The body of a 62-year-old American woman was found in a suitcase in a luxury hotel in Bali, and the woman’s teenage daughter — and the daughter’s boyfriend — have been arrested in connection with the crime.
CNN reports that 18-year-old Heather Mack and her 21-year-old boyfriend Tommy Schaefer are now in police custody, and the events leading up to the woman’s death are unclear.
Mack and Schaefer claim that while staying at the St. Regis Bali resort, they — and Mack’s mother, Sheila von Weise Mack — were taken captive by an armed gang. Mack and Schaefer say that they managed to escape, but that the gang killed Sheila.
But that story doesn’t line up with other reports, CNN explains:
The taxi driver told police that Heather Mack and Schaefer 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 reportedly went back in to the hotel and did not return.
After two hours went by, the taxi driver said he entered the hotel and spoke to employees, who went to the family’s rooms and found them empty.
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 the woman’s body was found inside a hard-sided grey piece of luggage, Trans TV reported.
Mack and Schaefer were asleep in a hotel room about 6 miles away from the resort when they were found by police.
According to the Guardian (there’s a picture of the bloody suitcase at that link), there is closed-circuit TV footage from Monday of Schaefer and Sheila arguing in the lobby of the hotel. The Daily Mail has more details: Apparently, inside the suitcase, the body was wrapped in a hotel bedsheet and tied up with duct tape, and Mack and Schaefer refused to let a bell boy carry the piece of luggage down to the lobby.
Image via AP.