Atty: Bali murder suspect denied private talks with lawyers

BALI, Indonesia - An American teen accused of killing her mother on Indonesia's Bali island is being prohibited from meeting privately with her legal team in Indonesia, her U.S.-based lawyer said, according to Reuters.

Michael Elkin, the Chicago-based attorney representing 18-year-old Heather Mack, is reportedly pushing for Indonesian authorities to allow his client to meet with her local legal advisers and investigators in private. Elkin has previously said that his client is two months pregnant and has raised concerns about her treatment in custody. He has also said she is innocent of any involvement in her mother's death.

Mack and her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, have been declared suspects in the killing of Mack's 62-year-old mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, whose body was found Aug. 12 stuffed into a suitcase in a taxi outside the St. Regis hotel in Bali. The couple was arrested the next day at a hotel about six miles away.

Naming someone a suspect is a formal step under Indonesian criminal law meaning police are preparing to bring charges. Officials said they could include premeditated murder, which carries a maximum sentence of death.

Bali police chief Maj. Gen. Benny Mokalu said a motive for the killing has not been established, but that witnesses reported that there was a disagreement between the three over who should pay for the hotel rooms.

An Indonesian lawyer appointed to the couple, Haposan Sihombing, said last week that the suspects were being held under a suicide watch and were still refusing to talk to investigators.

After their arrest, Mack and Schaefer told police that von Wiese-Mack was killed by robbers, while they managed to escape. Security camera video showed that the victim earlier had an argument with Schaefer in the first hotel's lobby.

According to police records in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, officers were called 86 times in 10 years to the house where von Wiese-Mack and her daughter once lived. The records, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, indicated that von Wiese-Mack was repeatedly and violently abused by the daughter.

Von Wiese-Mack was the widow of highly regarded jazz and classical composer James L. Mack, who died in 2006 at age 76.