Casefile Extra: Mirna Salihin

When school friends Jessica Wongso and Mirna Salihin caught up for coffee in Jakarta’s upscale Olivier Cafe in January 2016, it was supposed to be a friendly get together. Then, moments after taking a sip from her Vietnamese iced coffee, Mirna collapsed and died. What unravelled was one of Indonesia’s most controversial murder trials with the question on everyone's lips - did Jessica Wongso poison Mirna with cyanide? Casefile Extra features bonus episodes exploring compelling cases, stories and topics beyond our regular weekly releases. --- Narration – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/ Research & writing – Elsha McGill Production & music – Mike Migas http://mikemigas.com/ Audio editing – Anthony Telfer Sign up for Casefile Premium: Apple Premium https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/casefile-true-crime/id998568017?ign-itscg=30200S&ign-itsct=casefile_podcastsSpotify Premium https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/9gSwcv7USsbPatreon https://www.patreon.com/casefileFor all credits and sources, please visit https://casefilepodcast.com/casefile-archives-4-mirna-salihin Mirna Salihin case was originally released as a premium episode in August 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 3:20Speaker 00

  It was nearing 3:30pm on Wednesday, January 6, 2016, when 27-year-old Jessica Wongso arrived at the Grand Indonesia Mall in central Jakarta. She was due to meet two of her friends, Mirna Salihin and Hani Boon, for coffee at the upscale Olivier Café at 5pm. It had been a while since the trio had all been together. The three Indonesian women had met in Australia years prior while studying at the Billy Blue College of Design in Sydney. After graduating, Jessica had stayed in Australia while Mina and Hani returned to Jakarta.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  They’d all remained in contact and caught up intermittently over the years, but this was Jessica’s first trip back to Jakarta since 2012. Having arrived at the café early, Jessica went in to make a reservation. Olivier was a trendy venue that catered to high-end clientele. It was known as a cool spot to be seen and was a favourite among Jakarta’s more affluent crowds. Customers could enjoy the eclectic menu of fine foods, desserts and cocktails while soaking in the natural light that poured in from the skylights above. An assortment of indoor plants perfectly complemented the green vinyl booths and timber finishes,

• 4:47Speaker 00

  creating an earthy yet sophisticated atmosphere.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  It was the perfect spot for the friends, who came from well-off families and lived around the affluent Kalapa Garding district, to catch up.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  After reserving a table, Jessica still had plenty of time before her friends arrived. She ventured back into the shopping mall and headed to Bath and Body Works, a fragrance and skincare store, where she bought a bottle of liquid soap for herself and each of her friends. She then returned to Olivier with the soaps in three large paper gift bags. By this point, it was 4:14pm. Jessica took a seat at table 54, a large booth situated towards the back of the café. Earlier that day, Jessica had messaged Mirna and Hani in their WhatsApp group, saying that she'd like to pay for their drinks that afternoon.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  The others told her she didn't need to, but Jessica insisted. She walked over to the bar and ordered an old-fashioned cocktail for herself, a sazarak for Hani, and a Vietnamese iced coffee for Mirna. Mirna was a self-proclaimed coffee snob, and she'd raved to the group about how much she loved Olivier's Vietnamese iced coffees.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  By the time Mirna and Hani finally arrived, it was 5:16pm. Jessica stood up and warmly embraced her friends, letting them know she'd taken the liberty of ordering their drinks. Mirna thanked Jessica for this kind, albeit unnecessary gesture, and the three sat down and began chatting. Mirna took a sip through the straw of her iced coffee. She immediately screwed her face up in disgust. "This tastes awful", she declared. Mirna extended the drink towards Hani and asked her to taste it. It didn't smell like coffee at all, and the colour didn't look quite right either.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Hani reluctantly took a sip. It tasted bitter and burning. Hani pushed the drink towards Jessica, but having seen her friends' reactions, Jessica refused to taste it.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Then, Mirna started fanning her face with her hand. Suddenly, she threw her head back and began convulsing.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  The café staff saw what was going on and ran over to move the table out of the way and to give Mirna some room. It was clear she was having trouble breathing and she soon began foaming at the mouth, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Olivier’s manager joined the crowd that had gathered around trying to help. Jessica Wongso stood next to her. “What did you put in the coffee?” she asked.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  An unconscious Mirna Sally Hin was wheelchairled out of Olivier Café and to a medical centre within the shopping mall. Realising the seriousness of her condition, she was transported to hospital where doctors worked desperately to try and revive her.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  Her family immediately rushed to her side, having received a phone call from a hysterical harney who initially thought that Mirna might be having an epileptic seizure.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Mirna's father, Eddie Sally Hin, despairingly tried to administer CPR to Mirna himself, while her twin sister Sandy yelled at her to wake up. But it was no use. Mirna was officially declared dead thirty minutes after arriving at the hospital.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  The Sally Hin family was left in shock. As far as they were concerned, twenty-seven-year-old Mirna had been in perfect health. She was in the prime of her life, working for a design company and having just gotten married to her adoring husband, Arif Samarko, two months earlier. They’d had an opulent ceremony at a luxury resort in Bali, attended by their closest friends and family. Mirna had grand plans for her future, with the dreams of opening her own café and starting a family of her own.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  How, her family wondered, could she be taken from them so suddenly? Mirna's father, Eddie, reported his daughter's death to the police. There was only one explanation he could think of for Mirna's sudden death, and it was that she had been poisoned.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Hani Boon told the doctor that she had drank from Mirna's iced coffee, and was worried that she would die too. The doctor conducted a physical examination but concluded that Hani was fine. He prescribed a laxative and told her to eat and drink as much as possible to flush out any potential toxins from her system. Jessica Wongso was also examined and given the all-clear, while police took samples from Mirna's stomach contents for toxicological testing to determine if she had indeed been poisoned.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  The police went to Olivier's café and spoke to the staff there. The barista who made the Vietnamese iced coffee, Rungar Saputra, said there had been nothing unusual about the coffee. After the receipt for the order came through, Rungar said he made the beverage like he always did, filling a glass with ice and a couple of spoons of condensed milk before placing what's known as a fame filter full of ground coffee on top of it, and pouring over hot water. He then put the coffee on a tray to be taken out by the server. The server didn't find anything unusual about the coffee when he took it over to table fifty-four. It looked and smelt like it always did.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  After Mirna collapsed, Olivier's bar manager, Divi Siagian, took the iced coffee into the back kitchen and examined it herself. She had immediate concerns about it based on Jessica Wongso's comment about what had been put into it. Divi gave the iced coffee a whiff and took a sip. It smelt and tasted rotten. Rungar, the barista who made the iced coffee, came in and noticed that the colour had changed since he made it. It should have been brown, but it had turned the golden-yellow colour of turmeric.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Ranga sniffed the coffee and was hit with a sharp odor that smelt like glue. It instantly irritated his nose. Panicked, Ranga began double-checking all of the ingredients he'd used to make the drink, but everything appeared to be completely fine.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Having kept the drink aside, a bartender poured the leftover iced coffee into an empty water bottle and handed it over to the police for toxicological testing.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Three days after Mirna Salihin's death, the results came back. It was confirmed that the iced coffee contained cyanide, a rapidly-acting and highly lethal poison. When ingested, cyanide affects the cardiovascular and central nervous system by preventing the body's cells from receiving or absorbing oxygen. Within minutes of absorbing the poison, a person can experience organ failure, convulsions, coma, and death.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  While all of this was consistent with the symptoms Mirna exhibited right before her death, a full autopsy would need to be done to prove that she hadn't died from natural causes.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  The police met with Mirna's family at the funeral home and requested permission to perform a full autopsy. Her mother refused, saying she didn't want anyone to touch her daughter's body. They intended to have an open-casket funeral for Mirna the following day, and her body had already been prepared for burial. This was a major roadblock for the police. They explained that without an autopsy being done, they wouldn't be able to conduct a proper investigation to prove that Mirna had actually been poisoned.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  After some deliberation, Mirna's family continued to reject the full autopsy, but they agreed that her stomach and liver could be removed for further toxicological testing.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Mirna's funeral went ahead the following day. Mirna was a popular and deeply loved young woman, and it was a highly emotional time for those in attendance.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  For Mirna's father, Eddie Salihin, the loss of his daughter made him feel like he’d lost his sparring partner. Eddie was a successful, wealthy businessman with a tough, no-nonsense attitude. He’d always seen traits in Mirna that he recognised in himself, and he admired the way she challenged him whenever they had a disagreement.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Following his daughter’s burial, Eddie told reporters: “We entrust the case to the police. I believe in the power of God. I believe the police will be able to arrest the perpetrator, so my daughter can rest in peace.”

