Police Needed a Psychiatrist After These Cases. Top 3 Most Brutal Cases.
Three young women, three different stories, three people they trusted for the very last time. Sheila went to Bali with her daughter, a vacation, a five-star hotel. She never made it home alive. She was found inside a suitcase. Ally was dating a classmate. He wanted to break up. She didn’t. One night, he came to pick her up.
He took her to an abandoned fishing site. No one ever saw her alive again. Jackie just stopped by for a drink after her classes. She sat next to a stranger. The cameras captured them leaving together. Her body was found the next morning by a lake, burned. Three different stories, three different motives, and one thing in common.
At the final moment of their lives, each of them was standing right next to the person who decided she shouldn’t live. Today we are breaking down all three cases to the very end. We are about to begin, but first a small request. Please subscribe to the channel, leave a like, and most importantly, watch this video until the very end.
This is the best way to show your appreciation for our work. Subscribed? Then let’s begin. A routine morning patrol of a remote area near Lake Sardis changed everything. Hey Morgan, this is Mike East as Montana Sheriff’s Department. I’m calling in regards to a friend of yours, Ali Hostel. Through the fog on a deserted shore, the sheriff spotted something that shocked even the most seasoned officers.
The body of 21-year-old Ally Costiel. She had been shot nine times. Such sheer brutality in a remote, desolate area clearly pointed to one thing. This was no random attack or robbery gone wrong. Someone had acted with cold, calculated intent and driven out here with a single purpose, an execution.
The killer was confident they had chosen the perfect spot, free of witnesses and cameras, ensuring their secret would stay buried forever. But they underestimated modern technology. They had no idea that Alli’s Apple Watch would preserve the entire history of their relationship, cataloging every single message, ultimately turning into the star witness that would point police straight to the killer.
Before we begin retracing the events of that horrifying night step by step, please take a moment to subscribe to the channel and hit the like button on this video. Also, leave a comment below letting us know what city you’re watching from. Comments are incredibly important for the YouTube algorithm to help push this video.
Subscribed? Then let’s begin. Alexandria Costal, but to everyone who knew her, she was just Ally. 21 years old, she was a marketing major at the University of Mississippi, one of those classic southern institutions where the sun, deep traditions, and old Americana charm breathe through every piece of architecture.
Locally, the university is affectionately known as Old Miss, and it carries a very distinct, unmistakable atmosphere, blooming groves, a gorgeous campus, and a massive Greek life culture. Ally moved here from St. Louis, Missouri. Back in high school, she was super active. She did cheerleading, which was where her iron discipline and crazy energy came from.
Her mother, Cindy, recalled that her daughter chose Old Miss largely because of how beautiful the campus is in the spring. Ally absolutely loved nature and flowers. She even ran a separate social media page where she posted only the sky, literally collecting sunsets almost every day, sharing this warmth with others. Ally, what are you doing? Taking a picture for sunsets by Ali.
Follow at the university. Ally was a real engine. She became one of those who founded the new Alphi sorority on campus. She single-handedly created and led the student golf club and was a member of a prestigious business club. She also loved yoga and Pilates, got an instructor certification and ran workouts for other girls.
After graduation, she dreamed of working in the fashion industry. Her best friend, Maddie Norris, said that Ally was not just a close person to her, but literally a sister. They were together everywhere and always. I love you, too. Other friends recall that Ally could walk into a room and make the day brighter just with her presence.
She really radiated life. In the summer of 2019, Ally stayed in Oxford. This is a small university town in Mississippi. She was catching up on her studies and preparing for her last year before getting her degree. Her parents came to visit her a few days before the tragedy, a normal family weekend. Shopping, lunch, talking about plans.
Together, they bought decor for her rented apartment. Cindy recalls that they chose something in a coastal style. Ally begged them to stay with her for at least one more day, but they didn’t stay. They left as planned. On Friday, July 19th, around 7:00 in the evening, Cindy calls her daughter. Ally had just woken up from an afternoon nap and said that she was going out with friends in the evening.
It was a normal Friday conversation between a mother and daughter. Cindy later recalled that she wasn’t worried at all because Ally always did that. This was their last call. Ally did go out that evening to one of the local bars. Closer to midnight, she decided to head back. Surveillance cameras captured her at 11:52 p.m.
completely alone, walking out of the establishment, getting into a called Uber, and safely arriving at her Alphi sorority house at 12:10 a.m. The building is secured, so the night should have ended in total safety. But nobody knew what was happening on her phone. Earlier that afternoon, a guy she had these complicated on andoff relationships with texted her asking her to let him know when she got home.
Around half midnight, he pulled up to the sorority house and lured her outside. Ally got into his pickup truck without even suspecting that she had less than an hour to live. Since nobody in the house knew about their night meeting, to everyone around her, the girl simply vanished without a trace from her room.
The next morning, her body would be found 30 km away. An unbelievable tragedy no family would ever want to experience. A college student killed while far away from home. Good evening, I’m Ann Red and I’m Mike Bush. A St. Louis County family is mourning the death of their 21-year-old daughter. Police found Ali Castile’s body near a lake in Mississippi over the weekend.
The Saturday morning of July 20th began for the county sheriff with a chilling call. Hey Morgan, this is Mike East County Sheriff’s Department. I’m calling in regards to a friend of yours, Ally Hostel. Sheriff’s deputies patrolling the remote Buford Ridge fishing camp near Lake Sardis discovered Alli’s body on the ground.
The girl was lying on her back covered in blood. When detectives arrived at the scene, they counted nine gunshot wounds. The criminal acted with fury, but at the same time with calculation. The victim’s pockets were empty, and there was no purse, phone, or documents anywhere to be found. The killer took everything to maximize the difficulty of identifying the body and to hide any connection to himself.
but he underestimated modern technology and the background processes of gadgets. The Apple Watch smartwatch remained on Alli’s wrist in her final minutes. It recorded the exact time her heart stopped from the gunshots, 2:15 a.m. And before the killer managed to remove and destroy the device, the iMessage data, geoloccation, and biometric markers automatically synced to the iCloud cloud via the cellular network.
Detective Jarrett Bundren would later explain in detail in court that this very instant automatic process became the starting point of the entire investigation. When investigators under an emergency search warrant gained access to Alli’s iCloud, a three-year history of a toxic relationship unfolded before them, and the name that became the key to everything flashed on the monitors, Brandon.
The text messages showed that he was the one who insisted on meeting that night, asking her to text him when she got home. The last messages were sent right before Ally walked out of the sorority house. The police immediately began questioning the girl’s friends, and the answer was unanimous. It was Brandon Thefeld, an student. At that time, Brandon Thefeld was only 22 years old.
He was the son of a very wealthy doctor from Texas and grew up with the firm belief that his family’s money and status were a universal shield against any problems and consequences. His former dorm roommate recalled Brandon as an extremely arrogant, selfish guy who constantly bragged about his father’s connections, claiming that his dad could fix any issue and systematically allowed himself to make filthy, derogatory comments about women.
