Australian resident Jessica Wongso walked free from an Indonesian jail last August, eight years after she callously murdered her friend with a lethal coffee.
She was convicted in 2016 for fatally poisoning Mirna Salihin, 27, after lacing Mirna’s iced coffee with cyanide.
She was originally sentenced to 20 years in prison, but served less than half of that time, walking free from Jakarta’s Rutan Women’s Prison on August 18, 2024, for good behaviour.
Now in her first media interview, which aired May 18 on 7NEWS Spotlight, Wongso, 36, maintained that she had been wrongly accused.
“They still can’t prove anything,” Wongso told Spotlight’s Liam Bartlett.
In what was described as ‘Indonesia’s trial of the century’, prosecutors alleged Mirna collapsed and died after she and Wongso met at a cafe in Jakarta on January 6, 2016.
It was established that Wongso had laced a Vietnamese iced coffee with cyanide – a fast-acting poison – before Mirna and another mutual friend arrived at the cafe.
The court heard: “[Wongso] said: ‘This is for you, Mir, you said you want Vietnamese iced coffee.’
“Then Mirna drank it and said: ‘It’s not tasty, it’s awful’, waving her hands in front of her mouth due to the hot flavour it made. Two minutes later, Mirna fell unconscious.”
When questioned in the interview why she insisted on pre-ordering her friends’ drinks, even when they told her not to, Wongso says she “doesn’t know.”
“Maybe because I thought I was going to be there earlier?” she says. “I didn’t have evil thoughts at that time, so everything that I did, you know, felt like the right thing to do. I don’t even remember, I don’t know why I said that.”
Wongso reportedly stood watching her friend as she experienced convulsions and began frothing at the mouth. Mirna died on the way to the hospital.
Wongso was also seen scratching her palms, with experts noting that cyanide has a burning effect on the skin.
The pair studied together at Sydney’s Billy Blue College of Design and had arranged to catch up while Wongso was holidaying in Indonesia.
Wongso, who worked in Sydney as a graphic designer for NSW Ambulance, was believed to have been jealous of Mirna’s life and happy marriage.
It was also reported that Wongso was angry at Mirna after she’d previously told Wongso to break up with her Australian boyfriend.
Mirna’s husband, Arief Sunarko, said she had recently fought Wongso and was “afraid of her”.
“After that meeting, she grew a fear of Jessica, like, she [didn’t] want to meet her face to face just the two of them. She wants someone to accompany her,” Arief told 60 Minutes.
Despite the guilty verdict, Wongso’s conviction has been widely disputed due to a series of controversial decisions during the trial, such as the mishandling of evidence and a failure to perform a full autopsy on Mirna.
Talking about his sit-down with Wongso, Bartlett said it was a confronting, and at times uncomfortable, interview.
“There’s something you just can’t pin down about convicted murderer Jessica Wongso. Is she innocent, as half the Indonesian population seems to think? Or is she, as those who are convinced of her guilt like to put it, completely mad?” he said.
“Either I’m sitting in front of a cold, calculated killer who murdered her best friend on the basis of simple jealousy, or a young woman who is a terrible victim of circumstance.
“It’s a plot worthy of a soap opera. But now, nearly a decade on, a family still grieves the incomprehensible killing of a beautiful young woman by her one-time best friend, who continues to protest her innocence.”
In July 2024, her legal team announced it would be lodging a judicial review against her conviction after fresh evidence was discovered.
When asked, upon her release, if she had a message for Mirna’s family, Wongso said: “I’m sorry for your loss. My biggest condolences.”
She must remain in Jakarta until 2032 as part of her parole conditions.
