Page 2 - Lisa Hellmann News Today

Heather Mack’s lawyers hope to convince a federal judge Thursday to release the 27-year-old pending trial, giving Mack what would be her first taste of...

A federal judge rejected Mack’s request to be released pending trial. It would have been Mack’s first taste of freedom since her mother’s body was discovered in a bloody suitcase left outside a posh Indonesian resort in 2014.

Mack, 26, appeared in Illinois state court on Monday for proceedings to determine custody arrangements for her daughter, seven-year-old Estelle Schaefer, who goes by Stella.

Heather Mack, awaiting trial for the Bali murder of her Chicago socialite mom, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in alleged plot for her trust fund, requests release, custody of her daughter.

The future of Heather Mack’s daughter has been uncertain since her arrival with Mack in the United States a little more than a year ago. Mack spent seven years in Indonesian custody for helping murder her own mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack.

Estelle Schaefer, 7, has become the subject of a bitter custody battle before Cook County Judge Stephanie Miller.

A Cook County judge ordered Heather Mack’s 7-year-old daughter into the temporary care of a maternal cousin of Mack’s from Colorado at the end of a contentious, hourslong hearing Thursday — despite Mack asking the judge from jail to choose the girl’s grandmother instead.

Mack’s daughter is at the center of an ongoing bench trial. A bitter custody dispute has swirled around the girl ever since she arrived here with her mother last fall.

Four people are seeking custody of 7-year-old Estelle Schaefer, known as Stella, in the trial before Cook County Judge Stephanie Miller. Mack and her onetime boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, are charged in federal court with plotting the overseas murder of Mack’s mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack.

A Cook County judge on Friday ruled that the 7-year-old daughter of Heather Mack will temporarily live in suburban Cook County with her foster mother from Indonesia.