Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
27-year-old Wayan Mirna Salahin slid into a booth at a bustling cafe in Grand Indonesia, a massive shopping mall in Jakarta, Indonesia. She took a sip of her Vietnamese iced coffee as she settled in to catch up with two of her friends. Only moments later, Mirna’s body stiffened while her face twisted in distress, she struggled to breathe as her body began to convulse.
The once lively, buzzing vibe within the restaurant immediately morphed into a chaotic medical emergency as first responders rushed to Mirna’s side. No one could fathom how a previously healthy 27-year-old could die a painful death a little more than an hour after she sat down for a routine meet-up with friends.
Police began to piece together exactly what had happened inside that cafe in the moments before Mirna’s death while attention quickly turned to the people she had been sitting with. The investigation that followed quickly gripped the nation of Indonesia, sparking intense media coverage & igniting a debate that still hasn’t settled even one decade later.
Mirna, who had been an Indonesian graphic designer, headed out on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 6, 2016 to catch up with two of her friends, 28-year-old Jessica Kumala Wongso, who she met while attending the Billy Blue College of Design in Sydney, Australia & another friend, Hani.
Both Mirna & Jessica had been raised within Indonesia’s wealthy elite in Kelapa Gading, Mirna, to parents Edi Darmawan Salihin, a businessman, & her mother, Ni Ketut Sianti. While Mirna headed back to Indonesia after graduation, eager to return to her family as well as her longterm boyfriend, Arief Soemarko, Jessica stayed back in Australia where she’d lived since she was sixteen.
Mirna’s parents recall their first time meeting Jessica Wongso, someone they immediately felt was a highly peculiar girl. They’d always viewed her as the strange friend, someone who made herself feel a little too familiar in their home despite not knowing them all that well. They found her wandering around their bedroom during a visit to their home, acting overly friendly in a way that made them feel was forced & unnatural.
After graduation, when Mirna had gone back to Sydney for a vacation, she & Jessica met up, their conversation began to take a negative turn when Mirna encouraged Jessica to break up with her boyfriend, Patrick O’Connor. She accused him of being a poorly mannered drug abuser, something that upset Jessica, causing her to abruptly leave. Already drifting apart because of their physical distance, Mirna sensed a widening gap in her friendship with Jessica.
It was clear that during the passing year, Jessica began struggling terribly with her mental health as she was hospitalized five times for self-harm & suicide attempts. Her behavior became increasingly alarming in August 2015 when she crashed her car into a nursing home, her car stopping only meters away from the bedrooms that housed dozens of elderly residents. As a result, she appeared before a Sydney magistrate on drunk driving charges in February 2016.
Between 2014-2015, there were at least 13 police reports involving Jessica while she remained in Australia. Not only had she allegedly told her former co-worker, If I want to kill someone, I know how, but authorities also discovered that Jessica had sent emails to herself saying that her boss at NSW Ambulance, Christy Carter, & her mom should die. She wrote that if she wanted to kill someone, she could use a gun & she knew the right dosage of poison needed to kill someone.
On November 24, 2015, a little over a month before Mirna’s sudden death, Jessica’s ex-boyfriend, Patrick O’Connor, took out an urgent restraining order against her, indicating that her behavior was escalating. He felt she was highly unstable & feared for his own safety.
Only four days later on November 28, 2015, when Mirna married Arief Soemarko in Bali, she chose not to invite Jessica to the event. Only days later, Jessica was fired from her job with New South Wales Ambulance where she worked as a graphic designer.
As Jessica’s life continued to spiral out of control, paired with the distance that had grown between them, Mirna became very wary of her college friend. According to Arief, his wife mentioned that if she were to see Jessica again face-to-face, she would prefer that someone else accompany her.
So when Jessica let Mirna know that she was coming back to Indonesia on holiday & suggested they meet up for coffee, Mirna decided to bring her friend Hani along. The trio planned to meet up for drinks at the upscale restaurant, Olivier, within the Grand Indonesia shopping mall in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. These would be the last moments of Mirna’s life before the 27-year-old newlywed suddenly died.
According to her father, Mirna had always been a strong-willed, tough young woman who spoke openly about what she believed in. She grew up with her twin sister Sandy always by her side. She had many goals that she hoped to one day achieve, including opening a cafe, but sadly, she would never live to fulfill this goal or any other.
Although Mirna & Hani hadn’t planned to meet Jessica at Olivier until 5 pm, according to CCTV footage from the cafe, Jessica arrived nearly 90 minutes early at 3:32 pm. The cafe, which has since closed down, was a trendy hotspot that enforced a dress code, requiring its customers to be well-groomed & neat. As patrons gathered over food & drinks, it wasn’t unusual to see them wearing luxury brands such as Prada, Gucci & Louis Vuitton.
