Heather Mack, convicted in Bali of killing mom and stuffing body in suitcase, pleads guilty in US

The daughter of an American woman whose body was found stuffed inside a suitcase at an Indonesian resort island changed her plea to guilty in Chicago federal court on Friday on charges that she helped kill her mother during a luxury vacation to Bali nine years ago.

Heather Mack was convicted in Indonesia in 2015 of being an accessory to Sheila von Wiese-Mack's murder with her then-boyfriend in a bid to gain access to a $1.5 million trust fund. Mack served seven years before being deported in 2021 and U.S. agents arrested her immediately after her plane landed in Chicago.

The change-of-plea hearing is the latest chapter in a story that drew international attention in part because of photographs of the suitcase, which seemed too small to hold an adult woman's body.