• 15:03Speaker 00

  There was one person who was noticeably absent from Mirna's burial, and that was Jessica Wongso. Some wondered why she wasn’t there, given the two seemed to be close friends and had been together when Mirna died. But the truth was that Jessica wouldn’t have been very welcome there. Mirna's parents had always viewed Jessica as a bit peculiar. The first time they’d met her, she’d been overly affectionate in the way she hugged Mirna's mother. When she first visited their house, they also found it strange that she had entered their bedroom.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  Her older behaviour continued at the hospital on the day Mirna died. Unlike Hani, who had been in a clear state of shock and distress, Jessica had been oddly calm. Eddie Salihin felt like Jessica was avoiding him by pretending to be short of breath and have a stomach ache. He asked Jessica what she had to drink at the café, and she told him mineral water. Eddie was surprised by this response. He’d seen the receipt from Olivier and knew that Jessica had ordered cocktails for herself and Hani. He couldn’t understand why she would lie about such a thing, unless, of course, she had something to hide.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  The day after Minna's burial, toxicology tests confirmed the presence of cyanide in her stomach. With the police now confident that she had definitely been poisoned, they reviewed the footage taken from the nine CCTV cameras around Olivier's café on Wednesday, January 6. There didn't appear to be anything unusual about Runga Saputra's actions as he made the Vietnamese iced coffee, nor did the server interfere with the drink in any way when bringing it over to Jessica's table at 4:24pm. It sat there, out in the open, for 52 minutes, until Minna and Hani arrived, at 5:16pm.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  At no point between the drink being delivered and Minna taking the first sip, did anyone else approach the table.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Jessica Wongso was filmed arriving at the café lobby at 3:30pm. She then made her way into the main dining area to choose a table for her group. But there was something odd about her movements that seemed unnatural. She walked around the room in a somewhat suspicious manner, looking around as though she was scoping the place out. At one point, she looked directly at one of the security cameras. The table Jessica eventually chose, table number 54, was located towards the back of the café, where the closest camera was obscured by a large pot filled with indoor plants.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  However, another camera at the opposite side of the restaurant provided a direct, albeit grainy, view. This camera captured Jessica as she sat down in the booth and placed the three gift bags from Bath & Body Works on top of the table, arranging them in a line. When the waiter placed a menu plate at the end of the table, Jessica picked it up and placed it parallel to the gift bags. Once the drinks arrived, the bags essentially acted as a barrier, obstructing the drinks from the view of the camera on the other side of the room.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Police couldn't see exactly what Jessica was doing behind the gift bags, but at one stage, she made some movements as though she was taking something out of her handbag. She later moved the iced coffee cup around, placing it further down the table to where Mirna would eventually sit. Minutes before Mirna and Hani arrived, she put the gift bags on the floor.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Once Mirna took a sip of the iced coffee, she began exhibiting symptoms almost immediately, waving her hands in front of her face as though trying to cool herself down.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  After she collapsed and the staff rushed over to help, a panic-stricken Hani called Mirna's husband a reef on her mobile to let him know what was happening and to ask if Mirna had any pre-existing health conditions that could explain what was going on. While all of this was happening, Jessica stood back from the crowd, watching on with little emotion, while rubbing her hands together.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  This was a significant moment for the police. When cyanide comes into contact with the skin, it causes irritation, itching, and a dermatological condition known as cyanide rash. Based on the footage, they began to theorize that Jessica had invited Mirna out for a drink with the intention of poisoning her. Beyond the café staff, there was simply no other person who had the opportunity to tamper with Mirna's drink. It also explained why Jessica had arrived so much earlier than her friends and why she'd offered to buy their drinks in advance. Furthermore, after Mirna died,

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Jessica had sent Mirna's twin sister Sandy a message asking if her family had received the results of Mirna's lab tests yet. She also sent Sandy a link to a news story about fake coffee containing cyanide that was being sold in Vietnam, and suggested that's what could have happened to Mirna.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  From the way Jessica had surveyed the restaurant, the police believed she'd arrived early so she could scope out the locations of the security cameras and choose a table that was out of their view. She then purchased the items from Bath & Body Works so the gift bags would provide an added layer of protection while she stealthily slipped the cyanide into Mina's iced coffee, getting some on her hands in the process.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  A review of the WhatsApp messages sent between the friend group revealed that Jessica had asked if there was a medical clinic inside the shopping mall. She claimed she needed to get a prescription for vitamin D, but investigators suspected there could be a more sinister reason for her query. What if she was checking to make sure there wouldn't be a doctor on site who could administer first aid to Mina and potentially save her life?

