The U.S. trial of Heather Mack, the Chicago-area woman who served seven years in an Indonesian prison in connection with her mother’s overseas murder, is set to begin next summer and potentially overlap with the ninth anniversary of her mother’s death.
Mack, now 26, was released from the Indonesian prison in October 2021 and deported with her now 7-year-old daughter to the United States. As her flight neared O’Hare Airport in November 2021, an indictment was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Chicago leveling charges against her here.
Also charged in that indictment was Tommy Schaefer, Mack’s onetime boyfriend, who remains locked up overseas. The couple is charged here with conspiring to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack in a foreign country as well as obstruction of justice.
U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle on Thursday set Mack’s federal trial in Chicago for July 31, 2023. Attorneys have predicted it will last “no longer than three weeks.”
Von Wiese-Mack’s body was discovered inside a suitcase outside the St. Regis Bali Resort on Aug. 12, 2014. Mack and Schaefer were arrested the next day, and they stood trial in Indonesia. Schaefer was ultimately sentenced to 18 years in prison for beating von Wiese-Mack to death, and Mack was sentenced to 10 years for helping.
Mack gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Estelle Schaefer, during their 2015 trial.
Since her return to the United States, Mack has been held in Chicago’s downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center. A bench trial to resolve a custody dispute over her daughter kicked off earlier this week.
