'Suitcase killer' Heather Mack's family say 'a weight has been lifted' after she gets 26 years in prison for murdering her mother for $1.6m inheritance and stuffing her body in luggage

Heather Mack was sentenced to 26 years in prison last week for the 2014 murder of her mother Sheila Von Wiese-Mack in BaliSheila's brother Bill Wiese tells DailyMail.com that a 'weight has been lifted' after the sentencing and the family feel justice has been servedWiese still believes Mack is a 'monster' and called her a 'master manipulator'

‘Suitcase killer’ Heather Mack’s family feel that justice has finally been served after she was sentenced to 26 years in a federal prison for murdering her millionaire mom.

Her uncle, Bill Wiese, tells DailyMail.com that a ‘weight has been lifted’ from the relatives of Sheila Von Wiese-Mack, who was killed by pregnant Mack, then 18, and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer in a luxury hotel while they were vacationing in Bali, Indonesia, in August 2014.

Denver attorney Wiese admits that the family will never get closure, but Mack, now 28, has finally apologized for the heinous crime, which the family have waited ten years for.

Mack had previously never shown any remorse, says Wiese, while serving seven years of a ten-year sentence for the murder in Kerobokan Prison on Bali.

Heather Mack, 28, was sentenced last week to 26 years prison for conspiring to kill her mother in Bali in 2014

Sheila’s brother Bill Wiese tells DailyMail.com that a ‘weight has been lifted’ after the sentencing and the family feel justice has been served. He is pictured with his sister Debbi Curran

Mack’s wealthy mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack was killed and stuffed in a suitcase by Mack and her boyfriend before being left in a taxi on the island of Bali in 2014. The couple were then discovered and arrested

Immediately after returning to the US, she was arrested again and charged with conspiracy to kill a US national and obstruction of justice, and was handed the hefty jail term last week despite her plea for leniency.

She is currently Prisoner number 72776-509, held in the Chicago Metropolitan Detention Center awaiting transfer to a permanent prison home.

While Mack has finally showed penitence, no one in the family can be sure that it’s real with Wiese still convinced she’s as much of a ‘monster’ today as she was as a teenage killer, and hopes she gets mental health treatment in prison.

Mack and her former boyfriend were convicted in 2015 of plotting together to kill Mack’s mom, socialite Sheila von Wiese-Mack at a luxury resort on Bali during a family trip, and then stuffing her body in a suitcase

‘It’s like a weight has been lifted off me, but ten years is a long time to wait for justice,’ says Wiese.

‘I’m not sure I can ever have closure, losing my sister to a horrific crime like that, you can never forget what happened. There’s always going to be that void in your life.

‘I did appreciate her apology at the sentencing hearing. She turned around in court and said: ‘I’m sorry Aunt Debbi [Curran, Sheila’s sister], I’m sorry, Uncle Bill.’

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard her do that. I think it was sincere, but it’s hard to tell, because she’s never apologized before in ten years.

‘She’s the master manipulator, it’s good to hear her take responsibility, but she’s lied so many times, it could have been another lie to get a lighter sentence from the judge.

‘Sheila was very close to her other sister Debbi. Heather never reached out to Debbi over all these years even though Debbi was like a second mother and she spent a lot of time with Heather. She went to Chicago to spend weekends with them, so for Heather not to reach out to Debbi is just shocking.

‘What makes me most sick about this case is they plotted the murder for a year in advance of their trip. The way they murdered Sheila and then lied about it. The fact that Heather never apologized, never took responsibility.

‘I still think she’s as much of a monster now and hopefully she can get access to mental health services in prison. A normal person doesn’t do what Heather did.

Wiese-Mack was an academic and the wealthy widow of James L. Mack, a renowned classical and jazz composer, who died in 2006.

Mack and Schaefer plotted to kill her mom in a bid to take her $1.6 million inheritance, which has now been left to their daughter Stella, eight, whom Mack gave birth to in prison.

Wiese-Mack was killed by Schaefer with a metal object, stuffed in a suitcase and left in a taxi. Mack and Shaefer tried to put the suitcase into the taxi, and fled when the driver suspected something was wrong. They were both arrested shortly afterward at a nearby budget hotel.

Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years for murder and remains in Indonesia.

