A CONVICTED “suitcase killer” who once faced possible death by firing squad is now back in US custody after walking free from an Indonesian prison.
The move puts him back before an American judge more than a decade after his girlfriend’s mother was beaten to death and hidden in luggage.
Tommy Schaefer was deported from Bali, Indonesia, this week after serving 11 years of an 18-year sentence for the 2014 murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack.
Her battered body was found stuffed in a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi outside the St. Regis Bali Resort.
The gruesome killing became known around the world as the Bali “suitcase murder.”
Prosecutors said Schaefer and his then-pregnant girlfriend, Heather Mack, were trying to get access to a $1.5 million trust fund.
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They said Mack covered her 62-year-old mother’s mouth while Schaefer bludgeoned her with a fruit bowl inside the hotel room.
The pair then put the body in a suitcase and loaded it into a taxi before police arrested them a day later.
When the case first erupted, Schaefer and Mack were facing a charge that carried a maximum punishment of death by firing squad in Indonesia.
That sentence never came.
Instead, an Indonesian court convicted Schaefer in 2015 and sentenced him to 18 years behind bars.
Indonesian officials said he got out early after receiving remissions and reductions for good behavior.
He was then flown back to the United States, where authorities took him into custody after he landed in Illinois.
The Justice Department said Schaefer was arrested in international air space on the flight home.
He now faces a three-count federal indictment in Chicago.
Prosecutors charged him with conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, conspiracy to commit foreign murder of a US national, and obstruction.
Schaefer pleaded not guilty on Thursday, and a judge ordered him held ahead of a trial now set for January 2027.
Mack, who was 18 and pregnant at the time of the killing, served seven years of a 10-year sentence in Bali before being deported in 2021.
She later pleaded guilty in the US case and was sentenced in Chicago in 2024 to 26 years in prison.
Mack gave birth behind bars not long after sentencing, and the child is now being raised by a maternal cousin.
Before his deportation, Schaefer told The U.S. Sun after his release from Bali’s Kerobokan prison, “I’m feeling good and I’m happy. I can enjoy life, God is good.”
But even then, he was not off the hook, as he was being held in Bali’s Immigration Detention Centre before being sent back to Chicago.
Kerobokan prison chief Hudi Ismono said at the time: “Tommy was released today. He was sentenced to 18 years and received a sentence cut of 75 months and 120 days.
“He has been in prison for 12 years. We handed him over to Immigration.”
When Mack was deported back to the US in 2021, she was arrested by the FBI after landing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
She later struck a plea deal, pleading guilty to one conspiracy charge while the remaining counts were dropped.
Schaefer was named in that same indictment, and now, after dodging the firing squad and getting out of Bali early, he is finally facing justice on US soil.