Jakarta, Indonesia
AP
—
Indonesia on Tuesday released and deported an American man who had been imprisoned for 11 years for the premeditated murder of his then-girlfriend’s mother on the tourist island of Bali.
Tommy Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison for murdering Heather Mack’s mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, during a luxury vacation in Bali in 2014, also known as the “suitcase murders.”
Mr. Schaefer was deported to the United States from Bali International Airport on Tuesday night after completing his sentence and receiving several pardons for good behavior, Director of the General Directorate of Immigration’s Bali Regional Office, Felucia Senky Ratna, said in a statement.
In August 2014, the badly battered body of von Wiese-Mack, 62, a wealthy Chicago socialite, was found in the trunk of a taxi parked at the luxury St. Regis Bali resort.
Heather Mack, who was almost 19 years old and several weeks pregnant at the time of the murder, and her then-21-year-old boyfriend, Schaefer, were arrested on the island the day after the bodies were discovered.
Mak served seven years of a 10-year prison sentence in Bali for aiding and abetting the murder of his mother, and was deported in October 2021.
She was also sentenced to 26 years in prison in Chicago in January 2024 after pleading guilty to helping kill her mother and stuffing her body in a suitcase while on vacation.
