JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities deported American national Tommy Schaefer on Tuesday evening following his 11-year incarceration for the premeditated 2014 murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, his girlfriend’s mother, in a case that gained international notoriety as the Bali “suitcase murder.”
Schaefer’s release and subsequent removal from Bali International Airport came after he completed his reduced prison term, having originally received an 18-year sentence. Felucia Sengky Ratna, Head of the Bali Regional Office of Immigration, confirmed that Schaefer qualified for early deportation due to accumulated sentence remissions awarded for consistent good behavior during imprisonment.
The case dates back to August 2014, when the severely beaten body of 62-year-old Chicago socialite von Wiese-Mack was discovered inside a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi parked at the exclusive St. Regis Bali Resort. The victim had been vacationing at the luxury property with her daughter, Heather Mack, who was then 18 years old and several weeks pregnant, and Mack’s boyfriend, Schaefer, then 21.
Both Mack and Schaefer were apprehended on the Indonesian island within 24 hours of the grim discovery. Mack ultimately served seven years of her 10-year Indonesian sentence for complicity in her mother’s murder before being deported to the United States in October 2021. Earlier this year, in January 2024, a Chicago court sentenced Mack to an additional 26 years imprisonment after she pleaded guilty to U.S. charges related to the murder conspiracy and concealment of her mother’s body in a suitcase.