For him, this was entirely natural. He and Ally met during their freshman year. For the girl, it was an exhausting three-year cycle of on andoff relationships, a painful roller coaster of constant breakups, promises to change, and new arguments. However, Brandon’s defense after his arrest cynically tried to downplay this connection, calling it just a casual sexual contact.
It was this chasm in the perception of reality that became the driving force behind the tragedy. In the summer of 2019, Ally suspected she was pregnant. She was terrified, confused, and even sent Brandon a photo of a test that showed a positive result, persistently seeking a personal meeting to find a way out together. Brandon reacted predictably coldly.
He could simply ignore her messages for days. And in his replies, he wrote shortly and distantly. A child was ruining his plans for an easy, carefree future, and his father’s authority was of no help here. The autopsy would later show that the pregnancy was a false alarm due to a breakdown in her body. But Brandon didn’t know that.
For him, only two options existed. Either his perfect life was ruined or the girl had to go. This was not a spontaneous crime of passion or a momentary flash of anger. A week before the murder, Brandon traveled to Texas where his father officially purchased an Army Glock 22.40 caliber pistol for him. On that same day, the guy sent Ally a photo of this weapon resting on his lap in the car with the caption, “My favorite baby.
” It was a cruel hidden intimidation. At the same time, Brandon searched Google for how to buy suppressors and methodically chose a desolate spot near Lake Sardis. The final dots over the eyes were connected by evidence found during the search of his apartment. A handwritten letter to his parents dated that very same fatal weekend.
In it, Brandon said goodbye, confessed to horrible thoughts fueled by cocaine and alcohol, and directly noted that he saw only two paths for himself: death or prison. This letter completely dismantled the defense’s version of an unexpected argument. The guy clearly understood what he was about to do when he lured Ally out of the sorority house.
He had plenty of time to change his mind, but he didn’t stop. On Saturday afternoon, when investigators first called Brandon, he acted surprisingly calm. The guy confidently stated that he was very busy at the moment and promised to come to the station for questioning on Monday morning at 8:30 a.m. The detectives pretended to believe his story, but instantly put him under 247 hidden surveillance and requested his cell phone pings.
On Monday, July 22nd, at 8:30 a.m., Brandon never showed up at the station. Analysts tracking his mobile signal in real time recorded that his phone was rapidly moving north through the state toward Memphis, Tennessee. Brandon was frantically trying to flee Mississippi to cross the state line and hide in Texas under his father’s wing.
an urgent bolo. Be on the lookout for a black Ford F-150 pickup truck with a telling custom license plate. Take it went out to all patrol units in the neighboring regions. The police caught up with him and blocked him at a gas station in Memphis. A few hours later, when Brandon was pulled out of the cab, he was under the heavy influence of drugs and alcohol, barely able to stand on his feet.
During a thorough search of the truck, forensics found that very same Glock 22 inside the cab. Fired.40 caliber shell casings were lying right in the bed of the pickup. And on the driver’s door, experts discovered hidden traces of Alli’s blood, which Brandon had tried to hastily wipe away. There was nowhere left to run. Ballistic analysis later confirmed all nine bullets recovered from the girl’s body were fired from this exact pistol.
A young college student from St. Louis murdered in Mississippi, shot over and over again. Tonight, her classmate at Miss is behind bars and has been suspended from the university. Our Jenna Barnes has more on the case that spans several states. Ally Castile graduated from Lindberg High three years ago.
Now at the entrance to her old school is a reminder she made an impact here. A thank you card says she was a light in this world whose joy radiated to all who met her. And at Old Miss, where she was a business student, her sorority house is draped in black ribbon. Her family there also in mourning.
Police say this man, her classmate, 22-year-old Brandon Thefeld, killed her. He is being held in our jail without bond. Thefeld is charged with murder and faced a judge for the first time Tuesday. He’s originally from Texas and it appears Ally knew him. These photos show the two of them together. Sources tell NBC affiliate WLBT Ally was shot eight times.
A deputy found her body Saturday near a lake about 20 miles from the Miss campus. Friday night, Ally was captured on surveillance video outside this bar near campus. Investigators say they also have surveillance video of Castile and Thefeld at this market near the lake. Monday afternoon, Thefeld was taken into custody in Memphis, about an hour and a half away from Old Miss, and brought back to Mississippi.
His father says he believes his son is innocent. A GoFundMe set up to help cover Alli’s funeral costs has already exceeded its $10,000 goal in just a day. We posted a link to it on ksdk.com. Brandon Thefeld was officially charged with capital murder. Prosecutors also added a kidnapping charge as they believed Ally might have been held in the vehicle against her will before the shooting.
The presence of this charge automatically paved the way for the death penalty, the highest form of punishment in the state of Mississippi. Due to bureaucratic delays and then the massive CO 19 pandemic, which completely paralyzed the US judicial system, the process dragged on for a long 2 years. Throughout all this time, Alli’s family lived in a hellish limbo, forced to attend technical hearings over and over again and look at their daughter’s killer.
Initially, Brandon and his team of expensive defense attorneys denied guilt. They tried to build a defense based on his heavy cocaine addiction, claiming the guy lacked self-control due to psychosis. However, the prosecution’s ironclad evidence, the Google search history for a suppressor, the photo of the weapon, and the handwritten letter left them absolutely no chance.
On August 27th, 2021, realizing that he was facing a lethal injection, thefeld entered a plea deal and fully pleaded guilty in exchange for dropping the kidnapping charge. At the Lafayette County courthouse as dozens came together to learn the faith of Brandon Feesfield following the 2019 murder of Ali Costol. There’s no excuse for my actions.
I ask for an emotional Brandon Deesville appeared before a judge confessing to the murder of Ali Costile while also expressing remorse. I’m sincerely sorry. The DA’s office revealed during the hearing that Casio was likely pregnant by Thievesville and he was against her having a baby. Upset by the situation, he got a gun, allegedly killed her near the Sardis Lake in Mississippi in July 2019.
It’s extremely sad uh that this has occurred. Our prayers and thoughts are with the Costal family and with the Fesville family. During the hearing, Thesville was made aware of his rights and also listened to written statements prepared by costy old parents. She had a smile on her face. Ultimately, the judge accepted the guilty plea and both the defense and prosecution walked away pleased with the outcome.
We are saddened for the Costail family but uh happy that we could get this matter resolved in a way that prevents them any further grief. We on on the other hand are grateful that we obtained this result. We think we uh spared his life and uh there different types of victories in these situations. The court’s sentence was final.
Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Under Mississippi’s strict laws. His only theoretical chance of ever walking free is a direct petition for clemency to the governor, which can only be filed after reaching the age of 65, having served a minimum of 15 years. In practice, such petitions are never granted to first-degree murderers in this state.
He will spend the rest of his days behind bars. In court, his lawyer called this case a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, but it isn’t. In Shakespeare, heroes are driven by fate, mysticism, or uncontrollable passions. Here, however, was a series of sober, cold choices. Purchasing a weapon, a photo with a threat, searching for a suppressor, wiping gadgets.
Brandon could have stopped at any of these stages. When he got into the car, when he bought the ammunition, when he lured the girl out of the house, but he didn’t want to. When the trial ends and the sentence puts a final period on the documents for the loved ones, everything is only just beginning.
