FORMER lovers Heather Mack and Tommy Schaefer have revealed the gruesome details of how they killed her mother and stuffed her corpse in a suitcase.
In 2014 Mack and Schaefer shocked the world when it was revealed they’d murdered millionaire Sheila von Wiese-Mack and stashed the suitcase in the back of a taxi while holidaying in Bali.
Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison for premeditated murder in 2015 after telling court he killed 62-year-old von Wiese-Mack with the metal handle of a fruit bowl.
Mack, who was only 18 and pregnant at the time, was sentenced to 10 years for helping plan the murder.
Their trial heard the killing was carried out in the luxury St Regis Hotel in retaliation against von Wiese-Mack’s racial slurs.
In the past five years, both convicts have shared some details about the motives behind the gruesome murder and their lives behind bars at Bali’s notorious Kerobokan Prison.
Mack posted a bizarre three part confession on YouTube last year in which she said she blackmailed Schaefer and also claimed von Wiese-Mack killed her father – though it is widely known he died of a blood clot.
But for the first time, both killers have agreed to extended face-to-face interviews, with news.com.au.
The only child of a wealthy family, Mack says her childhood was perfect until her father, celebrated jazz composer James L Mack, died when she was 10 and she was left alone with her mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack.
“My mother was super abusive because she was an alcoholic and a drug addict. I still have these,” she says.
“These are from when she stabbed me with her nails, this one was a cigarette burn.
“One time she even set my hair on fire. It may have looked like I was rebelling when I was a teenager because I was hanging out with gang members and missing school. But it wasn’t like that.”
“My mother would drink heavily at night and once she was drunk she’d start fighting with me because I’d hide her car keys to stop her going for a drive to the store to get more booze.
“If I fell asleep early, she’d fall down the staircase so I rarely got to bed before five or six in the morning, and I’d wake up when she woke up about 1pm.
“At school, they thought I was a spoilt rich kid who was partying till dawn but they had no idea I was being chased around the house all night by my mother with a kitchen knife.”
Though the murder took place in Bali, Mack revealed she planned it back home in Chicago – though the killing didn’t quite go as they expected it.
“I was the one who said it first. I planned it all in Chicago,” Mack says.
“But when it happened at the hotel it wasn’t like that. There were huge knives in the kitchen for cutting up pineapples. If we had planned to kill her then, we would’ve gone for the knives.
“It just happened in the heat of the moment. He beat her to death with a fruit bowl that was in his hand.”
She said stuffing her corpse in a suitcase was her idea.
“Tommy was saying we should leave her there and run but I was like no, I just didn’t want to leave her there.
“So we wrapped her up with tape, put her in a suitcase and got it outside to a taxi.
“But when we refused to let the taxi driver help us put the suitcase in the back of his car he became suspicious. He thought it was drugs, he wanted to open it, so we left it and ran.
“Yes, I feel remorse. She didn’t deserve to die.”
I was the one who said it first. I planned it all in Chicago
Heather Mack
Shaefer is now a born-again-Christian who has baptised more than 50 prisoners
Asked what he thinks about Mack he replied: “Heather is a black hole.”
“I am guilty of murder and that is why I am in here. I did it along with Heather but my reasons for killing Sheila were different to hers,” Shaefer says.
“She had an objective and I was emotionally tagged along. I don’t want to sound like a crybaby or a b**ch or that I am not a man, but I was emotionally tricked.
“God only knows the sorts of mind games and tricks I went through at the time, which is why I helped kill her mother.”
“But the truth is everything was her idea and I went along with it because at the moment I was really f**ked up.
“My life was great until my girlfriend Rachel died in a traffic accident on April 17, 2014.
“I already knew Heather as a friend but only got with her about two months after Rachel died because of how vulnerable I was.
“I was trying to find answers, trying to find something positive because there’s a lot of negative things in the world.
“But if you know the higher truth, you know there is justice because God is always watching.
“So even though I know Heather is happy in prison and I am in hell, I would say I am freer than her.
“I have become a better person while she is stagnant; she’s stuck in a spider web and she doesn’t even know it.”
He said that “God is currently judging her as he is judging me” and “to go through some sort of rehabilitation you have to go through fire”.
“So I thank God for putting me through the fire and finally giving me the answers,” he said.
“But unfortunately it cost somebody their life and it has cost me my life, too.”
Shaefer backs Mack’s allegations regarding her mother being a violent alcoholic and abusive.
“I would hear her slurring her words when Heather was talking to her on speaker phone and hear her verbally abusing Heather.
“Was she violent? I think it went both ways, they were both violent to each other.
“But there is no doubt Sheila was an abusive mother. One time back in Chicago, I saw her flip out, grab Heather by the hair and drag her around. Sheila was doing the same thing the day I killed her.”
Shaefer said the murder “just happened in the heat of the moment”.
“The fight was already going on when I walked into the room.
“I was just standing there listening to all the yelling and name-calling and it all became too much for me so I started thinking about justice.
“I made a terrible decision thinking if I killed Sheila it would help the situation. I was just trying to do what was right, to set things right, but I know now that isn’t our job. That is God’s job only.
I made a terrible decision thinking if I killed Sheila it would help the situation
Tommy Schaefer
“I would give my own life to undo what I did that day. I would give my own life and so much more. So, so, so much more.”
Shaefer adds “there is no doubt” Mack could kill again.
At present he said he’s “not focused on applying for parole”.
“As long as I am doing the Lord’s work in here and I am alive, everything is a plus. I do believe I am paying back my debt by the way I live here.”
Various reports have refuted Mack’s claims that her mother was abusive and say it was Mack who was both violent and abusive towards her mother.
“She bit Sheila. She would hit her. Heather pushed her one time in the bathroom and she fell down and broke her arm,” von Wiese-Mack’s sister Debbi Curran has said.
“And she wouldn’t press charges (because) it’s a really hard thing to do when it’s your own child.”
Elliott Jacobson, a friend of the family added: “Police came to the house 86 times. Not in one of those (police reports) was there a shred of evidence that her mother was alcoholic or violent.”
Jacobson also points to an email sent to him by von Wiese-Mack in which the deceased wrote: “Heather was violent tonight … I am really scared of what she may do next.”
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