They once called themselves “Bonnie and Clyde” but apparently the confines of an Indonesian prison proved too powerful for their young love to last.
A former Chicago-area couple imprisoned for killing the girl’s wealthy mother during an exotic Bali vacation nearly two years ago has broken up, according to their recent social media posts.
Heather Mack, 20, is serving a 10-year sentence and gave birth while behind bars to a healthy girl named Stella. She is raising the child in prison per local custom until age 2. Mack’s ex-boyfriend and the child’s father, Tommy Schaefer, 22, is serving an 18-year term.
Recent Instagram posts from both over the last few months indicate an icy divide. They were last photographed together in the prison for their daughter’s first birthday party in March.
Several weeks later, Schaefer began taking to social media to criticize Mack’s parenting skills. Schaefer told his followers he has tried without success to persuade Mack to allow family to raise their daughter while they are imprisoned.
“Based on (the) way she treats me, my daughter and her own family, I can quite comfortably say that she can rot in hell,” he wrote in May. “If she loved Stella as much as I did, she wouldn’t let Stella see the place that she is in.”
Mack’s Instagram account is updated nearly daily. She often posts photos and videos with their daughter. Of Schaefer, Mack posted a picture days ago of the two in happier times with the caption, “We made a mess of what used to be love, so why do I care at all?”
Mack has had access to a cellphone in prison and has communicated with the Tribune occasionally. She did not respond to a recent request for comment.
Mack and Schaefer were convicted in April 2015 of the grisly murder of 62-year-old Sheila von Wiese-Mack, whose badly beaten body was discovered in a suitcase left in a taxi in August 2014.
The woman’s friends and siblings say von Wiese-Mack planned the trip to Bali with her daughter as a new beginning in their troubled relationship, and von Wiese-Mack did not know Schaefer also had traveled to the island.
The murder garnered international attention with each development, including the revelation that Mack, then a teenager, was pregnant.
While the criminal proceedings played out in Indonesia, a battle over Mack’s $1.56 million trust has ensued in Chicago. Mack’s uncle, the trustee, argues Mack should be prohibited from reaping financial benefit from her crime under Illinois’ slayer statute, which states that a person who unjustifiably causes the death of another person cannot receive property as a result of the death of that person.
Stella is next in line for the money.
Schaefer, formerly of Oak Park, testified at his Bali trial that von Wiese-Mack was angry when she learned about her daughter’s pregnancy. He tearfully testified he repeatedly struck her with a heavy metal fruit stand only after she threatened to harm the unborn baby, made a racial slur and tried to strangle him.
Mack testified that her mother upon learning of the pregnancy began searching for a knife in their suite. Mack said she hid in the bathroom after the melee began, which the daughter said her mother initiated, and she emerged minutes later as Schaefer tried to resuscitate her mother.
Their testimonies belied emails provided to the Tribune that von Wiese-Mack wrote to friends in which the mother said she was aware of her daughter’s pregnancy. Also, authorities have made public several text messages they say Mack and Schaefer traded the morning of the slaying. The couple used the phrase “saying hi” as code for the actual moment of attack, according to federal court records.
In text messages, they referred to each other as “Bonnie and Clyde,” a nod to the 1930s outlaw couple.
On the day of the murder, at 8:20 a.m., Mack is alleged to have texted Schaefer, “Theres no better time to say hi is there?”
For the next 37 minutes, Mack and Schaefer set their deadly plan into action.
In her frequent Instagram posts, Mack often writes lovingly about her slain mother. Mack also hinted she’ll be returning to Chicago soon despite her 10-year prison sentence. Authorities in the U.S. said they had no information about an early release.
In a recent post to her more than 1,750 Instagram followers, Mack wrote: “I know all yall haters gettin ready to throw me a home coming party.”
Twitter @christygutowsk1