Such stories do not close along with the court file. They continue to ache in everyone who loved Ally, in everyone whose life she once made brighter. She was a girl who collected sunsets, adored spring flowers, and knew how to fill a room with warmth just with her presence. Ally made plans, dreamed of the fashion industry, prepared for her senior year and the adult life that was supposed to unfold before her in all its beauty.
She had everything ahead of her, a career, love, travel, thousands of those same bright pictures of the sky that she loved so much. But it was taken away from her cruy, selfishly, and irreversibly. She simply didn’t have time to grow up. A few days after the tragedy, hundreds of people, family, friends, professors, and girls from her sorority gathered together on campus to say goodbye to Ally and honor her memory.
It was not just a farewell, but an evening of memories of how incredible she was. I may have been Alli’s teacher, um, but clearly listening to everybody’s thoughts tonight, she she taught a lot of us as well. And I know our candles are burning, but Ally clearly is a light that’s going to shine on in each and every one of you. She didn’t deserve what happened to her.
Nobody does, but she didn’t, especially. And I just want everyone to remember that. I want everyone to focus on how good of a person she was and how much joy she brought into the world and how positive she was, not the situation. Ali Costiel will forever remain 21 years old.
A girl who simply wanted to spend the summer in a beautiful college town, was preparing for her senior year and was making normal plans for an adult future. She did not expect an attack, did not look for danger, and completely naturally trusted a guy she had known for several years. The tragedy of this case lies precisely in the fact that no campus security systems or safety rules work when the threat comes from someone for whom you open the door and calmly get into the car.
This story remains a cruel reminder that real evil rarely looks like a cinematic monster. It can study in the same year as you have wealthy parents text you and seem completely ordinary. But behind this facade sometimes hides absolute coldbloodedness and a willingness to destroy someone else’s life for the sake of one’s own comfort.
Ali Costiel will forever remain 21 years old. A girl who collected sunsets, loved flowers, and simply wanted to live. They located a body. Investigators and the crime sim technicians arrived on the scene and began investigating shortly thereafter. When investigators arrived at the scene of a reported fire, they had no idea they were walking into a case that would change everything forever.
What they discovered was chilling to the bone. The body of 24year-old Jacqueline Ray Vanagri hadn’t just been burned. it had been dismembered. The killer then tried to incinerate the remains as if trying to erase the very fact that this person had ever existed. Jackie was just a regular college student who had walked into a bar that evening looking for some company and maybe a part-time job.
But lurking nearby was a man whom the system had given chance after chance, even though he had long proven to be a danger to society. And that is exactly why this case is about more than just murder. It’s about how a catastrophic failure of the system allowed it to happen in the first place.
Before we dive into the details, please take a moment to subscribe to the channel, hit the like button, and leave a comment below. It really helps the YouTube algorithm know that you enjoy this type of content and helps share it with others. Subscribed? Then let’s dive in. Jackalene Ray Vandergriff was born on April 11th, 1992 in Frisco, Texas.
By 2016, she was 24. From the age of three, Jackie did gymnastics, eventually reaching level 5 in state competitions. She wasn’t just an athletic kid. She was someone with grit and inner discipline from a very young age. the kind of person who sets a goal and goes after it. Her closest friend was also named Jackie.
Within their circle, they were affectionately known as Jackie squared. Her friend would later recall, “She was the smartest person I knew. She could accomplish anything she set her mind to. She met you exactly where you were, and around her, you could be completely yourself. Confident and outgoing, yet incredibly grounded and warm.
She wasn’t the type to pressure anyone or try too hard to impress. She was just entirely genuine. So, I’m really excited to be doing my first video. Um, I’ve been meaning to start incorporating social media into what I do for work and my job, and I haven’t really been good about that, but I think today would be a good time to start because I just did a little haul at Ulta.
So, um let’s start with my favorite product of all time is the Caravee uh foaming facial cleanser and the PM facial moisturizing lotion. Um I’ve been using these for like seven years. If I’ve ever helped you with skinincare stuff, I probably told you to buy them. Um just because I’ve tried so many other things and I always go back to them and they work really well.
Um they work for a lot of different skin types. Um, you could probably find some kind of uh face wash that would turn me into Beyonce or something and I would still be like, “No, I’ll take this every how much I like it.” Uh, I think that is it. Thank you for watching. Um, this is um the first of hopefully many videos.
So, if you have any ideas, um, anything you want to hear about, any questions that you would like me to address, or just any comments, um, leave a comment below or send me a message on Twitter if you’re watching this. You probably follow me on Twitter, so uh just send me a message and thank you for watching.
After high school in Frisco, Jackie earned her aesthetician license and began working in the beauty industry. Through her work, she quickly realized how deeply nutrition and overall health are connected to how a person looks and feels. It wasn’t just about applying creams.
It was about what happens on the inside. This sparked a passion in her and she decided to take it further. She enrolled at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, majoring in nutrition and food sciences. Her dream was to become a registered dietician to help people from the inside out. My name is Jacqueline Vandergri, but friends call me Jackie.
I am originally from the Colony, Texas, but I moved to Frisco when I was in elementary school and I graduated from Wakeland High School. I am currently a junior here at Texas Women’s University and my major is nutrition with an emphasis in wellness. As far as my career aspirations go, right now I’m most interested in corporate wellness.
I think more and more companies are starting to recognize the need to provide health resources for their employees. So, I think right now that’s where I’m wanting to go with my career. In this class, I hope to learn more about how to use the resources available to reach different individuals um and to communicate effectively with the amount of diversity that we have in our community as well as just building on my overall communication skills.
By early September 2016, everything seemed to be falling into place. She was a junior taking classes she loved, surrounded by friends, and making plans. Jackie had recently told her friends that she wanted to ditch dating apps and start socializing more in the real world to meet someone genuine face to face.
She was also looking for a part-time job to make some extra money and keep herself busy. On the evening of September 13th, 2016, less than 12 hours before she would be found, Jackie headed out to Fry Street in Denton. It’s a bustling area near the university campus, always packed with students, and full of networking opportunities.
She went there for the same reason many students do, to ask around about job openings, hand out her resume, and just be out in the community. but she would never make it back home. Her first stop that evening was the Fry Street Public House Tavern. Jackie sat at the bar and struck up a conversation with the bartender.
Before long, a stranger took a seat two stools down and naturally joined in. Three people, easy small talk, laughing, looking at something on their phones. To anyone watching, it looked like a completely normal, safe evening scene in a college bar. That stranger was Charles Dean Bryant, 30 years old, a personal trainer and bartender. But more on him in a moment.
The bartender, Jackie, and Bryant all stepped out around the same time. From there, Jackie and Bryant walked into a neighboring spot called Shots and Crafts. They sat together at the bar again, and soon a small group of women ended up next to them. For a while, everyone chatted, laughed, and hung out together.
It was the warm, carefree atmosphere of a typical night out. Those women would later tell investigators that Jackie seemed relaxed and happy. Nothing in her demeanor suggested any anxiety or discomfort. At 9:45 p.m., Jackie and Bryant left together. No one followed them. They got into his car and drove to a nearby gas station.