According to the footage from the cafe, Jessica left only two minutes after she got there, later claiming that she had gone to buy presents for two of her friends. On her return at 4:14 pm, 46 minutes before they were scheduled to meet, she carried three shopping bags, each containing only a small bottle of liquid soap from Bath & Body Works. She could then be seen walking around the cafe, checking out various locations, sometimes looking directly at the CCTV cameras.
The table she chose was a distance from the closest camera with an obstructed view due to the positioning of a plant.
Despite the fact that Mirna & Hani were still about 45 minutes out from arriving, Jessica took the liberty of ordering drinks for the table at 4:18 pm. When the bartender, who started his shift at 4 pm, saw the order come through for a Vietnamese iced coffee, he made the drink how he always did before placing it on a tray for the server to pick up.
Vietnamese coffee is made by slowly dripping coarsely ground, dark roast coffee through a metal filter, sweetening it with sweetened condensed milk & pouring it over ice.
The three drinks that Jessica ordered were delivered to table 54 at 4:24 pm where she sat alone with three shopping bags positioned on the table in a way that blocked both her movements as well as the drinks from the surveillance camera within the cafe. She could be seen making a series of unknown movements behind the bags before she eventually moved the bags from the table top to a seat.
Earlier that day, in anticipation of their meet-up, Jessica had texted Hani & Mirna at 1 pm, asking them what they wanted to drink. She planned to pre-order the drinks so they were ready for them as they arrived. Although Mirna told her that wasn’t necessary, she insisted. Seeing it as a nice gesture, Mirna, who was a lover of coffee, told Jessica that she wanted to try the cafe’s Vietnamese iced coffee.
52 minutes after the drinks had been delivered, Mirna & Hani arrived at 5:16 pm. As they said their hellos, Mirna settled into their table & took her first sip of iced coffee at 5:18 pm. She immediately complained that it tasted funny & when Hani took a tiny sip, she agreed. Within about one minute of her sip, Mirna’s body began to stiffen & convulse as staff rushed to her aid, pulling the table away. It was immediately clear that they were dealing with an absolute emergency as Mirna struggled to breath as her body violently shook.
Although Jessica had been sitting at her friend’s side as Mirna took her sip of coffee, staff, who had never met the trio, could see that Jessica didn’t seem to be jumping in to help Mirna. She also seemed eerily calm while other guests were crying at the sight of the young woman’s sudden medical crisis.
As chaos was in full swing within the cafe, Jessica turned to the manager, Devi Siagian, & asked her, What did you put in her drink? Rather than being confused & panicked at her friend’s sudden medical crisis, Devi noticed that the woman seemed defensive. She immediately got the strong sense that Jessica was somehow involved & that something had been put into her friend’s coffee. After Devi took a small taste of the drink, she realized that it both tasted & smelled rotten.
When the bartender who had made the drink looked at the coffee, he could clearly see that the color was off & not at all how it had been when he made it. It was now the color of turmeric & it gave off a sharp-glue like smell that irritated his nose. Feeling panicked, he began to re-check all of the ingredients he’d used only an hour before, but he found nothing wrong & Mirna’s coffee had been the only order that was like that.
After Mirna was transferred to the hospital, staff from the cafe wrapped her glass in plastic wrap & handed it over to authorities so it could be examined at the National Police Headquarters. They also collected all the components used in making the iced coffee for analysis.
Shortly after Mirna’s father Edi rushed to the Abdi Waluyo Hospital in Central Jakarta, he was met with Jessica, who seemed to be avoiding him as well as the questions he asked her. It also seemed as if she was feigning a stomachache & shortness of breath in order to avoid conversation with him.
While Hani openly wept at the shocking news of Mirna’s sudden death, Edi could see that in contrast, Jessica didn’t seem fazed or upset in the least.
When Miran’s twin sister Sandy arrived at the hospital, she was unable to accept that her sister was truly gone. She desperately tried to wake her up, slapping her face, hoping she would come out whatever was going on. As the doctors & nurses entered the room, they told her that Mirna was gone & there was nothing more that could be done. Sandy could see the frozen look on her sister’s face that made it appear as if she was trying to say, Help me.
Later that day, Sandy was taken aback when she received a phone call from Jessica, who asked her what Mirna’s lab tests had found.
