US woman in Bali ‘suitcase murder’ freed from jail

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. 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. 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 morning. Mack’s sentence was shortened by a total of 34 months due to reductions that are often granted to prisoners on major holidays because of their good conduct, including a six-month remission of sentence awarded during Indonesia’s Independence Day in August, said Lili, the prison chief warden, who goes by a single name. She described that Mack was a bit shocked, sad and frightened when she was about to leave, “but we all cheered her on and reassured her that everything would be all right.” “Heather used to say that prison has changed her life a lot, she loves Indonesia and the people who have surrounded her all these years,” Lili said, “She will miss us so much and so do we here.” Mack will have to stay for a few days at the Immigration Detention Center while waiting for flight tickets and travel documents to be ready, said Amrizal, chief of the Bali immigration office for the Ministry of Law and Human Rights.