Surveillance footage captured Jackie in the passenger seat, calm and at ease. She didn’t know. She couldn’t have known. That was the last known footage of Jackie alive. The next day, September 14th, her Twitter account suddenly came to life. Never knew I could feel like this. But it wasn’t her writing it. While her social media account was being kept alive by someone else’s hands, a plastic kitty pool was already ablaze about 20 m outside of Denton.
And as firefighters arrived at the scene and realized what they had just stumbled upon, detectives began piecing together the last 24 hours of her life. Minute by minute, they located a body uh that appeared to have been had have been set on fire. Uh the body uh there is some degree of dismemberment to the body.
Uh investigators and crime scene technicians arrive on scene and began investigating shortly thereafter. Um we requested the response of the FBI evidence removal or recovery team uh to assist us in that investigation. When forensic experts began working the scene, it became clear that this wouldn’t be a routine identification.
The body was so badly damaged that determining even the sex and age seemed like a nearly impossible task. The fire had done its devastating work. However, enough skin had been preserved on the fingers. Forensic technicians managed to pull fingerprints and ran them through the databases.
After a short while, they got a hit and a name. Jacquellyn Ray Vandergriff, 24 years old, a student at Texas Woman’s University, registered as living in Denton, about 20 m away from where her body was discovered. There was nothing left with the body. No purse, no phone, no keys, no ID, not a single personal item.
It was as if she had arrived there without leaving a trace of who she was because someone had gone to great lengths to make it look that way. Investigators immediately began retracing the last 24 hours of her life. Where had she been? Who was she with? Where was she heading? Detectives made their way to the bars on Fry Street. The bartenders remembered her.
A pleasant young woman stopped by to ask about job openings, sat down, chatted. The women from Shots and Crafts also recalled that evening and the man who was by her side. And right there, the first real lead emerged. One of the women mentioned that he had handed her his business card. They had been talking about fitness.
He had introduced himself, Charles Dean Bryant, 30 years old, personal trainer and bartender. When investigators ran his name through the system, a picture began to take shape. And with every new line of data, it grew more and more alarming. He had a string of prior arrests over the years. Forgery, possession of marijuana, and misdemeanor assault.
But one thing stood out from his record in bold letters. He had been arrested three times for stalking and harassment. All targeting the exact same woman. Her name was Caitlyn. She was 18 years old. Just 3 days before Jackie’s body was found, a court had issued a restraining order against Charles, he was legally barred from going near Caitlyn, contacting her, or showing up anywhere she might be.
He violated that order. And that was part of the reason he had recently landed behind bars in the first place. As investigators dug deeper into Bryant’s background, they quickly realized one thing. He already had a history and that history was directly tied to the reason why Jackie ended up by his side that night. In June 2016, Charles met Caitlyn.
He was 29, she was 18. At first, he swept her off her feet. He was charming, attentive, and always knew exactly what to say and when to say it. He showed up with flowers. He said all the right things. One of their favorite date spots was Lake Grapevine. Yes, that exact same lake. But Caitlyn’s mother took one look at him and felt that something was off.
It wasn’t any specific action or word, just pure maternal intuition. She told her daughter bluntly, “He’s going to hurt you. He’s going to do something terrible to you.” Caitlyn heard her. But at first, she didn’t fully believe it. Before long, the red flags became impossible for Caitlyn to ignore. He constantly demanded to know where she was, who she was with, and what she was doing.
He would say one thing only for the truth to be completely different. He became increasingly controlling and toxic, refusing to respect her independence. She decided to end the relationship. Charles refused to accept it. He began messaging her from fake email accounts. He showed up everywhere she went. He started telling mutual acquaintances that Caitlyn was mentally unstable.
A textbook gaslighting tactic used by stalkers to destroy a victim’s credibility before she even starts speaking out. If everyone already thinks she’s crazy, who’s going to believe her? Caitlyn did exactly what she needed to do. She moved into a college dorm in Denton at the University of North Texas. a fresh start, a new chapter.
He didn’t know where she lived, or so she thought. And then a knock on the door. He was standing in the dorm hallway with a bouquet of flowers and a letter. Somehow, he had bypassed the front desk security. Caitlyn didn’t open the door. She hid in her closet and called the police. Sir 27, myself, a 443.
You have school here? No. What’s your name? He was arrested and taken away. But that very same day, he showed up on campus again. She heard his voice through the door. I heard him say, “Hey, it’s Charles. I’m sending for you.” You know, for sure it was him. Yeah, I know it was him. Two arrests in a single day.
Then another, a restraining order, and still he wouldn’t stop. Another woman who had dated Charles before, Caitlyn shared a remarkably similar story. They had only gone out a few times and hadn’t even kissed, but he was already telling her he loved her. Too much emotion, too fast, too intense, classic lovebombing.
He told her about his childhood, claiming he had been abused. She recalled feeling that while his trauma might have been real, being around him was deeply unsettling. Charles Bryant was a man who didn’t understand the word no. or rather he understood it and chose to consciously ignore it, which is far more dangerous.
Investigators immediately pulled the cell phone records. Geoloccation data revealed that after Jackie and Charles left the bar and were spotted at the gas station, both of their phones traveled north from Denton to Hlett near Lake Grapevine, where Charles lived. They were driving there together. At 10:56 p.m.
, Charles posted on Facebook, “Teach you tricks to blow your mind.” Jackie’s phone pinged near his house at 1:30 a.m. By 4:41 a.m., surveillance cameras captured Charles at a Walmart. He was buying a shovel along with cold medicine to keep himself alert. Less than 2 hours later, emergency responders were already rushing to Lake Grapevine.
When investigators executed a search warrant at Bryant’s home, they found far more than they had anticipated. In the trash, they found a bag bearing the Texas Woman’s University logo. The exact same bag Jackie had carried that evening. He hadn’t even bothered to properly dispose of it. He just threw it into a trash can behind the house.
In that same trash can, they found a white plastic zip tie with strands of Jackie’s hair caught in it. The exact same type of zip tie investigators believed was used to strangle her. They also found a knife, which was likely used to dismember the body. Inside Bryant’s car, they found the battery from her cell phone. The phone itself was missing.
He had apparently disposed of it separately, but the battery remained. Next to it was a stun gun. When tested, Jackie’s DNA was found on the electrodes, proving direct contact with her body. Then came another piece of evidence that confirmed what investigators already suspected. The blue kitty pool in which her body was found had been taken right from his own backyard.
He hadn’t searched for a disposal container. He just grabbed what was sitting outside. And to make matters worse, a search of his phone uncovered child sexual abuse material. Any single piece of evidence might have been explained away. But all of it together, the victim’s bag in the trash, her hair on the zip tie, her DNA on the stun gun, the body in his pool, and buying a shovel at 4 in the morning, left absolutely no room for a defense of panic or accidental death.
But there is one final detail that is incredibly difficult to just stomach and move past. The day after the murder, Charles logged into Facebook using Jackie’s phone. and he sent a friend request to Caitlyn. He used a dead girl’s phone to try and reach his ex, the very woman he was legally ordered to stay away from.