Mirna’s friend Vera, who had also planned on meeting the girls at the cafe that day, had texted the group at about 6 pm to say that she was leaving work & running late. As she made her way to the cafe she was stunned to read Jessica’s response, Mirna is gone. Passed away. I’m sorry.
As she was staring at her phone, unable to comprehend the words she was reading, another friend tearfully called her & confirmed that Mirna had died. She couldn’t wrap her head around what was going on since she had only just been texting with Mirna at 5 pm. How had her 27-year-old previously healthy friend suddenly died?
When Edi confronted Jessica at the hospital, asking her what she had to drink while she’d been at the cafe with Mirna, she told him mineral water. When he eventually learned that this was a lie, it immediately made him suspicious of her. According to her receipt, in addition to Mirna’s iced Vietnamese coffee, she also ordered a Sazerak cocktail & an Old fashioned. As Edi stood with Jessica, she began yelling out, Did Mirna die? Did Mirna die? Was I the one who killed Mirna?
On January 9, 2016, three days after her death, police officers met Mirna’s family at the funeral home to explain that they believed she had been poisoned. Although they were told that an autopsy would need to be done in order to prove it, the family refused to consent. This is common in Muslim countries as Islamic law emphasizes respecting & keeping the deceased’s body intact, viewing disfigurement as a violation of its sanctity.
Officers warned them that if they didn’t give consent, their daughter’s killer might not be brought to justice. After agreeing to only a partial autopsy, which was completed on January 10, samples from Mirna’s stomach, urine & liver had been tested. Her family was then told that these samples confirmed what they had suspected, that Mirna had been poisoned to death by cyanide.
However, because a full autopsy was not conducted, her chest & abdomen hadn’t been fully opened up & examined, a full toxicology was not done from multiple organs, nor was there an examination of all of her organs, including her brain & heart. This was something that became the most controversial part of the entire case.
Cyanide is a naturally occurring chemical found in many plants, seeds, fruit stones, bacteria, fungi & algae. It’s highly lethal & has been used in conventional warfare & poisoning for more than 2,000 years. The most common form of cyanide poisoning is smoke inhalation from fires. It’s used in industrial chemicals, pesticides as well as medicine, including sodium nitroprusside, a medication that’s used to lower blood pressure.
Because cyanide prevents the body’s cells from using oxygen, rapid death occurs within seconds of ingestion of a lethal dose. When ingested as sodium or potassium cyanide, the lethal dose is 100-200 mg & as the case eventually moved to trial, the prosecution indicated that there was 298 mg of cyanide in Mirna’s coffee. After unused oxygen stored in the body floods into the bloodstream, a victim’s complexion will turn a cherry red color.
Mirna’s family now knew that she had been poisoned, but the questions they were left with were, how, why & by whom? Since it’s so lethal as one of the ten most poisonous substances on Earth, cyanide is not easy for the average person to get their hands on.
Morbid curiosity led patrons to flock to Olivier where business was booming after Mirna’s death, guests sometimes even requesting Mirna’s specific booth where they sat & took selfies after ordering a Vietnamese coffee for themselves.
As police investigated the cafe, conducting three reconstructions while holding witness interviews, they were doing everything they could to figure out who had been responsible for slipping the poison into Mirna’s drink.
As they combed over the cafe’s CCTV footage, authorities were able to see that because Jessica had ordered the coffee so far ahead of when Mirna & Hani arrived, it had given her time to sit with the drinks. Because of this, she was the obvious top suspect & was questioned five times. Mirna’s family were stunned that a close friend could have been capable of doing something so evil.
According to Jessica, since she had been living in Australia & hadn’t been back to her home country of Indonesia in four years, she was very eager to catch up with her friends during her visit. She’d met Mirna eight years earlier in college where they quickly bonded, often going out to eat or drink & just celebrating life & their youth together. She denied having anything to do with her friend’s death & said that anytime she spent with Mirna, they would be laughing & having a great time.
Mirna’s family believed that because Jessica’s mental health had been deteriorating, paired with the anger & resentment that had grown within her after Mirna voiced her negative opinion about her boyfriend, she killed her. They also believed that she was extremely jealous of Mirna’s life & the fact that she was newly married & in a healthy, loving relationship.
Since the cafe where Mirna was poisoned had 9 CCTV cameras, investigators combed over the footage from the timeframe in which Jessica entered until Mirna took her fateful sip of coffee. Because she arrived at 3:30 pm & left only two minutes later, authorities felt that Jessica had likely been scoping the place out, something that would indicate premeditation. However, Jessica later claimed that she had been following Jakarta’s traffic rule where during peak traffic times only cars with three or more occupants can utilize main roads.
