Australian resident Jessica Wongso was all smiles as she walked free from an Indonesian jail last week, eight years after she callously murdered her friend with a lethal coffee.
Wongso was convicted in 2016 for fatally poisoning Mirna Salihin, 27. The 35-year-old laced 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 18th for good behaviour.
Wongso, who has always maintained her innocence, must remain in Jakarta until 2032 as part of her parole conditions.
Waving to local media as she left the jail, Wongso said she felt “relieved” and had forgiven those who she felt had wrongly accused her.
Wongso added that the hardest thing had been “accepting what I had to go through” and “staying positive” through a very “long journey”.
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 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.”
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 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.
In Netflix’s docuseries, Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso, Wongso said she was overwhelmed by the media attention her story garnered.
“I could not understand what was happening to me. I was just having a holiday,” she said. “I was just calling my friends to catch up for a coffee.”
Last month, her legal team announced it will 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.”
