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 Police arrested the daughter, Heather Mack, 19, and her boyfriend,
Tommy Schaefer, 21, on Wednesday after a taxi driver found a
battered body in a suitcase outside the St. Regis luxury hotel in
Nusa Dua, Bali.
The body was identified by hospital officials as Chicago-based
Sheila von Wiese-Mack, 62.
Neither Mack nor Schaefer has been charged but police have detained
them as suspects.
"We have done blood and psychiatric tests to try to find out their
motive in the case, maybe they are mentally unstable," Djoko
Hariutomo, police chief for Bali's provincial capital Denpasar, told
reporters.
"So far we haven't gotten any information on what is behind the
murder. Is it financial or something else? We don't know."
Television broadcast images of Mack, dressed in a pale grey hoodie
and denim shorts, laughing and telling a group of reporters
following her, "You are crazy," as she walked between rooms in the
police station.
 Police said the young couple on Tuesday left a bloodied suitcase and
other luggage in the taxi, and went to check out of the five-star
hotel, where a single room can cost as much as $1,340 a night.
The couple did not return, so the taxi driver checked the luggage
and found the body. An official at the hospital that conducted the
autopsy said von Wiese-Mack had been repeatedly hit on the face and
head with a blunt object.
A St. Regis hotel official said the incident was believed to have
taken place in a room booked by Schaefer.
HANDCUFFS
Mack and Schaefer were apprehended on Wednesday at a budget hotel
about 1.6 km (1 mile) from the St. Regis hotel after a day-long
search by police.
Staff at the Risata Bali resort said they were immediately
suspicious of the couple after they checked in without luggage.
Risata Bali security confirmed their identities after Schaefer asked
resort staff for a voucher to use the Internet and they alerted
authorities, said Nyoman Wija, a hotel manager.
Police have appointed an Indonesian lawyer to represent the couple,
but they have asked for U.S. legal representation.
"She doesn't want to comment on the incident and she declined to
give any information," Haposan Sihombing, an Indonesian lawyer
appointed by police to represent Mack, told Reuters late on
Wednesday.
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"She kept asking to be represented by a lawyer from the United
States," Sihombing said.
The U.S. State Department is aware of reports of a U.S. citizen's
death in Bali and the arrests of two people in connection with the
case, said a State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf.
She declined to give details due to privacy considerations.
"Obviously we are monitoring it and will provide any consular access
as appropriate," Harf said.
An official with the U.S. consulate general in Bali, who met Mack at
the police station on Thursday, declined to comment after the
meeting.
The Mack family lived for a number of years in the Chicago suburb of
Oak Park, Illinois.
Oak Park spokesman David Powers said on Wednesday police responded
to 86 calls from the Mack home due to incidents between mother and
daughter from 2004 through to June 2013.
No arrests were ever made from the calls, which were a combination
of reports of domestic violence, theft, missing person and 911
hang-ups, Powers said.
Von Wiese-Mack more recently had moved to a condominium in Chicago.
Her husband, and Heather's father, classical music composer James
Mack, died in 2006.
Laura Voigt, a pianist in Oak Park and friend of James Mack, said
she remembered seeing mother and daughter fight outside the local
high school one morning.
"I was worried about Sheila," Voigt said.
Von Wiese-Mack had worked as an editor for famed oral historian
Studs Terkel and later studied with Nobel literature laureate Saul
Bellow at the University of Chicago.
Georgia Parchem, a neighbour and friend in Oak Park, said von
Wiese-Mack was a "lovely, charming woman" and the Macks often held
parties involving "artists and friends from all over the city".
(Additional reporting by Wayan Sukarda in NUSA DUA; Writing by Randy
Fabi; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez)
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