Bali killer Heather Mack claims slain mother was trying to control her inheritance

A Chicago woman serving a sentence in an Indonesian prison says she believes her slain mother lied and falsified court documents to get control over an inheritance.

Heather Mack, 20, and her 22-year-old boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, were convicted in April for killing Mack's mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack. She was bludgeoned to death with a metal fruit bowl and her body stuffed into a suitcase at a Bali resort.

A battle over Mack's US$1.56 million trust has been ongoing in Chicago. In a letter to a judge, Mack said she believes her mother was trying years earlier to get control over Mack's inheritance from her late father.

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In a telephone interview, Mack told the Chicago Tribune that she didn't want to publicly criticise her mother, but has little other choice because her trust lawyers won't investigate her claims.

Mack's father died in 2006, and he had named her sole beneficiary in his will. His wife was the executor of his estate. Court records say she got Us$340,667 after legal fees for her share of a 2011 lawsuit settlement surrounding his death, and another US$500,000 went to his estate.

A judge authorised Wiese-Mack in summer 2011 to pay herself the remaining US$500,000 as “sole beneficiary” of the estate. The Cook County circuit clerk's office says a transcript of that court proceeding doesn't exist.

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Mack claims her mother misled the court to get the money, and Mack wrote she worries “there are still assets out there somewhere” such as property or stocks that “are rightfully mine”.