• 21:54Speaker 00

  The problem was, the cameras hadn't actually captured Jessica putting anything into Mina's drink, and no traces of cyanide had been found at their table. Jessica had been summoned to the police station for an interview after the toxicology tests came back, and she'd appeared calm the whole time, saying nothing that incriminated her in Mina's murder. She had no criminal record in Indonesia, and told the police she'd never had any trouble with the law. A search of her parents' home in Jakarta didn't turn up any evidence of cyanide, nor was there any trace of the poison found in Jessica's handbag.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  However, when police asked Jessica for the clothing she had been wearing on the day Mina died, she told them she had thrown the pants away. She said they'd gotten a hole in them on the way to the hospital, and had asked her maid to get rid of them. Police seized a computer, documents, and tissues from Jessica's house, but found nothing that tied her to the poisoning.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Then there was the obvious question of what motive Jessica could possibly have to want Mirna dead. Not only did she claim they were good friends, but an examination of text messages sent between the two showed nothing but a typical female friendship, and no one in their social circle knew of any overt friction between them. They also didn't think of Jessica as a violent or dangerous person. Most knew her to be bubbly and a bit goofy, not the kind to commit such a callous crime.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Police spoke to Mirna's husband, Arif Samarko, to see what he knew about Jessica and Mirna's relationship. The only thing Arif could think of was a minor incident that Mirna had told him about back in October 2014, roughly fourteen months before she died. Having returned to Sydney for a holiday, Mirna had caught up with Jessica for a coffee. As they chatted, Jessica told Mirna about some problems she was having with her boyfriend at the time, a man named Patrick O'Connor. She apparently said that Patrick could be rough with her and that he had some problems with the drugs.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Mirna had never met Patrick, but she didn't like the sound of him and couldn't fathom what Jessica saw in him. According to Arif, Mirna could be very upfront about her opinions, and she told Jessica not to be stupid. She told Jessica to think about her future and urged her to end the relationship. Jessica didn't like what she heard and had reportedly stormed out of the restaurant.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Arif said that Mirna became wary of Jessica after that and no longer wanted to meet up with her one-on-one. When Jessica returned to Jakarta in December 2015, one month before Mirna died, Arif joined Mirna when the two women had first caught up for coffee. He and Mirna had only recently tied the knot in Bali and they were still riding the wave of newlywed bliss.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  Jessica hadn't been invited to the wedding, but if she held any grudges about this, she made no mention of it.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  While these minor incidents indicated that things weren't completely rosy between the two friends, it still didn't suggest why Jessica Wongso would want Mina Sally Hin dead, or how she'd managed to pull off such an elaborate plot. For the average citizen, cyanide isn't exactly easy to come by. Although it's a naturally occurring chemical found in many plants, such as apple seeds, almonds, and tapioca, the level of cyanide found in the foods we consume is very low. It's the man-made version, available in gas, liquid, and solid form, that's fast-acting and highly lethal.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  Cyanide is illegal in Indonesia, and police could find no evidence of Jessica having sourced or attempting to source it from anywhere. However, that didn't mean it wasn't possible. In Indonesia, it was once a common practice to catch fish using cyanide. Fishermen would add a small amount of the chemical to waterways to stun fish and send them floating to the surface. Although this practice had become illegal, the laws were minimally enforced, and it wasn't difficult to buy cyanide from illegal sellers. If Jessica had managed to source the cyanide,

• 26:56Speaker 00

  police considered how she could have gotten the cyanide into the iced coffee. According to Olivia's staff, it was cafe policy that all straws be served alongside a drinks with a paper sheath at the top for hygiene purposes. Yet, some staff members recalled that the sheath had been removed from Mina's straw and placed into her iced coffee before she arrived. Police wondered whether Jessica could have come prepared with the cyanide-laced straw, which she swapped over with the cafe's straw. Either that, or she could have placed the cyanide into the drink in some other way and then unsheathed the straw to stir it in. The straw Mina drank from had been thrown away,

• 27:41Speaker 00

  so neither of these theories could be tested.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Regardless of how she'd managed to do it, police felt confident enough with the circumstantial evidence they'd gathered that on Friday, January 29, 2016, they publicly declared Mirna Salihin's death a murder and named Jessica Wongso as a suspect. The following morning, they went to Jessica's parents' house to formally place her under arrest, only to find that no one was there. The police tracked her down to a hotel room in North Jakarta where she was staying with her parents and in possession of her luggage. Fearing that Jessica was trying to flee the country, they charged her with Mirna's murder and placed her in custody without bail.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  As news spread about Jessica's arrest, many were quick to question her unusually calm demeanor when fronting the press. Jessica smiled for the cameras outside the police station, raising further suspicion against her in the eyes of the public. The murder charge carried the possibility of a death sentence, making her seemingly upbeat attitude difficult to reconcile. In the eyes of Mirna's family, Jessica seemed to be enjoying the attention.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  They supported Jessica being given the death sentence, with Mirna's twin sister Sandy telling Australia's 60 Minutes programme: "I would like to see justice for my sister. Eye for an eye, life for a life."

• 29:22Speaker 00

  But when the prosecutors were handed the brief of evidence, they were reluctant to proceed to trial. While the police case against Jessica Wongso was compelling, it relied almost entirely on the grainy CCTV footage, statements from cafe staff, and to Jessica's strange behaviour on the day of Mirna's death. There was still nothing to suggest how Jessica could have sourced the cyanide, no clear indication as to how she could have administered it, and no information about her mental state at the time. Prosecutors returned the brief to police, requesting more information before the trial could go ahead.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  Given that Jessica had spent roughly the past eight years in Australia, the Indonesian police knew very little about her past. All they had was her statement that she'd never been in trouble with the law. They considered whether Jessica could have sourced the cyanide in Australia and brought it over when she returned to Jakarta. They reached out to the Australian Federal Police to see if they could shed any light, but AFP agents were hesitant to cooperate.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  Australia doesn't have the death penalty for convicted murderers, whereas Indonesia does. Given that Jessica was an Australian resident, they wanted to protect her from that possibility.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  The AFP agreed to help with the investigation on the condition that the death penalty be taken off the table. The Indonesian prosecutors agreed, and the confidential files were handed over. As the Indonesian investigators cast their eye over the information, it quickly became clear there was more to Jessica Wongso than they had first realised.

• 31:29Speaker 00

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  While little was known about Jessica Wong Soh’s early days in Sydney, the year leading up to Mianna Sullyhin’s death had been a tumultuous one for the then 26-year-old. Police records revealed that Jessica had been working as a graphic designer for the New South Wales ambulance service when things began to unravel in her personal life. It all started in January 2015 when her boyfriend at the time, an Australian man named Patrick O’Connor, tried to end their relationship. According to Patrick, Jessica began sending him countless texts and voice messages in which she threatened to hurt herself.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  She went ahead with that threat in late January 2015 and was subsequently hospitalized for self-harm. This destructive behaviour continued to escalate over the following months. In October 2015, Patrick called the police to Jessica’s flat after she tried to poison herself with carbon monoxide from a small coal barbecue. She was hospitalized but released shortly after. A few weeks later, police were called to the flat again. This time, Jessica was unconscious in bed with a bottle of whisky and three letters by her side. One of the letters was addressed to her family

• 35:54Speaker 00

  and one was addressed to her coworkers, saying her goodbyes. The other letter blamed Patrick for her death.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  In November 2015, two months before Mirna's death, Patrick contacted the police after discovering that his car had been destroyed by a vandal. Although he couldn’t prove who was responsible, he felt confident it was Jessica. Not only had she been harassing him, but his friends too.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Fearing for their safety, Patrick sought an urgent apprehended violence order against Jessica, hoping that a court-issued restraining order would deter her from further harassment. He described Jessica as unstable, and although there was no evidence for police to charge her with damaging the car, the urgent AVO request was granted, with a court hearing set for February 2016 to formally put it in place. Around the same time that Patrick's car was vandalised, Jessica was fired from her job with the New South Wales Ambulance Service. As part of the investigation into Meena Sally Hin's suspected murder,

• 37:10Speaker 00

  police interviewed Jessica's former boss, a woman named Christie Carter.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Christie told the police that during the eight months she'd spent working with Jessica, she'd seen two very different sides of her personality. While Jessica could be kind and loved to smile, she was also quick to anger if things didn't go her way. Christie described Jessica as being manipulative, dishonest, hateful, and bad-tempered. She said she wasn't surprised to hear that she was being accused of poisoning her friend, telling police, "I have observed her for the past eight months, and from her attitude, hatred, and nature of her craziness, I have no doubt that she is capable of hurting or killing another person."

