The Coffee Killer
The Billy Blue College of Design was nestled beneath the Harbor Bridge in Sydney, Australia. Sydney was a long way from Indonesia, which was perhaps why Mirna Salihin and Jessica Wongso became such close friends. They had both started their first year at the prestigious school for graphic design, and they had both come from Jakarta, Indonesia, specifically to attend the school.
The young girls were like two peas in a pod. Both came from wealthy Indonesian families, had a passion for graphic design, and were eager to start their careers. They were inseparable.
After graduation from college, however, Mirna took a job in Jakarta, where her family still lived, while Jessica stayed in Sydney. Jessica loved Sydney so much that her parents and two siblings also immigrated there in 2008.
As the years went by, Jessica and Mirna kept in touch. Both had secured well-paying jobs doing graphic design and had fallen in love with young men: Mirna with a young Indonesian man, and Jessica with a young Australian man. However, the men differed significantly from each other.
In 2014, when Mirna took a vacation back to Sydney, the two girls met to catch up. During their time together, Mirna and Jessica discussed their lives, work, and boyfriends. During the discussion of boyfriends, however, Mirna was surprised to learn that Jessica’s boyfriend, Patrick O’Connor, was a bit of a bad boy. When the girls were friends at college, they were pretty conservative and had concentrated on their studies, but now Jessica was dating a young man with a completely different way of life. O’Connor was involved in drugs and alcohol, and his habits seemed to be rubbing off on Jessica.
Despite their solid friendship for many years, the two girls argued about Jessica’s boyfriend. It was clear that Mirna disapproved of her dating a man that was such a bad influence on her and told her in no uncertain terms that she should get away from him. Mirna told her that this guy was messing up her future, and if she didn’t change her path, it would change her life forever.
Jessica didn’t take the advice well and told Mirna that she loved Patrick despite his faults and would stick with him. She became furious with Mirna to the point that Mirna was uncomfortable being alone with her. The rest of her Sydney trip became awkward, and Mirna ensured that there was always another friend with them whenever they went out.
Despite her initial objections, Jessica reluctantly took Mirna’s advice and dumped her boyfriend. Still, Jessica secretly harbored deep resentment toward Mirna for suggesting that she leave the man she loved. Leaving him didn’t stop her problems, though. They were only getting started.
After breaking up with Patrick, Jessica developed a drinking problem, and her attitude toward friends and co-workers began to change. Over the next two years, Jessica drank more and more until one night in August 2015 when, while driving drunk, she plowed her car over a curb, across a grassy area, and through the wall of a busy nursing home. Her vehicle landed within meters of the bedrooms of elderly residents. The fiasco landed her a DUI, a cracked rib, some time in jail, and an embarrassing video of her on the nightly news. Despite potentially killing residents of the nursing home, Jessica was angry rather than apologetic.
Throughout 2014 and 2015, Jessica attempted suicide five times. She was admitted to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital each time, and when she returned to work, she told her boss, “Those bastards in the hospital didn’t allow me to go home, and they treated me like a murderer. If I want to kill someone, I know exactly the right dose.”
In October 2015, during one of her failed suicide attempts, Jessica tried to poison herself. Police found her unconscious, with a bottle of whiskey and three handwritten letters next to her bed. One letter blamed her ex-boyfriend, Patrick O’Connor, for her death. She addressed two other letters to her family and work friends, saying her goodbyes.
Jessica’s anger and alcohol problems were affecting her work. She worked as a graphic designer at a firm called New South Wales Ambulance, but despite working there for less than a year, she developed deep-seated anger toward her boss, Kristie Carter. At one point, Jessica threatened Kristie because she wouldn’t help Jessica find a place to stay after crashing her car into the nursing home, telling her, “You must die, and your mother must die.” Kristie reported the threat to the local police.
Jessica regretted her breakup with Patrick and sent him countless text messages and voicemails. She threatened to hurt herself, him, and his friends if he didn’t take her back. Patrick, however, wanted nothing to do with her. She was clearly unstable, and in December 2015, Australian police issued an urgent restraining order against her.
Back in Jakarta, Mirna was having the time of her life. Her picture-perfect life was that of a wealthy socialite: she had a well-paying job that she loved and was planning her dream wedding. However, due to Jessica’s continuing problems and their uncomfortable discussion, Mirna decided not to invite her to the wedding.