After she sat down in the large booth, it seemed strange that she would arrange her shopping bags on the table rather than placing them out of the way on the open seat beside her.
On January 30, 2016, 24 days after Mirna’s death, investigators arrived at the hotel where Jessica was staying in Indonesia & arrested her in connection with Mirna’s death. Her luggage had been packed which gave the impression that she had been getting ready to leave the country. She was charged with premeditated murder, something that carries a minimum sentence of 20 years & a maximum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of the death penalty if found guilty.
However, because the Australian Federal Police agreed to assist the Indonesian police with their investigation on the condition that the death penalty would not be carried out should she be convicted, this was off the table.
The case was highly publicized since no one could wrap their heads around what would potentially drive a friend to do something so incredibly heinous. There were also a lot of rumors & speculation swirling around the case, many of which suggested that at one point, Mirna & Jessica had been in a romantic relationship. Some believed that she killed her friend in a fit of jealousy after Mirna got married, ideas her family considered simply ridiculous.
The trial began on June 15, 2016 within the Central Jakarta District Court where the courthouse was swarming with people who were eager to have the opportunity to be allowed inside. The trial was broadcast 24 hours a day across 14 Indonesian TV stations. As it began, the majority of the public held firm on their opinion that Jessica was absolutely guilty.
Since Indonesia doesn’t have a jury system, the three judges presiding over the case were to decide if Jessica was innocent or guilty based on the evidence presented as well as what her ultimate sentence should be if she were found guilty.
Jessica entered the courtroom wearing a white button-up blouse & black pants, looking exceptionally calm & relaxed. She hired a well known defense attorney, Otto Hasibuan to represent her.
It was the prosecution’s goal to prove Jessica’s guilt based on the sequence of events depicted by the cafe’s CCTV footage. The footage would walk the judges through the moment she entered the cafe to when the coffee was made until the end when Mirna took her final sip of coffee. It was the CCTV footage that was the foundation of their case.
The prosecution focused on the footage of Jessica, who could be seen sitting down at her booth with her shopping bags positioned on the table, hiding her movements from a camera positioned in front of her while she positioned a chair that blocked the camera’s view from behind.
At 4:29 pm, she could be seen making movements behind the shopping bags, a time when no one else was in her vicinity. It was at this point the prosecution believes that she put the cyanide into Mirna’s coffee.
Meanwhile the defense argued the lack of evidence to prove her guilt as there was no proof that she either purchased or carried cyanide & no image or eyewitness who could confirm that she poured the poison into Miran’s coffee.
When police went to collect evidence, they realized that the pair of pants Jessica had been wearing at the time of Mirna’s death had been thrown away. During the trial, her house keeper testified that Jessica had instructed her to throw them away. Despite the fact that she claimed it was because they had an irreparable tear in them, police believed they could have given them clues as to where she allegedly hid the cyanide used in the murder as it hadn’t been found in her purse. Although they eventually recovered the jeans, there was no cyanide residue found on them.
The defense focused on the fact that a full autopsy hadn’t been done. Because Mirna’s brain & other organs had not been examined, it could not be confirmed that she hadn’t died from natural causes such as from a stroke or a heart attack. This idea made the public begin to question if Jessica could actually be innocent.
A forensic pathologist who testified for the defense indicated that according to toxicologist Nursamran Subandi’s report, the 10mL of Mirna’s gastric fluid which had been extracted 70 minutes after her death, had tested negative for cyanide. Tests for cyanide in her bile, liver & urine also came back negative & he concluded that her cause of death had not been from cyanide poisoning.
However, the gastric sample that was taken by Dr. Slamet Purnomo at the National Police Hospital in East Jakarta three days after her death found 0.2 mg of cyanide. The defense argued that this was much lower than the lethal dose of 150-250 mg. To give reference, apple seeds naturally contain 0.6 mg/gram of cyanide.
Professor Beng Beng Ong, the first witness for the defense, also believed that the low-level of cyanide detected in Mirna’s stomach was not consistent with a fatal poisoning. He felt that nor was the fact that Mirna had collapsed within minutes of consuming the iced coffee as symptoms of cyanide poisoning normally present after about 30 minutes of ingestion. He went on to say that he would have expected Mirna’s stomach contents to be as high as 1,000 mg per liter rather than the 0.2 mg that had been detected.
However, according to the CDC, symptoms of cyanide poisoning can present within seconds to minutes while death may occur within minutes since it rapidly enters the bloodstream & circulates throughout every part of the body.