The bloodied suitcase that contained Mack’s dead mother is pictured being examined by police

In 2019, Mack claimed in an interview that her mom was ‘super abusive because she was an alcoholic and drug addict’

Wiese-Mack was an academic and the wealthy widow of James L. Mack, a renowned classical and jazz composer, who died in 2006

In 2019, Mack claimed in an interview that her mom was ‘super abusive because she was an alcoholic and drug addict’, detailing episodes where she’d been burned with a cigarette and ‘chased around the house all night by my mother with a kitchen knife’.

However, police reports in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park show a different story. According to reports at the time of Mack’s arrest, there were 86 calls from their home to the police mostly for domestic violence and theft by Heather as well as missing person reports when Heather went missing for days.

Wiese agrees that it was Mack who was the perpetrator and his sister was the long-suffering mother of a violent teenager.

Wiese adds: ‘I think the way she treated Sheila before the murder, all the abuse that Heather inflicted on Sheila was just terrible. I didn’t know the extent of the abuse. I knew some things, but I didn’t realize the police had been called by Sheila 86 times.

‘But Sheila never gave up hope. She always loved Heather and she always thought Heather would change.

‘Heather made Sheila’s life very difficult for probably five to ten years before the murder.’

Wiese’s family fought a successful legal battle to stop Mack from inheriting her mother’s fortune, but that wasn’t before a Chicago judge allowed $150,000 to be transferred to Bali to help pay her legal fees.

Based on information from an Indonesian law expert and US State Department documents, Wiese thinks it helped to corrupt the justice system and led to her lenient sentence and subsequent party lifestyle inside, where she was pictured drinking and smoking.

‘Indonesia wasn’t justice, the money sent over there by Judge Cohen from Sheila’s estate corrupted the system,’ adds Wiese.

Wiese feels differently towards Mack’s accomplice Schaefer, 32, who’s had a much tougher time in prison.

Tommy Schaefer shares a child with Mack – born after the pair were convicted in 2015 – and was the one to brutally beat von Wiese-Mack to death with a metal bowl in a bid to get hold of her millions

Mack was pregnant at the time of the murder and delivered her daughter, Stella (pictured together, left), in prison. Mack’s then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer  right), who is also the father of her child, is serving an 18-year sentence for murder

Wiese says: ‘Obviously, he had a much longer sentence and he has shown remorse while in Bali. I think it’s been a much tougher time.

‘We were getting reports from a non-profit about their time in prison and they were saying Tommy was getting beat up to in there, having a very rough time and had been abandoned. Heather was also stopping him from seeing Stella.

‘He did apologize to us. I think that was very sincere. It’s not my decision what happens to him when he comes back to America, but it’s incredibly lopsided what Tommy has gone through and what Heather went through in prison – hers was a party as she had access to Sheila’s money.’

The other victim in this case is Mack’s daughter Stella, who was raised initially by a Balinese local. Sheila’s niece Lisa Hellman has now been appointed legal guardian.

Hellman and Stella’s therapist made the difficult decision to tell Stella what her mother did – and Stella currently doesn’t want anything to do with Mack.

Wiese explains: ‘Stella’s with Debbi’s daughter in Colorado and she’s doing brilliantly. We haven’t met Stella yet, but I’m sure we will. We wanted to give them time alone.

‘It’s comforting to know how well she’s doing, making lots of new friends, playing sports, she’s learned how to ski.

‘I don’t know what the parental rights are with Heather, but obviously she’s going to be in prison and Stella will be an adult when she gets released

‘Lisa has Stella in therapy, which is good, and the therapist recommended that they tell Stella what her mother did and why she’s in jail. Not all the details, but just the fact that she did murder her grandmother.

‘The therapist said she’s going to find out in school, she’s going to do a Google search. It’d be better to do it with the therapist. We believe Stella said I don’t want to talk to her anymore from what Lisa says.’

Mack was allowed to live with the child during her incarceration overseas, but her daughter now lives with a relative

In court, a statement was read out on Hellman’s behalf asking for Mack to serve the longest sentence possible for Stella’s sake so that the little girl ‘has the time, protection, safety and resources she needs to have a fully developed adult brain, and strong emotional armor before she has to face her connection to Heather’.

She added that Mack had only exploited her daughter for monetary gain while in the Indonesian prison, using Stella’s trust money to fund her party lifestyle, a sentiment Wiese agrees with.

‘I saw it as a trustee of the trust and the legal expenses submitted by Heather’s attorneys were wildly inflated. Last week, the judge ordered restitution, which means that if Heather ever makes money from the media then the trust can go after that money so it benefits Stella instead,’ he says.

‘Now we finally have justice, we can move on, we can focus more on the future.’