The badly beaten body of a Chicago woman was found stuffed inside a suitcase on a resort island in Indonesia, and authorities have arrested her 19-year-old daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend, officials said.
The body of Sheila Von Wiese Mack, 62, was discovered Tuesday after the suitcase was left in the trunk of a taxi outside the St. Regis Bali luxury resort in Nusa Dua, the Jakarta Globe reported.
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Mack’s daughter Heather and her 21-year-old boyfriend, Tommy Schaeffer, were taken into custody after they were found by police sleeping in a hotel room in Kuta, about six miles away, according to CNN and The Associated Press. No charges have been announced.
“The couple are now being detained and interrogated,” Hery Wiyanto, Bali police spokesman, told Reuters.
The couple told police they had been taken captive at the resort by an armed gang whose members killed Mack but they later managed to escape, CNN reported. But hotel workers and the taxi driver who discovered the body gave a different version of events, local media reported.
The taxi driver told police that the daughter and the boyfriend hailed him at the St. Regis, placing one bag in the trunk and two more in the back seat, according to Trans TV. They then went back into the hotel and did not return.
After two hours, the taxi driver said he entered the hotel and spoke to employees, who went to the family’s rooms and found them empty, the TV station reported.
When the taxi driver and a manager opened the trunk, they saw blood on the luggage and drove the car to a police station, where Mack’s body was found inside a hard-sided gray suitcase, Trans TV reported.
Ida Bagus Putu Alit, a forensic expert at the hospital that conducted an autopsy, said Mack had been “hit by a blunt object and the blows were concentrated on the face and head.”
“There were signs of a struggle by the victim, as there were bruises on her arms and some fingers were broken,” Alit said.
Neighbors in the quiet, tree-lined Oak Park, Ill., neighborhood where Mack and her daughter lived said their relationship appeared troubled.
“Police were here all the time,” said one neighbor. “They would call police on each other. It turned very abusive and volatile.”
The neighbor said she called police several times when they were arguing loudly.
Oak Park police confirmed that they were frequently called to the home.
“Between January 2004 and today, officers had been called to that residence 86 times,” said spokesman David Powers.
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