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Christie had gone to visit Jessica in the hospital after her suicide attempt in October 2015. Jessica was furious because the doctors were refusing to discharge her. She said something along the lines of, "The bastards in this hospital will not let me go home, and they are treating me like a killer. But if I wanted to kill someone, I certainly know how to do it. I could get a gun, and I know the right dosage."

• 38:34Speaker 00

  After Jessica lost her job with the ambulance service, she asked for Christie’s help in finding a new place to live. When Christie refused, Jessica allegedly threatened to kill both Christie and Christie’s mother.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Christie told the police she had no idea how Jessica could have obtained the cyanide that was used to kill Mina, but she didn’t doubt the possibility. “When Jessica wants something to happen,” Christie said, “it could happen.”

• 39:10Speaker 00

  All up, Jessica Wongso had reportedly been hospitalized for four suicide attempts in the months leading up to Mina’s death. Combined with the allegations from Patrick O’Connor and the comments she allegedly made to Christie Carter, this gave Indonesian authorities their first real insight into Jessica’s psychological state leading up to the supposed crime. But it was a police report from August 2015 that really caught their attention.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  On the night of Saturday, August 22, 2015, emergency services were called to a nursing home in the Sydney suburb of Lycat after a car plunged through the brick façade just metres from where dozens of elderly residents were sleeping. Police arrived to find Jessica Wongso behind the wheel in what they believed to be an intoxicated state. She was taken to the hospital but managed to escape with minor injuries to her ribs and chest. No one else was hurt in the accident. Jessica was charged with a high-range drink-driving offence, further adding to her problems.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  According to confidential police files released exclusively by ABC’s 7.30 programme, in the lead-up to her trip to Jakarta at the end of 2015, Jessica sent a text message to a friend saying she was considering fleeing Australia to avoid paying over $15,000 she owed in fines and legal fees. “I could use the money to have an epic holiday,” she wrote. “Have new licences anywhere where my dad got power too, rather than giving money to those police ignorant cunts.” In another message, she wrote: “I’m being pushed again and again. I’ll break.”

• 41:11Speaker 00

  For the Indonesian prosecutors, the files handed over by the Australian Federal Police were exactly what they needed to pursue the murder charge against Jessica. In their view, it proved that she was becoming more emotionally unstable and increasingly aggressive in the lead-up to Mina’s death.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Her harmful behaviour, once directed at herself, was now turned toward others. It also turned out that Jessica had been fired just days after Mina and Arif got married, a wedding she had not been invited to.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Prosecutors believed the culmination of these events could have led her to direct her anger towards Mina. As Mina’s twin sister Sandy told 60 Minutes: “I think Jessica is jealous of Mina, because Mina had a good life and a good future ahead of her, and maybe Jessica’s life is crap.”

• 42:14Speaker 00

  All up, the brief of evidence was sent back and forth between the police and prosecutors five times over a three-and-a-half-month period, before the Jakarta High Prosecutor’s Office finally determined that there was enough evidence for the case to proceed to trial. This was major news in Indonesia, where the story had been making headlines from the outset. While the police had been gathering evidence against Jessica, speculation had been rampant about who else could have possibly been responsible for Mina Salihin's death. Although no one else was ever formally investigated for the murder, that didn’t stop the rumor mill from running wild.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  One of Jessica’s lawyers claimed that someone could have taken out a life insurance policy against Mina overseas, in which they stood to gain $5 million US dollars in the event she was murdered. Without elaborating on this possibility, he said that Jessica was being used as a scapegoat, asking: “Why is Jessica the only person targeted in this case, when it is possible that other persons were involved?”

• 43:29Speaker 00

  These comments led to public suspicion against Mirna's husband, Arif Samarko, with some speculating that he was the one who stood to gain from such a life insurance policy. Some publications reported that Arif could have co-conspired with Olivier’s barista, Rungasaputra, by paying him to spike Mirna's drink. One tabloid journalist claimed that on the day before Mirna died, he was in the car park of a shopping mall when he saw a man who looked like Arif Samarko pass a package to Rungasaputra. The implication being that the package could have contained either cash or the cyanide that was used to kill Mirna.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Arif vehemently denied such rumours and publicly accused the journalist of slander, while Mirna's father reported Jessica’s lawyer for defamation for his unfounded statements regarding the life insurance policy. Meanwhile, others theorised that Mirna and Jessica could have been having a secret lesbian relationship during their time together in Australia. Mirna's marriage to Arif tipped Jessica over the edge and led her to poison Mirna in a jealous rage. Mirna's friends and family denied that she was ever involved in a same-sex relationship,

• 44:57Speaker 00

  but that didn’t discount the possibility that Jessica could have had romantic feelings towards her. Mirna's father publicly claimed to have seen a series of text messages that Jessica had sent Mirna, which he believed carried romantic connotations, fueling rumours that Jessica could have killed Mirna out of rejection. A forensic hypnotist who interviewed Jessica and examined the messages sent between the pair told ABC’s 7.30 there was no evidence to support the theory that the two women were lovers, but the rumour prevailed regardless. Some also speculated that Arif and Jessica could have been having an affair, an allegation

• 45:42Speaker 00

  they both strongly denied and for which no evidence existed.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  For the average Indonesian, watching the story play out was compared to watching a real-life soap opera. In a country where the majority of the population reportedly lives on less than 4 US dollars a day, the same price as a cup of coffee from a Olivier café, the salacious story of murder and revenge among the wealthy urban class had people gripped. With the Jessica and Mina's families pitted against one another, unfounded rumours swirled that the murder was part of a business rivalry between the two families.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  As writer Johannes Negroho explained in an article for Foreign Policy Magazine: “While the two families do not make the list of Indonesia’s top 10 richest, they are filthy rich by the urban wealthy standards, at least rich enough to buy the law. The fight between them is a drama that even those convinced of Wongso’s innocence can enjoy.” Indonesians have a proverb that goes: “When two elephants clash, the mouse deer caught in between is doomed.” In Sally Hin’s murder case, however, two elephants are locked in a struggle while the tiny mouse deer get to be the spectators.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  For the average Indonesian, this is a moment of sweet irony. Watching giants grapple at each other’s throats without being trampled underfoot yourself does not happen a lot in a country where the political and economic elites hold the reins, often at the expense of the rest. Ultimately, tragedies like Sally Hin’s death are seized upon by Indonesians because they expose the vulnerabilities of the country’s upper class and bring the hope that things can go awry, even for the giants.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Interes dalam cerita hanya meningkat setelah ditemukan bahwa seorang pengacara populer Oto Hazeibwan telah setuju untuk mengambil kasus pembelaan Jessica secara gratis. Banyak orang terkejut dengan keputusannya untuk melakukan itu. Dengan kejujuran Jessica mendekati, sebagian besar Indonesiawan terbukti bahwa dia berhak dihukum dan mereka tidak memperbolehkan keputusan Oto untuk mempertahankan seorang pembunuh. Tapi seperti yang Oto kemudian memberi tahu Netflix, dia telah disebutkan untuk pergi ke perjalanan alaskan dengan keluarga dia ketika dia menerima pergi dari ibu Jessica, mengatakan bahwa anaknya telah dihadapi dengan tidak adil dan meminta dia untuk mengambil kasus itu. Oto bertemu dengan Jessica dan setuju untuk membantu dengan satu kondisi.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Jika pada suatu saat dia terbukti bahwa dia berhak dihukum untuk membunuh Mina Sally Hin, dia akan berhenti dari kasus itu. Jessica setuju tanpa ragu.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  Oto adalah salah satu lima belas pengacara di tim kehakiman Jessica. Maka mereka melihat lebih jauh dalam kasus, mereka menemukan bahwa semua tidak seperti yang terlihat dalam pengujian media. Pertama dan terutama, ada pertanyaan mengapa Jessica akan memilih Olivier Café sebagai tempat untuk mengambil perampok. Tidak hanya itu adalah tempat populer dan kerja keras, tapi jika Jessica tahu tentang kamera CCTV seperti yang diperintahkan oleh peneliti, maka mengapa dia tidak memilih tempat yang aman yang tidak memiliki kamera keamanan? Faktor bahwa Jessica telah datang ke Olivier Café sejam dan setengah sebelum waktu pertemuan yang setuju dianggap sebagai bukti bahwa dia telah

