Heather Mack, center, of the U.S. is escorted by immigration guards to the immigration detention house in Jimbaran, on the resort island of Bali on Oct. 29, 2021. (Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP/Getty Images/AFP via Getty Images)

       The FBI directed Heather Mack to return to Chicago and not Los Angeles as she’d originally planned following her release from prison in Bali for helping to murder her mother at a resort in 2014, her lawyer told the Tribune late Tuesday.

       Mack was scheduled to land at O’Hare International Airport at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday on a flight from South Korea, where she likely will be detained by authorities, California-based attorney Brian Claypool said.

       Whether she’ll face criminal charges or simply questioning about her mother’s death remained to be seen, Claypool said. But either way, he accused federal authorities of making a “spectacle” out of her return to the U.S., which he said forced her to make alternate travel arrangements for her daughter, Stella, who is now 6.

       “Let’s do this the right way, not in front of everybody, in front of the whole world,” Claypool said in a telephone interview. “They were playing hide-and-seek. Everything about how this has been handled has been inappropriate and reprehensible.”

       The FBI in Chicago had no immediate comment on Claypool’s remarks.

       Mack, 26, was released from prison in Indonesia and ordered deported earlier this week after serving seven years and two months of a 10-year sentence for helping to kill her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, and stuff her body in a suitcase at the upscale St. Regis Bali Resort.

       Her return comes amid a federal investigation that court records show remained open despite Mack’s conviction for the murder overseas. The Chicago Tribune has reported that as recently as 2017, the FBI had filed search warrants for Mack’s cell phone that had been seized from her after her arrest by authorities in Bali.

       Whatever awaits Mack when she steps off the plane Wednesday will mark a new chapter in a case that has captured worldwide attention ever since the body von Wiese-Mack, 62, was found inside a bloodied suitcase in the trunk of a taxi in August 2014.

       Mack was convicted in 2015 of helping her boyfriend kill her mother in order to gain access to a $1.5 million trust fund set up after her father’s death. Mack was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released early for good behavior. Her then-boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, who admitted to fatally beating Weise-Mack, was sentenced to 18 years and remains behind bars.

       Mack and von Weise-Mack had a troubled relationship, the Tribune reported in 2014 based on police reports and statements from neighbors. The mother filed dozens of complaints against her daughter for battery, theft, truancy and missing person reports in Oak Park and, later, after the two moved to a Chicago high-rise condo along the lakefront in 2013.

       Despite her conviction, the FBI had filed a search warrant in January 2017 seeking to extract information from Mack’s phone as part of an ongoing investigation into the murder in part “to determine whether additional people may have been aware of and involved in the conspiracy.”

       Federal prosecutors in Chicago, meanwhile, charged Schaefer’s cousin, Robert Bibbs, for helping in the murder plot. The FBI learned of Bibbs’ involvement after analyzing text messages found on Schaefer’s phone.

       Bibbs, 31, is serving a nine-year prison sentence in Michigan for coaching the defendants on how to carry out the murder in return for a share of the anticipated multimillion-dollar estate. He is eligible for parole Dec. 26, 2024.

       Tribune reporters Christy Gutowski and Stephanie Casanova and The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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