Jakarta - Indonesian prosecutors on Monday said they would decide as early as this month whether to formally charge a US man and his girlfriend with killing the woman's mother, whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase on the resort island of Bali in August.
Tommy Schaefer and Heather Mack, both from Chicago, were arrested and detained after the battered body of Sheila von Weise-Mack was found in a bloody suitcase outside a luxury hotel.
Bali police completed a four-month investigation into the incident, submitting all of their evidence to prosecutors. Under Indonesian law, charges follow an investigation.
“The earliest we can make a decision on whether to send them to court is 20 days from now,” Jaya Kesuma, head of the prosecution office in Bali's capital of Denpasar, told reporters.
Television footage showed the couple together in a holding cell at the prosecutors' office, while police submitted the evidence against them.
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.
Reuters