In her mind, Jessica already thought Mirna was to blame for her problems. Her downward spiral was all a result of Mirna’s bad advice. As a result, her anger and resentment escalated when she wasn’t invited to Mirna’s wedding.
Mirna and Arief Soemarko had an island wedding in Bali in late 2015. The wedding ceremony was elaborate and straight out of a fairy tale. They had plans to honeymoon in Korea and wanted to start a family as soon as possible.
A few days after the wedding, Jessica continued her downward spiral and was fired from her graphic design job at New South Wales Ambulance. Now jobless, Jessica took some time to return to Jakarta and visit friends. She wanted to get together with Mirna, let her know that there were no hard feelings, and congratulate her on her wedding.
The two girls agreed to meet for coffee at 5:15 p.m. on January 6, 2016, but Mirna was apprehensive despite Jessica’s assurance of good intentions. Mirna didn’t want to visit with Jessica alone, so she asked their mutual friend, Hani, to accompany her. Hani had also attended Billy Blue College with them in Sydney.
Jessica arrived oddly early at Olivier, a trendy restaurant in the posh Grand Indonesia Shopping Mall in central Jakarta. Mirna thought it was unusual when Jessica texted her at 1 p.m., insisting she would pre-order the coffee for the three girls. Mirna assured her there was no need for that and that she would order when they arrived later that afternoon.
Jessica arrived at Olivier at 3:30 p.m., more than ninety minutes before Mirna and Hani were scheduled to arrive. She walked around the restaurant looking for the perfect table, then left the restaurant to do some shopping. She wanted to buy gifts for her friends, so she stopped at Bath & Body Works. Jessica purchased three small bottles of bath soap for the three of them and arrived back at Olivier at 4:14 p.m. with three large gift bags. The gift bags were unusually large for only having a single, small bottle of bath soap in them.
Security cameras showed Jessica walking around the entire restaurant, still looking for the perfect table and occasionally glancing directly at the cameras. After a few minutes of searching, she chose a half-circle booth on the side of the restaurant with large palm trees behind it. The palm trees behind the booth conveniently obscured the security camera behind them, leaving only a single security camera across the restaurant pointing directly at the table.
Jessica then placed the large gift bags on the table, waited a few moments, and then moved the bags toward the center of the table. Almost an hour before Mirna and Hani were due to arrive at the restaurant, Jessica ordered a Vietnamese iced coffee for Mirna and two additional coffee drinks for herself and Hani. When the drinks arrived at 4:24, Jessica was seen on the security camera doing something with the glasses, but the cameras didn’t pick up the details because of the gift bags blocking the view.
The drinks then sat on the table for fifty-two minutes until Mirna and Hani arrived at 5:16. Within a few seconds of sitting down, Mirna took a big gulp of the Vietnamese iced coffee Jessica had ordered for her and immediately knew something was wrong. She began rapidly waving her arm in front of her mouth and told the girls something was wrong with the coffee. She pushed the glass away from her and continued frantically waving her hand. In less than sixty seconds, Mirna’s head fell back against the top of the padded booth. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her body began to convulse violently, and she started foaming from her mouth.
Restaurant staff and other patrons of the restaurant started to gather around. Their first assumption was that Mirna had epilepsy and she was having a seizure. Hani, crying and panicking, called Mirna’s husband. Jessica, however, showed no signs of stress at all.
Mirna was unresponsive, and emergency medical workers carried her out of the restaurant in a wheelchair, rushing her to the hospital. She died shortly afterward.
Jessica was the first person to make accusations. When people started gathering around at the restaurant, Jessica immediately said to the restaurant manager, Devi Siagian, “What did you put inside the drinks?!” Because of this accusation, Devi had the foresight to collect the three coffee glasses and save them in the back of the restaurant until the police arrived.
In the days after her death, it was assumed Mirna had died of an epileptic seizure, and Jessica and Hani were not questioned at the scene. However, three days after Mirna’s death, when police analyzed the contents of the Vietnamese iced coffee, they realized she didn’t die of an epileptic seizure at all. Mirna’s drink had contained a lethal dose of cyanide; the case was now considered a homicide.
Mirna’s family initially objected to an autopsy. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, and it wasn’t common for autopsies to be conducted as the procedure mutilates the body. However, the police assured the process would be brief. Finally, Mirna’s family agreed to an autopsy, and on January 10, the medical examiner found that there was bleeding in Mirna’s stomach consistent with that of a corrosive substance. Traces of cyanide were found in her stomach but not in her other internal organs.
