Young Couple Arrested After Mother Found in Suitcase

Heather Mack suspected in mother's death
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 14, 2014 5:00 AM CDT
Young Couple Arrested After Mother Found in Suitcase
An Indonesian officer escorts Tommy Schaefer, left, as he's brought to the police station for questioning in relation to the death of his girlfriend's mother in Bali, Indonesia, on Aug. 13, 2014.   (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

It's no secret that Heather Mack, the 19-year-old daughter of the late jazz composer James Mack, didn't get along with her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack. And now that her mother's body has been found in a bloodied suitcase in Bali, Mack has been arrested along with her 21-year-old boyfriend, aspiring hip-hop artist Tommy Schaefer. Mack's father died of an aneurysm while on vacation in Greece in 2006, but Heather's relationship with her mother started to spiral out of control before then, with police being called to their Chicago-area home 86 times since 2004, reports the Chicago Tribune.

On vacation this week in Bali, just weeks after Mack's boyfriend was arrested in Chicago after the couple allegedly charged almost $1,000 at a hotel on von Wiese-Mack's card without permission, Mack and Schaefer allegedly hailed a cab outside their ritzy resort, put a bloodied suitcase in the trunk of the cab, and ran back inside. The driver turned it over to the police, who found the body and then located and arrested the young couple 6 miles away at another hotel. They claimed to have escaped the captivity of gang members who killed von Wiese-Mack, reports WRTV Indianapolis, but now they're both refusing to talk until their attorneys are present. (Meanwhile, a married couple together 54 years are dead in a suspected murder-suicide.)

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