The day Heather Mack and her mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack went to O’Hare Airport for a trip to Bali in August 2014, Mack, then 18, was trading text messages with her 21-year-old boyfriend, according to a new court filing in the murder conspiracy case.
In documents filed late Friday in Chicago, federal prosecutors say he told her, “I can’t wait to be rich … Its crazy af Like Money Nothing rules the world.”
They say Mack responded to boyfriend Tommy Schaefer the next day, saying, “Keep your head up … Trips going as planned baby … faith.”
Schaefer replied, the filing shows, that he had “a lot of faith” in Mack, but she didn’t know “that a lot of things aren’t in her control.”
Prosecutors say Mack responded with several chilling texts, apparently referring to her mother:
“I also know what is in my control … I know what makes people tick … the witch … I know what make [sic] her tick … I’m with her so much … I know her habbit [sic]… how she acts … what she does at certain times … its like breaking out of jail … It takes several years of watching … I have been watching her routine … and I know what I do control … Im sneaky … Im smart … and I watch … trust bonnie … Dn’t make everyone else mistake and under estimate me.”
Schaefer responded, according to the filing: “I like the confidence g. Once you think like you’re a mastermind … You start understanding that you can control a lot more than you thought.”
Prosecutors revealed those messages as Mack, now 27, nears her scheduled July 31 trial date in the high-profile case. She’s accused of plotting with Schaefer to kill von Wiese-Mack, whose body was found in a suitcase left outside the posh St. Regis Bali Resort on Aug. 12, 2014. That triggered an international legal drama that at one point seemed to leave Chicago area residents Mack and Schaefer possibly facing the prospect of being put before a firing squad.
Prosecutors have said von Wiese-Mack was bludgeoned to death with the metal handle of a fruit stand so Mack, Schaefer and Schaefer’s cousin Robert Bibbs could profit from the proceeds of von Wiese-Mack’s $1.5 million estate.
They have said the couple referred to each other as Bonnie and Clyde — hence the reference to “bonnie” — and that the killing came after years of violence by Mack toward her mother, who lived in Oak Park.
Though Mack and Schaefer were tried and convicted in Indonesia in 2015, their fate is still unclear. Mack was deported from Indonesia in 2021 after serving seven years there for assisting with her mother’s killing.
She now faces another trial over her mother’s death, this time in federal court in Chicago, ahead of which she’s being held downtown at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
Schaefer is serving an 18-year sentence in Indonesia for beating von Wiese-Mack to death.
If Mack’s trial goes ahead as planned, it’s likely to overlap with the ninth anniversary of von Wiese-Mack’s killing.
The 36-page document that prosecutors filed in Chicago Friday night in the nearly decade-old case contains excerpts of a transcript of a recorded conversation between Mack and a relative of Schaefer identified only as “K.W.” It says the recording wasn’t made at the prompting of law enforcement officials. Prosecutors said they only learned later that it existed.
Previously, prosecutors have said Mack covered her mother’s mouth during the killing.
In the transcript of the conversation, Mack at one point seems to be explaining that she took part and did that because, had her mother survived, she otherwise would have blamed only Schaefer for the attack.
“When he hit her and she, she didn’t even really scream she just kind of grabbed him at that point,” Mack told the relative, according to prosecutors. “She would not have included me in that and it wouldn’t have mat … he would have been in such deep trouble and she would not have, I just, I was afraid for him and I was afraid for me and I just at that point we were in such trouble that I didn’t, I just wanted the trouble to stop.”
Prosecutors say the relative told her, “You know Tommy loves you, right? And he’s willing to, he’s willing to accept the blame completely basically.”
They say Mack responded, “I know. And I hate that. But if the real the actual story came out both of us would be here forever … He would never have done it if well you know if I hadn’t of put him in this situation. He would not have done it, it was not his battle … It was my fight and I just couldn’t handle it by myself and I shouldn’t have involved him.”