When police analyzed the security camera footage from the restaurant, they noticed Jessica awkwardly backing away from the scene while Mirna was convulsing. She made an odd movement with her hands, but exactly what she was doing was unclear. Speculation was that she was moving something from one hand to the other, while another theory was that she was scratching her finger because she had just stirred poison into Mirna’s drink using that finger. (A link to the security camera footage can be found in the online appendix at the end of this book.)
When the Grand Indonesian Police heard about the relationship problems between Jessica and Mirna, they turned to the authorities in Sydney to look into Jessica’s background. While Australia had abolished the death penalty in the 1980s, it was still in effect in Indonesia and was carried out by firing squad. The Australian Federal Police only agreed to help investigate the case after assurances from the Indonesian government that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty.
The Australian Federal Police shared the confidential history of Jessica’s troubles: her DUI charges, her multiple suicide attempts, her death threat to her former boss, and the restraining order her ex-boyfriend had issued against her. They also interviewed her former boss, Kristie Carter, for nine hours. Later, Kristie’s testimony became vital evidence in the case against Jessica.
Within weeks, Indonesian Police officially charged Jessica with the murder of Mirna Salihin. Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and with a sign hanging around her neck with her name on it, police took Jessica back to the Olivier restaurant for a reenactment of the crime.
Indonesian news outlets and social media quickly became obsessed with the case, and Jessica was thrust into the public spotlight. Reporters and cameras followed Jessica’s every step, and she seemed to strangely enjoy the attention. Television cameras showed Jessica smiling and waving as if she was unaware of the reason for all the attention.
Despite the agreement between the Australian Federal Police and the Grand Indonesian Police, prosecutors said the agreement not to seek the death penalty would be void if they convicted her on evidence the Jakarta police had gathered. The Indonesian police also argued that Jessica was not an Australian citizen but only a permanent resident. Eventually, the Indonesian police said they would leave it up to the judges for sentencing.
The case quickly became the most notorious case in Indonesian history. The media called Jessica “The Coffee Killer,” and the public interest was overwhelming in both Indonesia and Australia. The case played out like a soap opera and was covered every night on the evening news. Everyone in Indonesia seemed to have an opinion of whether Jessica was innocent or guilty.
The broadcast media was criticized for spreading insensitive rumors that Jessica was having an affair with Mirna’s husband. A coffee shop in Jakarta advertised non-toxic Vietnamese iced coffee with the slogan, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The Olivier restaurant became a tourist attraction for those who wanted to see where the crime occurred.
The trial started on June 15, 2016, and Indonesian national television broadcast it live. Jessica’s wealthy family hired Otto Hasibuan, a well-known celebrity defense lawyer. The defense team questioned the autopsy results, pointing out that they found no cyanide in any of Mirna’s organs other than her stomach. They produced forensic and toxicology experts who testified there was no proof that cyanide caused her death.
Jessica took the stand in her own defense, explaining that Mirna was a friend with whom she could laugh, talk, and share secrets. She tried to play on the sympathy of the court, “My family has been publicly shamed, and I have been treated like the scum of the earth since the case started.”
Mirna’s friends and family held press conferences to sway public opinion against Jessica.
The prosecution presented forty-six witnesses, including Mirna’s father, husband, twin sister, and several employees from the restaurant. The prosecution presented the case with the motive of revenge. They argued that Jessica blamed Mirna for the breakup with her ex-boyfriend and the subsequent chain of events in Jessica’s life.
The prosecution alleged that the security camera footage showed her looking around the restaurant to see if anyone was watching while she handled the coffee. They also argued that the murder was pre-meditated – that the use of poison illustrates pre-planning. They also used the interview with Jessica’s former employer, where Jessica threatened her life, and the restraining order against her to show her anger consumed her.
Ultimately, the panel of three judges agreed with the prosecution. On October 27, 2016, after almost five months of trial, Jessica Wongso was found guilty of poisoning Mirna Salihin by putting cyanide in her coffee.
Jessica Wongso was sentenced to twenty years in prison. She and her team of lawyers submitted a lengthy appeal, but both the Jakarta High Court and the Supreme Court rejected it. Jessica Wongso had no option but to serve the remainder of her sentence.
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