media.

“Mack’s earning potential is quite high. The story of his crime is world famous and he has likely already signed a media deal that is expected to net Mack a significant amount of money. The money generated as a result of this heinous crime should go to the victim’s estate and not the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing recommendation.