• 49:31Speaker 00

  datang untuk mengejar tempat itu dalam persiapan untuk pembunuhan Mina. Tapi menurut Jessica, dia hanya datang begitu cepat karena aturan perjalanan tiga di satu yang ada di Jakarta pada saat itu. Untuk menghindari kekerasan di jalan-jalan kota yang sangat populer, hanya mobil dengan tiga atau lebih pasangan dapat menggunakan jalan utama selama periode puncak. Dia mengatakan bahwa dia hanya datang cepat karena dia harus, bukan karena dia ingin.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Much had also been made about Jessica's decision to order her friend's drinks ahead of time, with the implication being that she did this so she could slip the cyanide into Mirna's drink. But Jessica claimed that she'd ordered the drinks expecting them to be served by the time Mirna and Hani arrived. WhatsApp messages sent between the group at the time confirmed that Mirna and Hani had been running late that afternoon. If Mirna and Hani had arrived on time, like Jessica expected, her defence team pointed out that she wouldn't have had the opportunity to administer the cyanide. The messages also showed that Jessica told Mirna she was going to order the Vietnamese

• 50:48Speaker 00

  iced coffee for her ahead of time, to which Mirna agreed. For the defence team, Jessica's message to Mirna's twin sister Sandy about the lab results wasn't an attempt to see if she'd been caught, but because she was genuinely curious to know how her friend had died. The article she'd sent Sandy about cyanide-laced coffee being sold in Vietnam wasn't an indication that Jessica knew Mirna had been poisoned with cyanide either, but simply proved that she was looking for any possible information about what might have happened to her friend. The fact that Jessica was staying in a hotel with packed suitcases at the time of her

• 51:33Speaker 00

  arrest wasn't an indication that she intended to flee the country. She and her parents had moved there to escape the throngs of journalists who had camped outside of their home. With no evidence to suggest how Jessica could have sourced the cyanide, and no footage of her removing anything from her handbag or putting anything into the iced coffee, her defence team questioned the validity of the prosecution's case entirely. The timing of the so-called suspicious movements that Jessica had made behind the gift bags coincided with a text message that she had sent to Mirna.

• 52:13Speaker 00

  They believed that any movement she made could be attributed to that, and they didn't think there was anything suspicious about the gift bags either.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Jessica claimed she had simply wanted to buy her friends a present. As for her unusually composed demeanor after Mirna's death and when fronting reporters, Jessica explained that she was generally a calm person and she didn't want to show her true emotions in front of the cameras.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Confused about how to deal with the whole saga, she said she wanted to bury the memory of what happened on January 6.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  But above all, there was one major detail that the defence team couldn't get past. The lethal oral dose of cyanide for a human of Mirna's weight was around 171mg. Toxicology testing of the Vietnamese iced coffee handed over by staff at Olivier Café detected 7,400mg per litre of cyanide in the glass served to Mirna and 7,900mg per litre in the water bottle into which staff had poured the remaining liquid after the incident. However, toxicology tests conducted on samples taken from Mirna's body 70 minutes after

• 53:39Speaker 00

  she died had revealed no traces of cyanide in her gastric fluid, bile, or urine. Further samples taken three days after she died had revealed just 0.2mg per litre of cyanide in her stomach. Not only was this incredibly low dose not enough to be fatal, but no cyanide was detected in her bowel or liver, which would be expected in a case of cyanide poisoning. Her skin also hadn't shown a reddish hue, which is another telltale sign of cyanide poisoning.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  By the time those second samples had been taken, Meena's body had already been embalmed.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  Jessica's defence team spoke to at least two forensic pathologists, who explained that the low levels of cyanide detected in Meena's stomach could have been produced post-mortem, possibly during the embalming process.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  Because her family hadn't approved a full autopsy, none of her organs, such as her brain, lungs, or heart, had been tested. And without these tests, the forensic pathologists said it couldn't be proven that Meena hadn't died from natural causes.

• 55:01Speaker 00

  This was a huge piece of information for the defence. If Meena hadn't been poisoned, it explained why Hani and the café staff who tasted the iced coffee hadn't fallen sick despite the high levels of cyanide found in the drink. As far as the defence was concerned, the only way to explain the lack of cyanide in Meena's system was that the cyanide had been added to the drink after Meena drank it.

• 55:41Speaker 00

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• 57:44Speaker 00

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• 58:00Speaker 00

  By the time Jessica Wongso's highly anticipated trial for the murder of Mirna Salehin commenced in June 2016, it had been dubbed Indonesia's Trial of the Century.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  In terms of public interest, it was likened to the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the United States, with the topic of Jessica's possible guilt deemed a national obsession. Camera crews filled the courthouse with three television stations set to broadcast around-the-clock live feed of the proceedings, complete with commentaries.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Indonesia operas untuk sistem hukum nasional. Di pengadilan kriminal, tidak ada pengadilan. Sebaliknya, tim pengadilan publik pergi kepala ke tim penjagaan, sementara panel tiga pengadilan menentukan keadaan dari orang yang dihukum. Perolehannya adalah sifatnya, artinya pengadilan diperbolehkan untuk mempertanyakan wakil langsung. Mereka duduk di depan ruangan, sementara wakil duduk sendirian di sisi kantor, dan dua tim hukum ditempatkan di sisi.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Selama waktu membuka pertemuan, tim pengadilan menunjukkan teori bahwa sejauh Jessica Wongso telah di motivasi untuk membunuh Mirna Salihin untuk membalas kekhawatiran yang dia pernah alami atas perpisahan dengan Patrick O’Connor. Mereka percaya Jessica telah datang ke Olivier Café dengan sarangan dengan sionide, dan memilih meja yang tidak terlihat dari kamera keamanan, di mana dia menggunakan tiga kantong benda untuk melindungi apa yang akan dia lakukan. Membeli minum sebelum datangnya teman, dia mengalirkan sionide di belakang kantong, dan kemudian melihat dengan kecemasan yang hampir terlalu sedih karena bahan yang mengalami penurunan pada Mirna.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  Tim penjagaan mengklaim tidak ada bukti untuk membuktikan kenyataan tersebut. Seorang lawyer dari dia mengatakan: “Tidak ada makna bahwa Jessica berjalan dari Australia ke Indonesia untuk membunuh Mirna. Tidak ada makna bahwa Jessica akan membunuh Mirna karena dia pernah meminta Jessica untuk mengakhiri hubungan dengan temannya saat itu.”