The woman detectives believe was the sole reason he went out to that bar that night in the first place. Because Charles had violated the restraining order and attempted to contact Caitlyn yet again, he was taken into custody on September 18th, 4 days after the body was discovered. While they already had enough to hold him, building a solid case was still going to be an uphill battle.
The body was so badly damaged by the fire that the exact cause of death couldn’t be determined. And that was exactly when they brought in someone who knew how to draw out far more from suspects than they ever intended to reveal. Jim Holland, a Texas Ranger with nearly 30 years of experience under his belt. his specialty, high-profile cases and crimes committed by psychopaths and sociopaths.
Over his decades of service, he had mastered one very specific deadly skill, making killers talk. Not through intimidation or screaming, but through something far more subtle. Jim used the opening minutes of the interrogation not to apply pressure, but to disarm Charles and ease his tension.
He spoke calmly, almost like a friend, as if the man sitting across from him wasn’t a murder suspect, but just a guy he could chat with about life, fitness, and discipline. This wasn’t just a casual approach. Jim was intentionally engineering an atmosphere where Charles would feel comfortable enough to start talking and ultimately reveal far more than he ever intended.
You know, you’re not a violent dude. You haven’t uh haven’t really been in trouble. You know, you obviously work out. I mean, you’re a stud, right? From that point on, the conversation slowly began to shift. Jim was no longer just building rapport. He was masterfully guiding Charles toward the night in question, probing into what exactly happened between him and Jackie, and why this entire story had landed on the police’s radar in the first place.
The key here was patience. The more calculated and steady Jim kept the pace, the less Charles realized how tightly the trap was closing around him. Was there a time that you pictured her as this girlfriend that did you wrong or did anything like that come into play? That’s when Jim began to tighten the screws, not with shouting, but with surgical precision and cold, hard facts.
It’s in moments like these that suspects usually do one of two things. They either trip over their own lies, or they frantically try to reshape their story to make themselves look less guilty. Charles was still trying to keep a poker face, maintaining his original narrative. But the more he talked, the more his story began to fracture.
And with every subsequent answer, he was only digging himself into a deeper hole. She didn’t fight you in any way when you were putting. So you think it just tightened up on it own basically that way had a snag on something. Okay. Then what happened? Responsive shaker. And then Jim zeros in on the very moment that renders Charles’s version of events completely indefensible.
This is where Charles starts talking too much, and with every phrase, it becomes glaringly obvious. This isn’t a man calmly and honestly describing an unforeseen tragedy. This is a man desperately scrambling to piece together a narrative that could somehow, at least on the surface, pass as an accident. What do you see in the pool? Now tell me exactly what you see occurring after that tree.
And what happens next? On fire. The fire. Why do you burn the body? And right here is a detail that I want you to listen to very closely. During the autopsy, forensic pathologists discovered something that chilled the entire courtroom to the bone during the trial. Jackie’s heart had been surgically removed from her body.
The prosecutors put the question bluntly, why? How could this possibly fit into a defense of panic and body disposal? It couldn’t. And when you look at the entire context, especially the fact that the very next day, Caitlyn received a friend request from the account of a girl who was already dead, everything begins to look significantly darker.
Investigators believe that Caitlyn was meant to be next, and Jackie was only the first victim. When Caitlyn learned of Charles’s arrest and saw Jackie’s name in the news, she went to Jackie’s Facebook profile and realized they were already connected as friends. Caitlyn later told investigators that she truly believed he intended to kill her, that she was supposed to be dead.
In her words, he had gone too far. Jim Holland later noted that Charles likely walked into that bar that night with the sole intention of killing someone. Jackie just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And on top of that, she bore a striking resemblance to his ex. Charles Bryant was charged with capital murder.
He pleaded not guilty later and now her accused killer is finally on trial. That’s right. Testimony started today in the trial of Charles Bryant Jr., the man seen with Jackie at the bar that night. Our David Goowens has been tweeting and updating us from the courtroom. He joins us now live with the latest from the court today.
Good afternoon, Cynthia. Testimony wrapped up here about uh 10 minutes ago. Jurors so far have heard descriptions, but have not yet seen surveillance video at a variety of Denton businesses that show Jackie Vandergriff with the man prosecutors say killed her hours later. This is my daughter, Jackie. On the stand today, Ricky Vandergri says it wasn’t like Jackie to not call or to make plans for her mom’s birthday.
It was on that day, just a few hours later, the couple learned that Jackie was dead. During opening statements, defense attorneys admit that Bryant did commit a crime by attempting to dispose of her body, but they told jurors that she died during what the defense called consensual sex in Bryant’s car. He wins out.
He is in the car with a young lady who has died in the during the course of sex. However, prosecutors plan to lay out Jackie’s final hours for jurors to show how Bryant took the vibrant 24-year-old out of a bar and away from her loved ones forever. Tragically, an evil, destructive figure stepped in front of her on that path.
Jurors on Tuesday are expected to see a lot of surveillance video in the courtroom. This trial is expected to last all week. Charles Bryant faces life in prison if he’s found guilty. The prosecution countered with a mountain of forensic evidence. Medical examinations showed no signs of consensual sexual contact.
Jackie’s DNA was on the stun gun. Her hair was caught in the zip tie and her personal belongings were scattered across his home and car. He had purchased a shovel at 4 in the morning, attempted to dig a grave in his backyard, and then burned the body in a kiddie pool before dumping the remains in a park. And on top of all that, he had removed her heart.
These were not the actions of a man in a panic. The judge ruled Caitlyn’s testimony about the stalking inadmissible, meaning a crucial part of the story was kept completely hidden from the jury. But the prosecutors played hard ball. Instead of relying solely on the lengthy interrogation tapes, they challenged Charles to take the stand and explain himself under oath.
He refused to testify, a move that only solidified his guilt in the eyes of everyone in the courtroom. A quick verdict in the murder of TWW student Jackie Vandergri. Taran County jurors taking just two hours to find Charles Bryant guilty and even less to sentence him to life in prison. That following the verdict, Jackie’s family stated that they had waited over 19 months for this day.
It wouldn’t bring her back, but it finally brought a sense of justice. In Frisco, community members gathered for a candlelight vigil, choosing to remember not the horrific tragedy, but Jackie herself. Her sharp intellect, her laughter, and her warmth. To ensure her legacy endures, her family established a memorial scholarship in her name at Texas Woman’s University, allowing her dream of helping others to live on.
Caitlyn still carries the heavy burden of knowing she was at the center of someone else’s tragic end. Yet, she had done everything right to protect herself and those around her. She contacted the police, secured a restraining order, moved away, and did everything possible to distance herself. The system saw how dangerous he was. It just failed to stop him until it was far too late.
Texas Ranger Jim Holland later reflected that this case held a dark significant place in his career. In his eyes, Charles Bryant exhibited the textbook behavior of a serial killer at the very beginning of his trajectory had he not been caught for what he did to Jackie. The veteran detective firmly believes he would have struck again.
