Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Spoiled Rich Girl Killed Her Own Mom - The Heather Mack Story

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Heather Mack is an American woman convicted of conspiring to murder her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, during a 2014 vacation in Bali. Heather had secretly used her mother’s credit card to fly her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, to Bali, and the two exchanged messages plotting her mother’s death.

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And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength, Hannity! Eye drops and work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner, by knockout, is Padaday! Padaday! Bring it on! So this spoiled rich girl ends up killing her own mom. Now the girl's name is Heather and Heather is 18 when the story starts and she's living in Chicago with her mother and her relationship with her mom is absolute chaos. They often get into fights and Heather hits her mom and steals money from her and once she even broke her arm.

In fact the police have been called to their house over 80 times. But one day around 2014, Around 2014, things get really bad between them. Because Heather starts dating this guy, Tommy. And Tommy's 21, and they describe him as an unemployed rapper. Here is actually a photo of them together, and here is another photo of them together. Now, Mom, she's not too happy about this Tommy guy. I mean, he's an unemployed rapper.

What's her to be happy about? He kind of seems like a bad influence. But Heather, she is determined to see him. She starts skipping school and running away from home, so mom has to keep calling the police, and it's just a whole ass mess. No matter what mom does, she just can't separate Heather from Tommy. She even decides to sell their mansion and move into a condo further away from where Tommy is, kind of hoping the distance will cause them to break up.

But it doesn't. The fights between Heather and mom continue. In fact, they seem to just get worse. Now she's smashing and breaking things around the house and like threatening to unalive her mom. Now eventually things get so bad that Heather, she runs away from home for good and she drops out of school completely to be with Tommy, the unemployed rapper. And unfortunately, there's not much mom can do. Heather is a legal adult now.

Now around this time, Heather realizes something that makes all of this just that much more complicated. She's pregnant. Here's the thing, though, this is not Heather's first time getting pregnant. This is actually her third time. Allegedly, her mom made her get an abortion the first two times. And this time is no different. Mom really, really doesn't want Heather to have this baby. I mean, she's only 19 at this point.

Mom just doesn't think she's responsible enough to take care of a kid. But of course, Heather's like, hell no, I want to keep this baby. And this is where Heather and Tommy come up with an insane plan. They're gonna unalive Heather's mom. Partly because of all the fighting and partly because Heather believes that if they do, she will inherit $1.5 million. Now, despite all the chaos in their relationship, mom still really wants to work things out with her daughter.

So she decides that a good way to do that would be to take a vacation with her. So she goes and she books a mother-daughter vacation to Bali, thinking, yeah, this is going to be great. So Mom and Heather, they fly first class from Chicago all the way over to Bali. And there, they check into a luxury resort, and Mom, she's ready to have a good time. However, pretty quickly, chaos ensues, and the trip suddenly isn't going so well, and they're, like, arguing a lot again. And at some point, Mom gets drunk, and she ends up falling, and, breaking her ankle, so now she's stuck in the hotel, in bed, on pain killers. And at one point, while mom is in bed, completely knocked out, Heather secretly steals her credit card, and she goes

and she buys Tommy a $12,000 plane ticket to Bali, first class, so that they can meet up. And so, about a day later, Tommy arrives in Bali, and he checks into his room at the same hotel Heather is staying at. And Heather goes and she meets up with him and they go walk at the beach. And around 3 a.m., mom finally wakes up and she realizes that Heather is missing. Like, she's just not in the room at all. So she goes down to the lobby and she talks with the receptionist. And that is when the receptionist tells her that a second hotel room was reserved using her credit card. Tommy's hotel room. And so mom is like, I knew it. And she is super pissed. And around this time, Heather and Tommy returned from their walk on the beach,

and mom confronts her, and they get into a huge argument, and mom's like, I ain't paying for his damn room, and she threatens to pursue credit card fraud charges against the both of them when they return to Chicago. Now, here's where the crazy murder plot comes in. So they all go back to their respective rooms. Heather and mom go to their room, while Tommy goes back to his room. And the whole time, Heather and Tommy are texting,

back and forth trying to figure out how they're going to move forward with getting rid of mom. And that is when Tommy finds a metal fruit bowl in his hotel room and he thinks, yeah, this would be a good murder weapon. Sometime later, Mom falls asleep and Heather sneaks Tommy into their suite and there he hides in the bathroom and he waits. And when the time is right, he comes out of that bathroom and he sneaks up on mom and suddenly, bam, he hits her with the fruit bowl. Then he hits her again and again and again. And this, unfortunately, unalives her. Then he and Heather wrap mom's body up in a hotel bed sheet and duct tape, and they somehow

managed to cram this whole person into a giant suitcase. And then afterwards, Tommy and Heather smash, because of course they do. Fucking weird ass people. The next day, it's time to check out of their rooms. And Tommy and Heather collect all their suitcases, including the big one with mom in it. And they go outside to the front of the hotel, and they hail a taxi. And so a taxi pulls up, and they put the big suitcase inside the trunk,

and they tell the driver to just wait there, because they need to go back inside the hotel and check out. Then Tommy and Heather go back inside, and they tell the receptionist that they're leaving, and that mom will pay for their rooms later when she comes down to the lobby. So on top of the murder, it seems like they're trying to get out of paying for the hotel room, which is just gross. Okay, but anyway, here's where they run into a problem.

Mom had requested that the hotel lock her and Heather's passports in a hotel safety deposit box. Not only that, she left specific instructions with the hotel that she is the only one who should be allowed to access it. So now Heather and Tommy are fucked because Heather can't get her passport. Regardless, she and Tommy sneak out of the back of the resort and they hail another different taxi and they head to the airport. When they get there, they walk up to immigration officers and they tell them that they lost their passport and they need help, but those officers can't help them. So Heather and Tommy then catch a third taxi and they go to stay at another completely different hotel. Here's the thing though, remember that first taxi that they hailed where they put that suitcase with mom's body in it in the trunk and then they told the driver to wait there because they need to go back inside the hotel and check out?

Well, that driver is still waiting there. In fact, he'd been waiting there for a whole two hours before he finally realizes, yeah, I guess they're not coming back. So he opens the trunk to get their suitcase out and on that suitcase he sees a big bloodstain. it probably smells a bit too. And he's like, oh shit! So he drives it to the local police station and he gives it to police. And when they open it, of course, they see Mom's Body. And so police end up finding Heather and Tommy at their new hotel and bam, they arrest her.

Also, bam, they arrest him. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of the two of them handcuffed together. And you can see that she's visibly pregnant. And so ultimately she gets 10 years in Bali prison. Here's actually a picture of her. In Bali, I guess she gets to keep her baby with her in prison. While Tommy, he gets sentenced to 18 years in Bali prison. But six years later, Heather gets out for good behavior.

However, she gets extradited back to Chicago, where she then gets sentenced to 26 years in U.S. prison. And in the U.S., she actually doesn't get to keep her kid with her. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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