Tommy Schaefer arrested for Bali killing of Heather Mack's mother after returning to Chicago
Nearly 12 years after the overseas murder of Oak Park’s Sheila von Wiese-Mack, the FBI on Wednesday arrested the man accused of beating her to death as part of a plot to access the $1.5 million estate that might have been inherited by her then-teenage daughter, Heather Mack.
Tommy Schaefer’s return to the United States begins what could be the final chapter in a long-running, international legal drama that created tabloid headlines around the globe in 2014 once von Wiese-Mack’s body was found stuffed in a suitcase outside the St. Regis Bali Resort.
Schaefer is due in a federal courtroom Thursday in Chicago, following his deportation from Indonesia. He was arrested mid-flight on a plane that landed at O'Hare Airport at 8 a.m. according to Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros.
Unlike when Mack returned to Chicago in 2021, there is little mystery about what the feds have in store for Schaefer. A 2017 indictment charges him with two counts of conspiring to kill von Wiese-Mack and one count of obstruction of justice. It was unsealed in November 2021.
That means Schaefer has known for at least four years that he’ll face prosecution in Chicago’s federal court. He’s also surely aware that Mack, the mother of his nearly 11-year-old child, is already serving a 26-year sentence in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
That’s in addition to seven years Mack spent imprisoned in Indonesia. Schaefer served more than 11 years there before being released and deported from the country this month, according to media reports.
Mack, now 30, likely has roughly 18 years to serve before she’ll be released in her late 40s. Schaefer’s cousin, Robert Bibbs, also served prison time for his role in the conspiracy. He is now in the custody of a residential re-entry management office in Phoenix, Arizona.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly handed Mack her prison sentence in January 2024. Now Schaefer is expected to face Kennelly Thursday morning. The attorney who once represented Schaefer, Thomas Anthony Durkin, died in 2025, so it’s unclear who will represent him now.
If Mack’s case is any guide, it could take years to resolve Schaefer’s U.S. prosecution.
The legal saga that followed von Wiese-Mack’s murder involved an aggressive FBI investigation, civil litigation reaching from the Daley Center to Indonesia, a bizarre YouTube confession, an Indonesian trial interrupted by the birth of Mack’s child, and seven years of questions about whether the couple would ever face consequences in the United States.
Meanwhile, media outlets have long labeled von Wiese-Mack’s death the “Bali Suitcase Murder.” Mack’s exploits as a young, attractive and notorious killer in an Indonesian jail fueled the coverage further.
Her return to Chicago also triggered a legal battle over custody of her daughter, Estelle Schaefer. A Cook County judge in 2023 named a maternal cousin of Mack’s as the guardian of the girl, better known as Stella. The cousin’s mother is von Wiese-Mack’s sister.
It wasn’t until June 2023 that Mack admitted plotting her mother’s murder. In all, it took 26 months for her U.S. prosecution to play out once she landed at O’Hare.
Mack apologized to her mother’s siblings during her January 2024 sentencing. She also said she loved and missed von Wiese-Mack.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her,” Mack said. “I miss her smile, her ‘I love yous,’ and mostly her holding me.”
Authorities documented a long history of violence in the Mack home before the murder — how Mack allegedly bit her mother, shoved her to the ground so hard that von Wiese-Mack broke her arm, and at one point went around their home breaking plates and picture frames during an argument over household chores.
Mack broached the idea of killing her mother with Schaefer as early as February 2014, the feds say. Schaefer wrote in a Facebook chat that month, “that b---- heather is crazy” and added “she asked me to find someone to kill her mom for 50k.”
The feds say Mack ultimately enlisted Schaefer, secretly booking a $12,000 plane ticket for him so he could rendezvous with her while she vacationed with her mother in Bali in August 2014.
Then, over the course of nearly 40 minutes on the morning of Aug. 12, 2014, prosecutors say Mack and Schaefer exchanged tense, excited text messages as they prepared to murder von Wiese-Mack. They allegedly used the phrase “saying hi” as code for the killing, and they referred to each other as Bonnie and Clyde.
Soon after, prosecutors say, von Wiese-Mack “was brutally beaten after being taken by surprise as she lay in her hotel bed.” Mack’s plea agreement alleged that Schaefer “repeatedly beat Von Wiese in the head and face,” ending her life.
Prosecutors once alleged that Mack covered her mother’s mouth with her hand during the killing, but Mack did not admit to it in court.