American Man Returns to US After 11 Years in Indonesian Prison for Bali Murder

Tommy Schaefer has been released from an Indonesian prison and deported to the United States after serving 11 years for killing his girlfriend's mother in Bali. The 2014 case became known as the 'suitcase murder' when the victim's body was discovered in a taxi trunk at a luxury resort.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — An American man has returned to the United States following his release from an Indonesian prison where he served 11 years for the calculated killing of his girlfriend’s mother on the vacation island of Bali.

Tommy Schaefer received an 18-year prison term for the 2014 killing of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, who was the mother of his girlfriend Heather Mack. The crime occurred during a high-end vacation and became widely known as the Bali ‘suitcase murder.’

According to Felucia Sengky Ratna, who heads the Bali Regional Office of the Directorate General of Immigration, Schaefer was sent back to America from Bali International Airport on Tuesday night following the completion of his sentence, which was reduced due to multiple good behavior credits.

Authorities discovered the severely beaten remains of 62-year-old von Wiese-Mack, a well-to-do Chicago socialite, stuffed inside a taxi’s trunk at the exclusive St. Regis Bali Resort in August 2014.

Both Heather Mack, who was nearly 19 years old and several weeks into her pregnancy when the murder occurred, and Schaefer, then 21, were taken into custody on the island one day after investigators found the victim’s body.

Mack completed seven years of her 10-year Indonesian prison term for her role in her mother’s death before being sent back to the United States in October 2021.

Following her return to America, she received an additional 26-year federal prison sentence in Chicago this past January after entering a guilty plea for her participation in murdering her mother and concealing the corpse in luggage during their island getaway.