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DENPASAR, Indonesia — An American woman convicted of helping to kill her mother on Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali in 2014 walked free from prison Friday after serving seven years of a 10-year sentence and will be deported to the United States.
The badly beaten body of a wealthy Chicago socialite, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, 62, was found inside the trunk of a taxi parked at the upscale St. Regis Bali Resort in August 2014.
Heather Mack, who was almost 19 and a few weeks pregnant, and her then-21-year-old boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, were arrested a day later after they were found at a hotel about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the St. Regis.
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Police said the hotel’s CCTV showed the couple had argued with the girl’s mother in the lobby of the hotel shortly before the killing, which is alleged to have taken place inside a room in the hotel.
An Indonesian court sentenced Mack to 10 years in prison for assisting Schaefer in her mother’s murder and stuffing the body in a suitcase. Schaefer received an 18-year sentence.
Their daughter, Stella Schaefer, was born shortly before her parents were convicted in 2015. Under Indonesian law, she was allowed to live with her mother in her cell in Kerobokan female prison until she turned 2 years old, and Mack gave custody of her young daughter to an Australian woman until her release from prison.
Mack and her mother had a troubled relationship, with officials confirming police had been called to the family’s Oak Park, Illinois, home dozens of times.
In 2016, Robert Bibbs, a cousin of Schaefer, pleaded guilty to helping to plan the killing in exchange for $50,000 that Mack was expected to inherit, and was sentenced the next year to nine years in prison.
Mack, now 26, was escorted through a crush of reporters outside the Kerobokan Female Prison in Denpasar, the Bali provincial capital, into a waiting car that took her to an immigration office near Bali’s international airport on Friday…
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Source : time