Jackie Vandergri did absolutely nothing to deserve such a horrific fate. She was just living her life. studying, making plans, and chasing her dream of becoming a registered dietician. She went out on a normal evening to a normal bar, trusted a stranger, and went home with him because in that moment, it felt like a perfectly safe choice.
She deserved to make it back home, to graduate from college, and to live the life that was only just beginning. But that future was stolen from her by a man who refused to respect anyone’s boundaries. Jacqueline Ray Vandergri, 24 years old, Frisco, Texas. The taxi driver was waiting near the hotel entrance. He had been asked to wait just a short while.
The client had headed inside the hotel, leaving their luggage in the trunk of the car. Nobody ever returned. Instead, a foul odor began to emanate from the trunk. Inside the suitcase was a woman. She looked to be around 50 to 60 years old. She had been beaten to death in the luxury suite of a five-star hotel in Bali.
Her daughter, with whom she had flown out for the vacation, was 18 years old. The daughter’s boyfriend had delivered the blows. The daughter stood right next to him. Afterward, they packed the body away together, all for a $1.5 million inheritance. As long as the mother was alive, the money was out of reach. They found a solution.
This is not a thriller. This is a true story that made headlines around the world in 2014. What was going through the mind of an 18-year-old girl? How could she look her mother in the eye knowing she had already made her choice? and why is this case still dragging on in courts more than 10 years later. Today we are breaking it down to the very end.
We are about to begin. But first a small request. Please subscribe to the channel, leave a like and drop a comment letting us know for instance which city you are watching from. This helps the YouTube algorithms promote our content. Subscribed then let’s begin. The story of this tragedy is rooted in an upscale Chicago suburb in a respectable home that from the outside seemed like the very model of American prosperity.
The head of the family, James Mack, was a monumental figure, an iconic composer, arranger, and conductor who had worked on the creation of over 60 classical and jazz music albums. His wife Sheila Vanisa Mak perfectly matched her husband’s status. An elegant socialite possessing impeccable taste, she collected rare historical books, was highly knowledgeable about vintage wines and was famous for her ability to host lavish home receptions.
Family friends recalled that an atmosphere of warmth and hospitality always rained in their home. Sheila genuinely loved gathering people around her, and every guest felt welcome. The birth of their only daughter, Heather, was a true blessing for the middle-aged couple. The girl was quite literally showered with parental love and material wealth.
From an early age, all the walls of the house were covered with her photographs, and she grew up in an atmosphere of absolute adoration. Heather formed a special bond with her father. She was a typical daddy’s girl, sharing his passion for art, theater, music, and ballet. However, this ideal picture of the world began to crumble in 2006.
During a sea cruise, James suddenly fell gravely ill. An infection caused a terrible complication in his spinal cord, permanently confining the successful musician to a wheelchair. A few years later, the elderly composer was given a new fatal diagnosis, terminal colon cancer. In an attempt to give her fading husband some rest and warmth, Sheila organized a trip to Greece.
It was there in Athens that an event occurred that completely altered 10-year-old Heather’s psyche. While Sheila was away from the hotel room, a blood clot broke loose in James’s lung. The man stopped breathing and passed away almost instantly right in front of his young daughter. In the girl’s mind, the shock she experienced transformed into a monstrous aggression directed at her mother.
Heather flatly refused to accept what had happened as a tragic accident and blamed Sheila for everything. For years, she claimed that her mother had literally forced her sick father to go on this trip against his will, which ultimately led to his death. Left alone, the mother and daughter found themselves locked in a cycle of ceaseless family warfare.
The older Heather grew, the more unmanageable and dangerous her character became. She categorically rejected any attempts by Sheila to establish any kind of boundaries or rules. Teenage rebellion quickly escalated into criminal behavior. Heather began systematically skipping classes, joy riding in her mother’s car, stealing large sums of money from family bank accounts, and spending nights in shady company.
Expulsion from school soon followed, as well as at least two terminated pregnancies as a minor and regular run-ins with the police for public intoxication and disorderly conduct. But the real nightmare was unfolding inside their mansion, hidden from the eyes of high society. Heather suffered from uncontrollable fits of rage.
According to official reports, the police were called to Sheila’s house an incredible 86 times over the course of several years due to domestic violence inflicted by her daughter. The young woman regularly raised her hand against her mother, biting and beating her. During one of these violent arguments, Heather forcefully pushed the elderly woman, causing Sheila to fall and break her arm.
Despite urgings from the sheriff and relatives to send the aggressive teenager to a juvenile correctional facility, Sheila dropped the charges every single time. Having survived the death of her husband, she was terrified of losing her daughter as well, hoping that the aggression could be cured with love. Heather herself later tried to slander her mother to journalists, claiming that Sheila was a secret alcoholic and suffered from mental disorders, though no one within the family circle ever confirmed this.
Sheila understood perfectly well that the situation had reached a dead end. In a letter to a close friend, she wrote in horror, “Heather was extremely cruel to me again today. I am truly terrified to be around her. The doctors at the psychiatric clinic insisted on her immediate involuntary hospitalization, but she would never comply.
This life of constant fear has become my new awful norm. I’m afraid of what she will do next time. The situation reached a point of no return when 18-year-old Heather met 21-year-old Tommy Schaefer. Tommy marketed himself as an upandcoming rapper, but in reality, he didn’t have a dime to his name and drifted through semi-criminal circles.
A volatile and deeply toxic romance sparked between them. Sheila immediately recognized the young man as a massive threat to her daughter. Understanding that he only fed her worst impulses, Tommy behaved provocatively, openly demonstrated his hatred toward Sheila, and egged Heather on into new conflicts. But the ultimate motive behind their union was a colossal amount of money.
Before his death, James Mack had altered his will, leaving his daughter a vast fortune, around $1 million in various assets and 1.5 million in a trust account. However, Heather could only gain control over this money after her mother’s passing. A horrific plan began to brew in the minds of the young couple. They started viewing Sheila as the sole obstacle on their path to a life of luxury.
In their chat logs, they romanticized the upcoming crime, calling each other Bonnie and Clyde, and openly discussed methods of physically eliminating the woman to secure the inheritance. Sheila, entirely unaware that her daughter and her boyfriend were planning her murder in meticulous detail, decided to make one last attempt to save their relationship.
She booked a 10-day tour to Bali at the luxurious five-star St. Regis Resort, hoping that a vacation by the ocean would help them grow closer. They flew business class, and Heather posed in joint photos, hugging her mother. To outsiders, it seemed that peace had finally returned to the family, but this was nothing more than a cynical facade.
Inside the hotel room, the arguments raged with their usual intensity. And at that very moment, Heather was already coordinating the movements of Tommy, who was flying out to join them on the island. When the police later cracked the conspirator’s smartphones, a chilling picture unfolded before them. It was revealed that Heather had been looking for a contract killer among her Chicago acquaintances 6 months prior to the trip, offering $50,000 for her mother’s elimination.
Just days before the flight, Tommy was sending her messages proposing to drown Sheila in the pool or suffocate her with a pillow while she slept. On August 8th, already in Bali, Sheila sent a panicked email to her friend Elliot. Heather ran away from the hotel a few hours ago. I found out that she secretly visited a local clinic and forged my signature to prescribe herself a batch of strong narcotic painkillers.