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  Berbalik ke pengadilan, dia bertanya: “Mengapa Jessica adalah satu-satunya yang diperhatikan sebagai orang yang membunuh ketika dia tidak melakukan apa-apa yang luar biasa, dan tidak ada yang melihat dia menaruh sionide dalam kopi?”

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  The defence said the possibility that someone else was responsible for the poisoning couldn't be discounted. A bartender from Olivier's Café testified to having poured Mirna's iced coffee into an empty water bottle and handing it over to the police for testing. While some staff members recalled that the glass had then been secured in cling wrap and handed to the police too, the bartender testified that he had returned the empty glass to the café pantry. Otto Hesibwan pointed out that the police brief of evidence said that cyanide was found in the water bottle as well as the coffee glass.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  If the bartender's testimony was correct, then what glass had police used for testing? The police had also asked Olivier's manager to provide them with a glass of Vietnamese iced coffee they could compare to Mirna's drink, as well as another empty water bottle that they could pour the comparison beverage into. Therefore, if the bartender had misremembered, the police should have had two glasses and two bottles. Yet, their brief of evidence inexplicably mentioned just one bottle and two glasses. Given these inconsistencies, and the fact that no one else who tasted the drink became severely ill,

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  the defence said it couldn't be ruled out that either the café staff or the police could have added the cyanide to the iced coffee after Mirna drank it, but before it was tested.

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  This wasn't an outlandish allegation to make. The Indonesian legal system is notoriously corrupt, with the judges and prosecutors known to take bribes from people in positions of power. Rumours had circulated that Mirna's father could have worked with the police to secure a conviction against Jessica at any cost necessary. Although there was absolutely no evidence to support such an allegation, talk of corruption had surrounded the case from the very beginning.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  The defence also pointed out that Olivier’s barista, Ranga Saputra, had disposed of the hot water from the kettle that had been used to make Mina’s iced coffee. They suggested this could have been a deliberate move to ensure the water couldn’t be tested for cyanide.

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  Lawyer Otto Hazabwan claimed to have seen a police file with a confession from Ranga Saputra, in which he admitted he was hired to kill Mina, but that this file had mysteriously disappeared. Taking the witness stand, Ranga denied having gotten rid of the hot water that had been used to make Mina’s iced coffee. He then changed his mind and said he wasn’t sure if he had. This inconsistency raised some eyebrows about his credibility, but when asked if he’d accepted any money from Mina’s husband, Arif Samarko, to commit the murder, Ranga vehemently denied it. At the time of the trial, he was still employed at Olivier’s café.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  “If I received the money, I would have quit my job,” he stated.

• 1:03:56Speaker 00

  The prosecution said it didn’t matter if the hot water used to make the iced coffee had been disposed of. Experts testified that if the cyanide was put into hot water, the resulting steam would have given off a strong smell of burnt almonds, and in an enclosed space like the café, others who inhaled this steam would have also been poisoned. Given that no one else was affected, and even Jessica claimed that the coffee had smelt normal, the cyanide had to have been put into the drink when it was already cold. And the only one who went anywhere near the drink when it was cold... was Jessica.

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  Arif Samarko also rejected the allegation that he'd conspired to have Mirna killed, saying he'd never met Ranga Saputra before in his life. He testified about how angry Jessica had been at Mirna for suggesting she break up with her boyfriend, and how this had led to Mirna becoming afraid of Jessica's anger and not wanting to meet her alone. Jessica's anger issues were further solidified by the comments she allegedly made to her former boss in Sydney, Kristy Carter. While Kristy didn't give evidence, her statement detailing Jessica's suicide attempts, her threats to kill Kristy and her mother, and her comments that she knew the right dosage

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  to kill someone were read to the court. These comments appeared to lend further weight to testimony provided by several psychologists who described Jessica as being intelligent and confident with a narcissistic personality and a huge impulse to be at the centre of attention. One clinical psychologist who had interviewed Jessica shortly after her arrest said that she was calm in situations where she could anticipate what was coming next, but it was when something unexpected happened that her emotions ignited. Having studied the CCTV footage from Olivier Café, this psychologist believed that Jessica

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  showed no signs of panic when Mirna collapsed. Even when Jessica walked over to fetch some water for Mirna, she didn't hurry. A criminologist from the University of Jakarta testified that he'd interviewed Jessica twice at the police station, during which he'd used physiognomy, the practice of assessing a person's character based on their outer appearance. Studying Jessica's facial features and expressions while they spoke, he determined that she had a narcissistic personality and a great desire to be loved. While he didn't find her to have psychopath traits, he did find her to be emotionally unstable, spiteful, and unable to tolerate criticism.

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  A criminologist for the defence team refuted that a criminologist has no place examining an individual’s gestures without assistance from a psychologist. She told the judges: “Physiognomy is only used to describe potential offences or people who have the potential to commit a crime. It can’t be used to determine whether someone is guilty.” But the major argument for Jessica’s innocence stemmed from the results of the toxicology testing, in which only small traces of cyanide were detected in Mirna’s stomach several days after her death.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  The forensic pathologist who examined Mirna’s body testified that her stomach and esophagus had turned black, which clearly indicated that she had been poisoned using a very toxic substance. A police toxicology expert told the court that after his expert team conducted a series of tests, he had no doubt that Mirna was killed by the cyanide. But Dr Jaya Surya Admaja, a forensic pathologist from the University of Indonesia, testified for the defence that these traces of cyanide in Mirna’s stomach had probably come from the embalming chemicals that were used to preserve her body, and that there was nothing

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  to disprove that Mirna hadn’t died from natural causes. “If you don’t check all the organs, you can’t determine the cause of death,” Dr Admaja stated to the court. “That’s forensics’ dogma. We wouldn’t know whether Mirna had a stroke, for example, unless you examined her brain. Would the lungs be infected with certain diseases or not? Not to mention the heart. All of these are potential causes of death.”

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  Dr. Atmaja also said that one of the telltale signs of cyanide poisoning is a red discoloration of the skin. When Mina was first brought into the morgue, he said her skin was blue. However, once the news got out that she had died from cyanide poisoning, the photos circulated online, and her skin was clearly red. The red-tinged photos had been submitted to the court by Mina's father earlier that day. According to Dr. Atmaja, those photos could have been easily altered, a claim that caused commotion in the courtroom

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  and provoked Mina's father to stand up in shock and voice his outrage.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  Two other forensic pathologists from Australia supported Dr. Atmaja's testimony that the low levels of cyanide found in Mina's stomach couldn't rule out the possibility that she had died from natural causes. One said: "If you take the toxicology results as they are and the explanation that the very low level of the gastric content was due to post-mortem changes, then it is impossible, in my view, to conclude that the death was due to cyanide poisoning." "The less-than-optimal quality autopsy has failed in its primary duty to the deceased and her family, the accused, and the justice system,

• 1:10:23Speaker 00

  which is to provide as definitively as possible a cause of death." Another stated plainly: "These toxicology results show there is no evidence of cyanide ingestion."

