Stereotypes in Media Portrayal of Murder

The story of Heather Mack and her boyfriend, Peter Schaefer, murdering Mack’s mother, Sheila von Weise Mack, and hiding her body in a suitcase in Bali certainly lends itself to some eye-catching headlines, and the media lost no time in broadcasting the story in all of its dramatic glory.  Sounding like the plot line to a movie, the riveting story of a potentially psychologically unstable teenage girl and her delinquent boyfriend brutally murdering her innocent mother was played up by the media.

The initial stories, which detailed the 86 police visits to the Mack home between 2004 and 2013 and the cryptic Instagram and Facebook posts foreshadowing foul play from Heather and her boyfriend, painted Heather Mack as a crazy teenaged killer that drew the public’s interest.  A friend of the victim was quoted saying “[Heather] could be as charming and self-effacingly sweet one minute, and then a vicious little monster the next.”  These potentially exaggerated facts all played a part in portraying Heather Mack as a typical teenager who got in with the wrong crowd, which eventually led to her committing a grisly crime more suited to a Hollywood film than privileged Chicago suburb.

In later coverage of the story, the reports were less focused on the shock value of the story and provided more details into the lives of both the victim and the suspect.  Heather Mack’s father was a prominent Chicago composer who had died in 2006.  Police reports suggest that Mack suffered from depression after his death, which led to some of the altercations with her mother.  As the shock value of the story wore off, the media started giving more accurate representations of everyone involved.

To read articles covering the murder of Sheila von Weise Mack, visit the following links:

Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Guardian
New York Post
Daily Mail