I am more terrified than I have ever been before. The next day, Tommy Schaefer arrives in Bali. his $12,000 business class ticket and an expensive room on a higher floor of the same hotel were paid for with a bank card that Heather had secretly stolen from her mother’s purse. Tommy drank heavily throughout the entire flight and upon checking in proceeded to empty the hotel mini bars.
During the day, the lovers conspicuously pretended not to know each other passing by one another on the beach. but all the while maintained continuous contact through messaging apps verifying their plans minute by minute. Around 3:00 in the morning, Sheila, discovering that her daughter was once again missing from the room, panicked and went down to the reception desk.
Camera footage captured the agitated woman finding Heather in the lobby, taking her by the hand and leading her back to the room. These were the final images of Sheila Vanwisamac alive. Once locked in the room, Heather and Tommy, located just a few meters apart, continued exchanging text messages. They egged each other on, discussing in detail how they would spend the millions after the murder.
Originally, Heather herself was supposed to deliver the fatal blows. Tommy texted her, “Try to do it yourself. Can you hit her on the head with some kind of heavy pipe? Heather replied that she would frame everything as an accident, making it look as though her mother had overindulged in alcohol and fallen. She wrote, “I know how this witch works.
I’ve watched her routine for years. Don’t underestimate me. I am very cunning and smart. Trust your Bonnie.” At the very last moment, Heather’s nerves failed, and she stated that she could not complete the plan alone. Tommy then took a heavy glass fruit bowl with a massive metal handle from his room, hid it under his t-shirt, and went down to their suite.
Sheila was already asleep at the time. Heather threw herself onto her mother, covering her face with a pillow to muffle her screams, while Tommy meticulously and with immense force delivered blows to the woman’s head with the glass object. Experts would later count no fewer than 12 strikes. Once convinced that Sheila was dead, the couple wrapped the body in blood soaked bed linens and attempted to stuff it into a small travel suitcase.
To close the zipper, Heather had to quite literally jump up and down on top of the lid. An hour later, security cameras captured the couple calmly wheeling the suitcase toward the exit. A regular Indonesian taxi driver was waiting for them by the main entrance. Heather and Tommy loaded the massive piece of luggage into the trunk of the car, after which they returned to the hotel lobby under the pretext of having forgotten some documents, promising to return in a couple of minutes.
Time passed. The clock’s hand made a full rotation, yet the passengers never reappeared. Losing his patience, the driver stepped out of the vehicle and walked over to the trunk, intending to remove the remaining belongings. But the moment he opened the lid, horror struck him. Thick, dark blood was slowly seeping from the seams of the suitcase.
Overcome with panic, the man slammed the trunk shut and sped off at maximum speed toward the nearest police station. The officers who opened the luggage discovered the mutilated body of the elderly American woman. A forensic medical examination would later establish that Sheila did not die from the skull fractures themselves.
The facial injuries were so severe that blood blocked her airways and the woman simply suffocated inside the suitcase. The hotel administration confirmed to the police that 19-year-old Heather had hastily left the premises without reporting her mother’s disappearance. She could not fly off the island as her passport had been locked in the hotel safe by Sheila. The clock was ticking.
Just a day later, the police tracked down the suspects. The couple had made a foolish mistake. They hid in a cheap motel nearby, registering under their real names and paying with the murdered woman’s credit card. Early in the morning, an operative posing as a housekeeper knocked on their room door. As soon as a sleepy Tommy cracked the door open, special forces stormed inside.
Once handcuffed, the pair attempted to claim that masked armed robbers had broken into their suite at night and brutally beaten Sheila while they had miraculously managed to escape. However, in a closed luxury resort with a strict security system, this story crumbled to pieces within the first minutes of verification. Global media exploded with headlines about the arrest of the American teenagers for the brutal murder of the mother at the resort.
A 19-year-old woman and her 21-year-old boyfriend have been arrested after police discovered the body of the woman’s mother stuffed inside a suitcase on the resort island of Bali. The victim has been identified as 62-year-old Sheila Van Whis Mack of Chicago and police have taken her daughter Heather Mack and her daughter’s boyfriend Tommy Schaefer into custody.
Authorities say the suitcase was discovered Tuesday inside the trunk of this taxi which was parked in front of a resort hotel on the island. Investigators say all three had been staying at the same hotel. The situation grew more complicated when a medical examination following the arrest revealed that Heather was pregnant with Tommy’s child.
The trial in Bali turned into a massive media circus. Heather, with her rounded belly, sat on the defendant’s bench next to her pale, trembling boyfriend. Both of them officially faced execution. In Indonesia, premeditated murder carries the death penalty. There are no jury trials in the country. Everything was decided by a panel of three professional judges who focused primarily on the defendant’s cynical actions following the commission of the crime.
The court entirely dismissed the defense’s arguments of self-defense or a sudden fit of passion. A brief recess was called in the trial for childbirth. Heather gave birth to a baby girl whom they named Stella. Ultimately, the judges showed relative leniency. swapping execution for lengthy prison sentences.
Tommy, as the direct perpetrator, received 18 years in a maximum security prison, while Heather, for her complicity and assistance in the murder, received 10 years. The young woman was sent to the infamous Indonesian prison, Koboken. Yet, contrary to expectations, her life behind bars hardly resembled suffering. Heather managed to use smartphones, regularly uploading videos online where she danced, smoked, hosted prison parties, and ordered fast food.
Looking at these clips, it was difficult to believe that this smiling individual was serving time for murder. Jalan Jalan in the jail. I want to go to the beach today. Let’s go to the beach. You’re losing your hair. Do you want to drink? Stella is losing her hair. Seriously, why? Maybe it’s the food.
Maybe it’s the Coke. All the Indonesians think I’m crazy for drinking Coke. Maybe they’re on this Sunday Coca-Cola. She’s already That’s going to be all over the news. Now I’m never going to get out of jail. What case are you guys here for? Little Stella spent the first two years of her life in the cell with her mother.
Heather eagerly gave interviews to Western tabloids, making up fantastic new versions of the events each time. In one interview, she claimed that Sheila had lunged at her with a knife upon learning about the pregnancy and that Tommy was merely protecting her. In another video, Heather suddenly took all the blame upon herself, stating into the camera with completely glassy eyes, “I don’t regret killing my mother.
” As wild as it sounds, that is my reality. With every cell of my body, I wanted her dead. When I was 10 years old, she was the one who killed my father in Greece. I don’t regret killing my mother. And as evil as that may sound, that’s my reality. In my heart, in my mind, my soul, in my blood, in the oxygen running through my body that I wanted to kill my mother.
When I was 10, my mother killed my father in a hotel in Athens, Greece. We spoke to family friend Elliot Jacobson, who says Heather’s claims are nonsense. It’s the kind of statement that doesn’t even warrant the response. It’s such an absurdity. He showed me this death certificate for Heather’s father, James Mack.