A total of three experts called by the defense testified that there was no proof that Mirna’s death had been caused by cyanide & because a full autopsy hadn’t been done, the prosecution couldn’t prove that she hadn’t died of natural causes.
On the other hand, forensic expert Dr. Slamet Purnomo, as well as police toxicology expert Nursamran Subandi, testified that the iced coffee that had been laced with cyanide had been more than enough to kill Mirna. Based on the toxicology report, 297.6 mg of sodium cyanide had been consumed by Mirna with 171.4 mg being the lethal dose for someone weighing 60 kg or 132# as Mirna weighed.
Dr. Purnomo, who assessed Mirna’s body three days after her death, supported the toxicology report as he noted a black discoloration of her stomach & esophagus that proved she was poisoned using a very hazardous substance. The majority of her stomach & esophagus had been severely damaged & despite the fact that she’d been embalmed, her lips turned black.
Although cyanide wasn’t easy to legally obtain in Indonesia, it wasn’t difficult to get from illegal sellers in Jakarta.
According to chemical toxicologist, Dr. Budi Budiwan, the estimates within Mirna’s glass were unusually high at 7,400 mg per liter of cyanide. However, he went on to say that scientifically, in certain conditions, it’s possible for cyanide to transform from a liquid & evaporate into a gas. The toxicologist for the defense argued that, had this been the case, everyone in the vicinity of the glass would have fainted.
After the three judges heard all of the testimonies from both sides, they came back with a verdict on October 27, 2016, finding a then 28-year-old Jessica Wongso guilty on the charge of premeditated murder & she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
On August 18, 2024, a then 36-year-old Jessica was released on parole from an Indonesian prison after serving only 8 years of her 20 year sentence due to good behavior. She remains on parole & must report to authorities until about 2032.
When Jessica, who is now known as the iced coffee killer, appeared on a prime-time Australian TV show after her release, it seemed as if she was attempting to downplay her relationship with Mirna, indicating that they weren’t close at all. She went on to say that their friendship existed simply because they came from the same country.
Since her release, she has earned money as a social media influencer while working to clear her name as she maintains that she’s innocent. However, as of August 2025, the Supreme Court has rejected her second appeal for a judicial review after her first appeal in 2018 was also denied.
A 2023 Netflix documentary, Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee & Jessica Wongso focuses on the trial as well as the perspectives of various people involved in the case, including Mirna’s twin sister & father.
Mirna Salihin’s young life came to a painful & sudden end on a day that began like any other. As she made her way to the trendy cafe to sip her creamy iced coffee she could have never imagined that her life was in danger. She had been in the midst of starting her life with her new husband. Instead, in the aftermath of her death, her story became a mystery that was filled with rumors & speculation, courtroom drama & unanswered questions.
Mirna’s case highlights the fragility of trust. Sometimes it can be the person you once trusted, sitting across from you at a table that could be hiding something you could never imagine. Today we can remember Mirna as a daughter, a new wife, a twin sister & a friend whose life was stolen far too soon.
References:
- Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: Factsheet – Cyanide
- The New Zealand Herald: Indonesia murder trial: ‘I have no doubt that she is capable of… killing another person’
- The Jakarta Post: Jessica showed suspicious behavior long before murder: Mirna’s father
- The Jakarta Post: Experts confirm Mirna was poisoned by cyanide
- The Jakarta Post: Impossible Mirna died from cyanide poisoning: UI pathologist
- The Sydney Morning Herald: Cyanide coffee murder: Alleged killer Jessica Wongso had Australian restraining order, court told
- The Sydney Morning Herald: Australian expert questions cyanide poisoning in alleged coffee murder in Indonesia
- Medium: Sweetened, condensed poison – The case of Mirna Salihin
- Netflix: Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee & Jessica Wongso
- Wikipedia: Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee & Jessica Wongso
- Grunge: The 2016 coffee murder of Wayan Mirna Salihin
- The New York Times: ‘Coffee Murder’ case that gripped Indonesia ends with a guilty verdict
- Jakarta Globe.ID: Police may have crucial evidence to pin Jessica in coffee murder case: Report
- ABC News: Why has public opinion flipped on Indonesia’s ‘iced coffee murderer’?
- ABC News: Indonesian ‘iced coffee killer’ Jessica Wongso does not assert innocence in Seven interview
- Netflix: Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso
- YouTube: 7 News Spotlight: Why Jessica Wongso murdered her best friend with poisoned coffee
- Tempo English: Supreme Court rejects Jessica Wongso’s second judicial review in cyanide coffee case
