Heather Mack with Tommy Schaefer. (Instagram photo)

Heather Mack, the former Oak Park resident sentenced to 26 years in prison for her part in the brutal murder of her mother, was one of four inmates allegedly sexually abused in 2023 by a prison guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.

Brittany Hall, 31, a former guard at the MCC, was indicted March 4 on multiple counts related to her alleged sexual contact with four female inmates in December 2023.

Hall, who was assigned to supervise female inmates on the 12th floor of the MCC, resigned her position last year following an investigation. A press release from the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office lists Hall as living in Chicago. However, a woman with the same name is documented as working for the prison system in a state adjacent to Illinois between 2015 and 2020.

The indictment does not name any of the four women allegedly assaulted by Hall. However, British journalist Andrea Dixon, who has interviewed Mack many times in Bali and the United States, and is working on a book about the convict and her late mother, Sheila. says “Victim A” in the indictment is Heather Mack.

In a telephone conversation with Chronicle Media, Dixon, who was present in the courtroom during Mack’s sentencing on Jan. 18, 2024, said she took careful notice of who was in the courtroom, and she did not recognize a woman who was “sitting at the back of the courtroom, next to the door.” She described the woman as “bi-racial, light-skinned, long dark hair, kind of frizzy.”

“It was later confirmed to me she was Brittany Hall,” Dixon said.

She said the woman shown on television identified as Brittany Hall arriving at the federal courthouse in Chicago on March 6 “was the same woman I saw in court (at Mack’s sentencing).”

Dixon said she has numerous copies of communications between Hall and Mack through a third party that indicate a relationship between the two women. She declined to disclose details of the communications, citing her upcoming book, but referred to her story published Tuesday in the New York Post. The lead paragraph in that story states that “Heather Mack is among a group of women claiming to have been sexually abused by a former corrections officer at Chicago’s Metropolitan Corrections Center …”

“Text messages viewed by The Post show Mack and Hall corresponded via a third party both before and after (Mack’s) sentencing, and made clear Mack had already told her attorneys about the alleged abuse and did not want to be in contact with Hall,” Dixon wrote, adding that one of Hall’s texts read, “Ask her why I am blocked.”

A reading of the indictment against Hall shows that Victims C and D were MCC prisoners who had already been sentenced in December 2023.

Mack was not sentenced until January 2024. Victims A and B were “female inmates detained in Unit 12 of MCC-Chicago and were charged with offenses,” but not yet sentenced, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, Hall engaged in oral and digital sexual contact with Victim A, but not Victim B.

Chronicle Media had been monitoring Mack’s status at the MCC following her sentencing in 2024. Under normal circumstances, after a federal felony conviction and long prison sentence, convicts are transferred within a few weeks to a regular federal prison facility to serve their sentence. However, Mack remained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center for more than seven months after her sentencing.

Dixon said in May that Mack continued to be held at the MCC due to an internal investigation being conducted into her alleged relationship with a female prison guard. The source’s information, which could not be confirmed, was that Mack was involved in a relationship that included sexual contact. Federal inmates cannot legally give consent for such relationships, and guards are strictly prohibited from any sort of personal relationship with prisoners.

Dixon said at the time that she had no last name for the guard, only a first name, “Brittany.”

Chronicle Media attempted to confirm that MCC officials were conducting an investigation involving Mack and the reason for Mack’s delayed transfer. A federal official contacted by phone in May regarding Mack’s circumstances directed Chronicle Media to forward specific questions regarding her case via email. However, no one ever replied to those emailed questions.

Mack, 29, was convicted in 2023 of one count of conspiracy to kill a U.S. national, after admitting to her part in the murder of her mother, along with alleged co-conspirator Tommy Schaefer. He remains incarcerated in a prison in Bali.

WGN television reported that while Hall arrived for her arraignment in street clothes accompanied by a federal defender on Thursday. She stood before U.S. Magistrate Judge Heather McShain “shackled at the ankles.”

Hall pleaded not guilty to five counts of sexual abuse of a prison ward and three counts of abusive sexual contact. The court appointed Thomas More Leinenweber of the Federal Defender program to represent Hall, who was ordered released on $10,000 bond.

Hall faces up to 15 years in prison, if convicted on the abuse charges, and up to two years for the abusive contact charges, federal officials said. She has a telephone status hearing scheduled with Judge Robert Gettleman on March 20.