A seven-months' pregnant teen accused of murdering her socialite mother is now suing for access to her late mom's $1.6 million estate for her defense fund.
Heather Mack, 19, is facing execution by firing squad in Bali, Indonesia, if found guilty of killing Sheila von Wiese-Mack, 62, whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase outside a luxury hotel last August.
On Thursday, a day after she made a preliminary court appearance to be charged with pre-meditated murder, Miss Mack, of Chicago, sued her uncle William Wiese, to release money to pay for her lawyers.
The 19-year-old alleged that Mr Wiese, who has become trustee of the estate, has denied her access to the money of which her mother made her sole beneficiary in May, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The teen had originally asked for $300,000 but cut that amount in half, according to the court filing, and asked that Mr Wiese, who is an attorney, hand the money over to the U.S. Consulate.
The filing read: 'Said legal funds are a necessity to preserve Heather's life.'
Mr Wiese has so far refused to release the money and has made no comment other than to previously tell The Tribune that the family wants the teenager to receive a fair trial.
He also said that his 62-year-old sister deeply loved her daughter and had hoped that a luxury vacation could help mend their broken relationship.
A court hearing over the estate is expected to take place on Friday.
Heather Mack and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, 21, who is also from Chicago, stand accused of killing Mrs Wiese-Mack after her brutally-beaten body was discovered in a suitcase placed in the trunk of a taxi.
On Wednesday, Miss Mack, who wore a loose white shirt over her large baby bump, and her lover arrived in handcuffs for the hearing at a court in Denpasar on the Indonesian resort island.
The 19-year-old also had a red string tied around her engagement ring-finger as she waited behind
The pair have been given separate trials on charges of premeditated murder, which carry a maximum sentence of the death penalty.
Mack and Schaefer said on Wednesday that they understood the charges. They are to enter pleas when the trial resumes next week.
Senior Police Commissioner Djoko Hariutomo told Daily Mail Online in December: ‘If they are both convicted of murder they could face the death penalty. There is evidence here of premeditation.’
The judges and prosecutors are the same in both trials.
In their indictments, prosecutors said the couple plotted to kill Mrs von Wiese-Mack because she did not endorse their relationship.
Mack once suggested that Schaefer hire someone to kill her mother for $50,000 before their visit to Bali, according to prosecutors.
On Wednesday, the couple were brought from holding cells having been transferred to the island’s notorious Kerobokan Prison in December ahead of the court appearance.
Their lawyers planned to submit defense pleas when the trial resumes next week.
Mack and her mother arrived in Bali on August 4 and stayed in Kuta before moving to the St. Regis hotel in Nusa Dua, where they planned to stay until August 14.
Schaefer arrived August 12 and stayed at the same hotel in a room booked by Mack under her mother's name.
Prosecutors said that made Mack's mother angry and led to an argument in which Mrs von Wiese-Mack, who was white, scolded Schaefer, using a racial slur.
Schaefer is black, as was Mack's father, James L. Mack, a highly-regarded jazz and classical composer who died in 2006.
They said Schaefer then battered her with the iron grip of a fruit bowl. Security camera video showed the victim earlier having an argument with Schaefer in the hotel lobby.
The indictment said the couple hired a taxi and placed the suitcase containing the body in the trunk and told the driver they were going to check out of the hotel and would return, but never did.
The young couple were arrested on August 13 after checking into another hotel following the gruesome discovery of Mrs von Wiese-Mack outside the St Regis Hotel.
Police claim the pair plotted Mrs von Wiese-Mack's murder also because of another argument between Miss Mack and her mother over money.
Other evidence submitted to prosecutors included CCTV footage showing the couple speaking to a taxi driver after dropping the bloodied suitcase along with other luggage outside the hotel.
Bali police Col. Djoko Hariutomo said that officers had questioned 12 witnesses and that their case included information from the FBI.
Officers brought the physical evidence to the prosecutors in large sacks, including the iron grip of a fruit bowl alleged to be the weapon used in the slaying, and several computer hard drives containing hotel surveillance camera videos.
But the lawyer for the teenager claims that the killing was not premeditated and that she had hid in the bathroom while her mother was bludgeoned to death in her hotel room.
According to a statement Miss Mack has given to police, she had no part in her mother’s murder, but went along with helping her boyfriend move the body out of a sense of duty because he was the father of her unborn baby, who is due in March.
The account she has given to police - which her lawyer Mr Raja Nasution hopes will result in her receiving a lesser charge - paints a picture of a terrified young woman who waited in terror in the bathroom of room 317 while her boyfriend and her mother had a furious argument which resulted in Mrs Mack being beaten to death.
In December, Miss Mack told reporters from her cell: 'My baby is a girl, she is fine.
'I want her to stay in Bali so she can visit me anytime while I'm in jail.'
At the time a police spokesman said that Miss Mack would continue to be under medical observation while in Kerobokan Prison because she is pregnant and due to give birth in March.
Mack and her mother had a troubled relationship and von Wiese-Mack had frequently reported that her daughter punched and bit her, according to police reports cited by Chicago media.
Von Wiese-Mack had recently moved to a condominium in Chicago. Her husband, and Heather's father, classical music composer James Mack, died in 2006.
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