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  By the time Jessica Wongso took the stand in her own defence, the trial had gone on for three and a half months. Hearings had run from morning to night, with some going as late as 2 AM. While it had been an exhausting time for all involved, the defence's evidence appeared to be having an impact on public perception.

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  Jessica had gained more supporters, with many viewing the trial as a farce in which the prosecution was relying on flimsy and unreliable evidence. Others were more convinced of her guilt than ever, and resented the defence team’s decision to call upon Australian expert witnesses instead of fellow Indonesians.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  One of the forensic pathologists was even arrested for misusing his tourist visa to testify at the trial, and deported to Australia. It was pointed out that nobody seemed to care when this same pathologist had used a tourist visa when he’d been asked to help identify victims of the Bali bombing terrorist attacks, back in 2002.

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  As Jessica took her seat in front of the panel of judges, she maintained her trademark calm and composed demeanour. She denied that the conversation in which Mirna had supposedly told her to break up with Patrick had ever even happened, saying she hadn’t ever told Mirna anything about her relationship. “I just told Mirna I was close with one guy,” she told the judges. “I didn’t even tell her Patrick’s name.” One of the prosecutors asked: “How could a reef know Patrick’s name when you never told Mirna about him?” Unfazed, Jessica told the judge he would have to ask a reef that.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  She also said that 90% of the allegations made by her former boss, Kristi Carter, were untrue. Jessica dispelled the rumours that she was a lesbian, stating: “A lot of the expert’s statements are untrue, and I want to say it firmly that I’m only interested in men, in the past, now, and in the future.”

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  Jessica said she hadn't lied when she told Mina's father that she had ordered mineral water at the cafe that day. Mina had asked for some after tasting the bad coffee, and CCTV footage captured Jessica going to get it for her. It just wasn't noted on their bill. She also rejected the claims that Mina was reluctant or scared to meet with her alone, saying it was Mina who had initiated several of their catch-ups in Sydney. Some compared Jessica's calm demeanor to that of Amanda Knox, an American woman who was wrongfully convicted of murdering her housemate Meredith Kircher, as covered in episode 270 of Case File.

• 1:13:41Speaker 00

  Instead of appearing nervous or intimidated, some thought Jessica was mocking the prosecutors. When one of them asked her whether Vietnamese iced coffee is served hot or cold, Jessica asked sarcastically: “Well, what do you think?” A moment that went viral on social media. Her attitude while giving her testimony only divided members of the public further. As Johannes Negroho explained in his article for Foreign Policy: “While Jessica’s sometimes contemptuous demeanor in court may have won hearts among the middle class, it could only aggravate her image with those prejudiced against her

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  from the outset.” Jessica told the judges she was being vilified by the prosecutors and the press, who had made her entire personal life a topic of discussion. If she acted calm, she was interpreted as being a cold-blooded murderer. But if she cried or showed emotion, that was criticized too. “Whatever I do is wrong,” Jessica said.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  In closing arguments, prosecutors demanded that Jessica be given a 20-year sentence for the sorrow she had caused Mina’s loved ones. They called her sadistic and cruel to have intentionally killed her friend in a way that would have caused great pain, and pointed out that she had shown no remorse. The defence countered that Jessica had shown no remorse because she had not committed the crime. After almost five months of hearings, on Thursday, October 27, 2016, the judges delivered their verdict. They concluded there were only three parties that could have possibly put the cyanide

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  in Mina’s drink: Olivier’s staff, the police, or Jessica Wongso. They ruled out the café staff on the basis that the iced coffee had looked completely normal in the CCTV footage, and that no other patrons in the café had smelt burnt almonds or collapsed, supporting the notion that the cyanide had been put in the coffee after it was already cold. Furthermore, the judges believed it was logical to assume that a guilty staff member would have immediately disposed of any evidence, rather than handing it over to the police. The fact that Mina had complained about the taste of the coffee and waved her hand in

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  front of her mouth after drinking it, coupled with the fact that Hani and at least two staff members tasted the coffee and noted it as foul, meant the cyanide was in there before the police arrived. This proved to the judges that the police had not tampered with the evidence or added the cyanide to the coffee after confiscating it. With the café staff and police ruled out, that just left one explanation.

• 1:16:51Speaker 00

  Jessica Wongso was the one who ordered the iced coffee. She was the one who placed the gift bags on the table to obscure the view of the cameras, and she was the only one who had access to the beverage before Mirna drank it. For the premeditated murder of Mirna Salihin, the judges found Jessica Wongso guilty and sentenced her to 20 years in prison. Mirna's loved ones broke down in tears of relief while Jessica maintained her composure. She looked at the judge and said: “Thank you, Your Honour. I don’t accept the verdict.”

• 1:17:32Speaker 00

  Her lawyer, Oto Hazabwan, was shaken. He told the court: “Because the judge’s decision is unfair, biased, and definitely not according to the law, this trial has sounded the death knell for justice. As a result, we firmly announce that we’ll file an appeal.” With that, a round of applause and cheering erupted. Outside court, Mirna's father told reporters that even though he hoped Jessica would get the death sentence, he respected the judge’s decision. “The most important thing is that it has been proven that Jessica has killed Mirna,” he said.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  Jessica’s legal team immediately filed an appeal, arguing that the judges had ignored key evidence that cast significant doubt on whether Mirna had actually died from cyanide poisoning, and if she had, whether Jessica was the perpetrator. They argued that the testimony from Jessica’s former boss and the CCTV footage taken from Olivier’s café should never have been admitted in court.

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  The prosecution hadn’t aired the original footage, only a police copy, and the original had never been given to the defence. They argued that the footage could have been tampered with, or certain frames could have been deleted.

• 1:19:05Speaker 00

  Jessica’s appeal was rejected by both the High Court and the Supreme Court, sparking further debate about whether or not she had received a fair trial. Many believed that the judges had made their minds up about her guilt from the very beginning and were too quick to believe the prosecution’s version of events without adequate evidence to support it. One of the trial judges even said so in an interview with Tempo magazine just days after the verdict was delivered.

• 1:19:38Speaker 00

  “For me, this case was very simple,” he said. “The relationship between the defendant and the victim was very close. A person who poisons another person is acquainted with that person. Just look at it from when Jessica came until she ordered a drink. That’s the extent of it. The poison was put in when the drink was cold. If cyanide is put into hot water, everyone around would have been poisoned by inhaling the steam. It is as simple as that.”

