Chicago Man Charged With Texting Advice On Indonesia "Suitcase" Murder

Murder in paradise goes sideways for American idiots   
AP VIA THE GUARDIAN
09/24/2015

A Chicago man was arrested on Wednesday on charges that he advised his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend about how to kill the woman’s wealthy mother at a resort in Indonesia. The criminal complaint described how the man used text messages from the US to suggest the most effective methods to kill.

Heather Mack

Robert Justin Bibbs, 24, believed that in exchange for instructing the couple on how to carry out the slaying and evade police detection, he would get a cut of the mother’s inheritance, according to the complaint, which was unsealed several hours after Bibbs’s arrest.

He is charged in federal court in Chicago with conspiring with his cousin, Tommy Schaefer, and Heather Mack to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack, whose body was found stuffed inside a suitcase in a taxi at the resort in Bali in August 2014. An Indonesian court convicted Mack, 19, and Schaefer, 21, of the killing in April.

When US magistrate Maria Valdez asked Bibbs at an initial appearance Wednesday whether he understood he could face life in prison, Bibbs quietly replied, “Yes, ma’am.” Sitting nearby, his mother shook her head in disbelief when a prosecutor said her son was accused in a murder conspiracy. 

Bibbs, whose lawyer declined comment after the hearing, will remain in jail at least until a Friday detention hearing.

Shortly before von Wiese-Mack, 62, was bludgeoned to death, Schaefer allegedly texted Bibbs saying the couple had unsuccessfully tried causing the mother to overdose on medication. “I told you,” Bibbs answered in a text; “U was right,” Schaefer responded, according to the criminal complaint.

Mack and Schaefer in Bali jail

The complaint says Schaefer then texted Bibbs that Mack was in the Bali hotel room with her sleeping mother and that she wanted him to come over and kill her right away. “She wants me to right now ... while she snoozing,” Schaefer texted; Bibbs’ response, according to the complaint, was: “Go sit on her face wit a pillow.”

In communicating that the overdose hadn’t worked, Schaefer included a gun emoji, or symbol in his text, adding, “Definitely need that.” Schaefer even texted emojis of money bags to indicate how the killing would make them all rich, the complaint says.

After their conviction earlier this year, Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison for battering the woman to death and Mack to 10 years for helping.

Mack and Schaefer both convicted and sentenced to prison

At his trial, Schaefer testified that von Wiese-Mack was angry when she learned her daughter was pregnant, prompting him to strike her with a metal fruit bowl. The couple’s baby girl, Stella, was born in prison in March.

Von Wiese-Mack was the widow of highly regarded jazz and classical composer James L Mack, who died in 2006 at the age of 76.

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Posted in: ASEAN Tourism,Indonesia,Indonesian Law,Mentally Ill Americans