It gives the cause of death as pulmonary ambolism, a blood clot in the lungs. Why do you think she’s lying about this? Heather was never easy to figure out. I just think she’s unhinged. I also think in this video that she’s under some kind of opiate, uh, heroin or cocaine. I regret trapping an innocent person into this because it was my battle.
It’s my mother. It was my father. Friends of the Mack family called these statements absolute nonsense. Presenting the official medical certificate where the cause of James Mack’s death was listed as a pulmonary embolism. Journalists who spoke with Heather noted that during these confessions the young woman was likely under the influence of heavy prison drugs.
Tommy Schaefer, by contrast, behaved exemplarily in his colony, demonstrating sincere remorse. He turned down the opportunity to apply for parole, stating that he was obligated to serve his sentence in full. At the same time, he emphasized that Heather was the ultimate puppeteer and manipulator, without whose demonic influence he would have never committed the crime.
Meanwhile, a custody battle over little Stella unfolded in the United States. Tommy’s mother tried to bring her granddaughter back to Chicago, but Heather blocked this decision through her lawyers. When the girl turned two, local laws dictated that she be taken from her mother and handed over to a Balan foster family.
Around the same time, Tommy’s cousin, Robert Bibs, was convicted in America. He had helped the couple plan the murder via text messages from the US, expecting to receive a cut of the future inheritance. He was sentenced to 9 years. In October 2021, after serving just over seven years, Heather Mack was released for good behavior.
Elated by her success, she retrieved Stella from her foster parents and planned to remain in Bali to start fresh with a clean slate. However, Indonesian authorities firmly put her in her place. As a convicted felon, she was subject to immediate mandatory deportation. Heather purchased tickets to Los Angeles, hoping to blend in and disappear in California.
Yet, American Justice had not forgotten the blood of Sheila Vonisamac. Good morning. Heather Mack is scheduled to land here at O’Hare around 9:30 this morning. And while her legal troubles overseas may be over, they may be just beginning here in the States. Brian Clayool has been Mack’s US-based attorney for the past 5 years.
The Tribune is reporting Mack was ordered to return to Chicago instead of her planned destination of LA. It is likely she will be met at O’Hare by FBI agents. We will vigorously fight any attempt by the US government to charge Heather with a crime stemming from her mother’s murder. A former federal prosecutor says it is unlikely Mack will face additional charges in the US.
She was convicted. by a competent uh jurisdiction overseas, was sentenced to 10 years, served seven, but her sentence uh was not too dissimilar uh depending on the facts that might have happened here in the States. Mac and Schaefer’s six-year-old daughter, Stella, is also heading back to the States.
She had been living with a foster family in Indonesia. Mac’s attorney says a guardian will be here for her when she lands, but it’s unclear if Mac will ever get full custody of her daughter. It would all come down uh to those components of whether or not it’s safe for the child to live with someone who was just convicted of murder.
US laws allow for the prosecution of its citizens for the murder of Americans, even if committed on the other side of the world. While Heather was flying over the ocean, federal prosecutors in Chicago had already signed a warrant for her arrest. The moment the plane’s landing gear touched the tarmac at O’Hare International Airport, FBI agents boarded the aircraft, Heather was led off in handcuffs right in front of her six-year-old daughter.
Her lawyers attempted to appeal to the principle of double jeopardy, arguing that the young woman had already paid her debt to society in an Indonesian prison. But American Themis was unrelenting. Conspiracy to commit murder on US soil is a distinct severe federal crime that carries a potential life sentence. After this video was taken, Aerys Heather Mack was arrested when she landed at O’Hare airport in Chicago today.
The charge, conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and stuffing her mom’s body into a suitcase during their vacation on the island paradise. As seen in this dailymail.com video, Heather was accompanied by her six-year-old daughter, Stella, who was born behind bars. She will likely be behind bars for at least 6 months until we can try to have the charges thrown out.
I get a phone call, hey, federal authorities have gotten involved. The FBI is involved. They’re diverting Heather and her child, Stella, to Chicago. Heather and her daughter were accompanied on the deportation flight by the foster mom who has been raising Stella. Do you think that Stella is the real victim here? It is heartbreaking.
Kia Walker is the mother of Heather Mac’s boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, who’s serving 18 years for the slaying in Bali. I want custody of my granddaughter. Stella has family here. She has me. Stella was temporarily placed in the custody of relatives while Heather found herself in an American federal holding facility.
Two years of investigation stripped her of the remnants of her youthful arrogance. Realizing that the prospect of dying in a cell loomed ahead in June 2023, 27year-old Heather Mack entered a plea bargain and fully plead guilty to conspiracy to kill a US national abroad. In January 2024, a Chicago district court put a final end to this nightmare case spanning 10 long years.
Heather Mack was sentenced to 26 years of imprisonment in a US federal prison. Years after police say she helped kill her mother at a resort in Indonesia, Heather Mack has pleaded guilty to charges related to her mother’s death. She went before a judge earlier this morning to avoid going to trial. CBS 2’s Lauren Victory was in the courtroom and is following the case.
Heather Mack faced life in prison. 28 years is the Mac she’ll serve. According to this plea deal, the judge now needs to decide if he accepts those terms. And if he decides Mac needs to be behind bars for more than 28 years, Mack can withdraw her plea and go to trial. She’s certainly not the same person she was. She’s much more mature.
Uh she’s much more empathetic. Um, she’s grown as a human just like we all would do over the course of 10 years. We’re all very different people from 18 to 28. We are hopeful for a sentence that more appropriately reflects the heeness and premeditated nature of the crime. That was Sheila Van Whis’s brother speaking.
The family says they are relieved that she plead guilty. This time in the courtroom, Heather wept real tears. She addressed the relatives of her late mother with words of apology. I can’t take back what I did. that I’m no longer that crazy 18-year-old girl. Having become a mother myself, I finally understand how deeply and unconditionally my mom loved me.
The brother of the murdered Sheila told journalists that this was the first time in 10 years they had heard even a shred of remorse from Heather, though it did not diminish their grief. Heather Mack said tearfully the worst punishment she’s had to endure is living every day with what she’s done. She apologized to her family members and said if she could take away all of this, she would.
That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Heather apologize, and I did appreciate that. Heather Mac’s family referring to the statement she made in court, tearfully apologizing to them. Mac said in part, “Becoming a mother herself helped her understand her own mother.” Today, Heather Mack is in a maximum security American federal prison.
There is no more Balan freedom here. No cigarettes, dancing, or fast food. It is a cramped cell, a rigid routine, a lack of sunlight, and long years alone with her conscience. Tommy Schaefer is still serving time in Bali with his sentence set to expire around 2033. But an identical criminal case has already been opened against him in the US as well, meaning that upon his release in Indonesia, an immediate extradition to an American prison awaits him.
Little Stella is currently living with Heather’s cousin in the state of Colorado. The child born within prison walls lost her grandmother, her father, and her mother to blind, irrational teenage greed. A story that began as a rebellion against parental control under the banner of a lifelong Bonnie and Clyde.
Love predictably ended in complete devastation, shattered destinies, and a suitcase drenched in a mother’s blood in the rooms of a luxury hotel.