• 1:20:14Speaker 00

  Simon Butt is a professor of Indonesian law at the University of Sydney Law School. After examining the case against Jessica Wongso in detail, he concluded that her trial was not fair based on the standards of the Indonesian legal system. He found that police had interrogated Jessica without a lawyer present, searched her parents’ house without a warrant, detained her without reasonable cause, failed to order a full autopsy to establish Mirna's cause of death, and mishandled, perhaps even contaminated, the coffee they claimed killed Mirna.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  In the new Criminal Law Review, Professor Simon Butt wrote that: “Procedural irregularities and legal mistakes plagued Wongso’s case from the very beginning.”

• 1:21:05Speaker 00

  He argued that the prosecution fell well short of meeting the evidentiary standard, while the court paid insufficient, arguably no, regard to the defence. He suggested the judges may have been swayed to convict due to public pressure, noting they swallowed the prosecution’s case and drew strange conclusions from Wong So’s demeanour without properly addressing significant holes in the evidence. Rejecting the possibility of natural causes, the court instead relied on process of elimination reasoning.

• 1:21:44Speaker 00

  In 2023, Netflix released a documentary on the contentious case titled “Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wong So”, which featured exclusive interviews with several important figures, including Min’s father and lawyers from both the prosecution and defence teams. The highly anticipated film propelled the case back into the spotlight and gained international attention, leading to renewed discussion about whether or not Jessica Wong So had been wrongfully convicted. The film put Jessica in a sympathetic light, leading to a shift in public opinion, despite criticism about its lack of journalistic rigor and balance, with some critics labelling

• 1:22:28Speaker 00

  the documentary as “sensationalistic”. The following year, in August 2024, Jessica was granted parole, having served just eight years of her 20-year sentence. Officials said their decision had nothing to do with the Netflix documentary, but was based on Jessica’s good behaviour, which included her teaching English and yoga to other prisoners. The now-36-year-old walked straight into a press conference, saying she didn’t have anything planned for her release, but “she had forgiven everyone who wronged her”.

• 1:23:08Speaker 00

  In May 2025, Jessica agreed to participate in an exclusive interview with Australian journalist Liam Bartlett for Channel 7's Spotlight programme. It was a highly anticipated interview that attracted millions of viewers. As had become her trademark, Jessica didn't appear at all ruffled by any of Liam's direct questions and was able to laugh off or explain away any uncomfortable moments. She also appeared to have backtracked on her claims about her friendship with Mina, saying: "We weren't close at all. It was because we came from the same country. That was why we kind of, like, know each other.

• 1:23:50Speaker 00

  We weren't best friends or anything." Jessica told Liam she never scoped out Olivier Café for security cameras and that if the footage made it appear that way, it was only because she was looking around at the place and people. As for the gift bags that she moved around the table, Jessica smiled as she said: "That's just me being me, you know? Being bored. It really doesn't mean anything at all." She said the fact that the bags shielded the drinks from the security cameras was a pure coincidence.

• 1:24:28Speaker 00

  Liam asked to Jessica why she was scratching her hands on the CCTV footage while Mina was getting first aid. Jessica explained it as a habit of hers, stating: "It's not because it's itchy or something from poison or something like that." Liam jumped in. "I'm not saying that," he clarified. "You made the suggestion. I'm just saying you're standing there scratching your hands, but you're not helping." It was yet another awkward moment that Jessica managed to brush off. She said she had never heard of cyanide before Mina's death, prompting Liam to point out it was therefore strange that she had contacted Mina's twin sister

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  the day after Mina died and asked about the results of the toxicology tests. Jessica explained she knew that samples had been taken and she was simply curious to know how Mina had died. As for the restraining order her ex-boyfriend Patrick had taken out against her, Jessica said the story was complicated and not like it sounds, explaining:

• 1:25:35Speaker 00

  The relationship was kind of, like, toxic in a way. We didn't really see eye to eye on a lot of things. Jessica said she had no idea why people said that Mina was afraid to be alone around her. Asked if she had the potential to be violent, Jessica laughed and said, "No, of course not. What would I do?"

• 1:26:01Speaker 00

  Liam told Jessica he wondered why she didn't get an invite to Mina and Arif's wedding. She began to stammer, saying, "Because I was in Australia, I couldn't be bothered to, like, fly over just to attend their wedding." Liam pressed on, saying, "But you didn't get that choice, did you? She didn't invite you."

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  Jessica looked stunned, pausing for a moment before saying, "I can't remember. Didn't she invite me? I can't even remember." She burst into giggles when Liam asked her about the time she drove her car into the nursing home. When he said she was lucky that she didn't die, Jessica responded, "Yeah, do you think I'm lucky? After everything I've been through, you think I'm lucky."

• 1:26:59Speaker 00

  Jessica Wongso will be held on parole in Jakarta until 2032. She maintains her innocence in Mina's murder and has filed a judicial review against her conviction in the hopes that she will be officially exonerated from the crime. In the meantime, Spotlight reported that she is trying to make a living as an influencer with brand deals coming in from beauty, food, and tech companies. Indonesia's largest coffee chain, Kanangan Coffee, has even reached out to her about collaborating with them.

• 1:27:33Speaker 00

  Jessica told Liam Bartlett she couldn’t imagine working a regular office job after everything that she’d been through. When he quipped that no-one would trust her to do the coffee run, she laughed heartily. The question of whether or not Jessica Wongso is guilty of murdering Mirna Salihin is still debated almost a decade later. Professor Simon Butt stated in his journal article: “Whether she is guilty or innocent, Wongso should not have been convicted. As has been shown, her trial was unfair, as was her treatment by police. Wongso’s case illustrates that Indonesia’s laws of criminal procedure require an urgent

• 1:28:18Speaker 00

  overhaul to better protect the rights of suspects and defendants, though this is unlikely in the foreseeable future.” Some view Jessica as an innocent victim of Indonesia’s broken justice system, while others see her as a cold-blooded and manipulative killer masquerading as the victim. Indonesian news presenter Timothy Maabun, who hosted a daily show covering Jessica’s trial for the Compass TV network, likened Jessica to a villain from a film. He told Australia’s 60 Minutes: “When you watch a movie, when the villain is that good, you don’t even want them to die.”

• 1:29:03Speaker 00

  Mirna Salihin’s loved ones have never swayed from their belief that Jessica was responsible for Mirna’s death. Her father, Eddie Salihin, told Netflix he is a million percent sure that Jessica is guilty, saying: “Deep inside her, something is evil.”

• 1:29:25Speaker 00

  Mirna's twin sister Sandy moved to the German countryside with her husband to distance herself from the case and find some peace.

• 1:29:35Speaker 00

  Mirna's husband, Arif Samarko, has remarried and no longer publicly discusses the case. However, back in 2016, when Jessica's trial was underway, he fondly told reporters how he had first met Mirna in 2006. They got to know each other over the course of the year before they started dating. Arif cried as he recalled how happy he'd been during their courtship, saying: "I was so happy to meet Mirna. She changed my life so much. She also introduced me to God. She was kind to everyone, she didn't discriminate, and she treated everyone equally."

• 1:30:19Speaker 00

  He proudly recalled watching Mirna in the lead-up to their wedding in awe of her creativity as she designed the small details of their wedding decorations. Arif told reporters that despite the public focus on Jessica,

• 1:30:37Speaker 00

  "When people follow the case, I always think of Mirna." Think of me now.

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