Heather Mack Learns to Cook, Clean, Raise Baby Stella in Indonesian Prison

Heather Mack is learning all kinds of new things inside the Indonesian prison cell she shares with seven other women and her infant child, Stella.

The daughter of an Oak Park socialite and a well regarded composer, Mack recently told People she couldn’t even make cereal before her incarceration.

Now, Mack said she’s learning how to cook Thai food and keep the cell clean, while also taking care of Stella.

She’ll have plenty of time to continue her domestic education. Mack and her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, were each convicted in April of the premeditated, brutal murder of Mack’s mother, Shelia von Wiese-Mack. Mack was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Schaefer received 18 years.

Under Indonesian law, Mack is allowed to raise her daughter, who was born in March, in prison with her for two years. She told People she’s learning about motherhood as she goes, and her fellow inmates have tried to help.

“They’re all really good about [Stella],” she says. “A lot of them are mothers and when I first had Stella they were all trying to get me to use some of their Indonesian traditions with her, like feeding her rice, chicken on the bone and putting onions on her head. But after they saw I wasn’t going to budge, they stopped.”

Mack said Stella has taught her what love is, and she’s looking for a way to keep her daughter close after she turns two and leaves the prison.

The murder of von Wiese-Mack has returned to the spotlight recently, after Schaefer’s cousin Robert Ryan Justin Bibbs, 24, of Chicago, was charged with conspiring in the murder. Bibbs was released on house arrest Sept. 25.