RedHanded - Jessica Wongso: Iced Coffee Killer | #435

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

In January 2016, a coffee date between three glamorous Indonesian gal pals turned deadly – when Mirna Salihin, a wealthy and beautiful newlywed, took a sip of a Vietnamese iced coffee that had been laced with a lethal dose of cyanide. The culprit? Her ex-bestie Jessica Wongso. The motive? A toxic case of the green eyed monster: with revenge served ice cold.At least, that’s how the Indonesian courts said it went down. But was it really that simple? A bungled trial, dodgy test results and a crooked legal system meant that many now believe Jessica Wongso could be innocent – no matter how guilty her smile. But what do we think? Join us as we explore the case that divided Indonesia... and left a pretty bitter taste in our mouths.Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/yc7jH8nWB4k--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / InstagramSources and more available on redhandedpodcast.com

I'm Hannah. I'm Sarutie. And welcome to Red Hand It. I know less than nothing about this case. It's a very interesting one. I've very swiftly Googled it. Coffee. Yes. Coffee, crime. The end. Welcome to our new podcast, coffee and crime. But I'm a professional. I can do this. You can, I believe. It's Valentine's Day this week. Apparently, we're in the past. Yes. February 14th is a long way away.

It is also my grandmother, Muriel Jones, is 100th birthday. On Valentine's Day? Sure is. Wow. Well, good work. Muriel. She is so miserable. Oh. It has, nothing has convinced me to dignitas my own mother more than watching Muriel be so unhappy.

Yeah. Unless there is a drastic improvement in quality of life. Yeah. No, thank you. No. I feel like it's a nice thing to say when somebody is 100, rather than like, you're... Why?

Yeah. It's just an impressive time to have been on the planet. I do often think about how different the world was when she was born to how it is now. She has this, like, story that she always, I think one of the few things she can remember. She worked in a factory during the war doing the soldering for the radar. She loves that one. And also, the first time she ever saw a cruise ship, she was... a child and she couldn't even comprehend something being that big.

Of course. And, you know, now she's got an iPad. That is a lot to live through. Mm-hmm. And fun fact, to officially classify something as an antique, it has to be at least 100 years old. Interesting. So there you go. Her value just went up if she was being bought by a dickhead like me at a flea market.

She was only vintage before. Exactly. And now she's antique. Retro, vintage, antique. They don't build them like they used to. that's what you should say to Muriel. You should get her a card that says, don't build them like they used to.

But anyway, none of this has got anything to do. No, sorry, I just got distracted. With anything. But it is Valentine's Day. This week, if you are listening on the day of release, which obviously you fucking should be. I have realized that Thursdays are an interesting day for either of us to be in the wild.

Because yesterday, three women looked at me, pulled out their phones and when is this you? And they were all listening to Dali Adipald. focus because it was released on that day. Yes. So that's, if I need a confidence boost, I'm just going to walk around tube stations on Thursdays. With a red phone. Yes, exactly.

Looking like my 26-year-old self. Sam's like, when are you going to change that picture? I was like, fuck you. We still look exactly like that. Exactly. Anyway, it's Valadised Day and I'm going to stop talking about other things because we really do need to get on with it. And you're coming. We're taking you on a coffee date.

or rather letting you eavesdrop on one that took place in Jakarta, Indonesia, back in January 2016, and ended not in anxiety from caffeine, but tragedy. Three glamorous 20-something gals met up at the Olivier Cafe, a swanky spot, tucked inside one of Jakarta's busiest shopping malls. Olivier's glossy decor, lush foliage and soft lighting, not to mention the megaspenny drinks, made it the place for the city's Wealthy, young elite to hang out and be seen. Just to put it into perspective, a singular drink at Olivier's,

cost as much as the lowest strata of Indonesian people earn in a day. Wow. Yeah. And also, Indonesia, Muslim. Socialites aren't at bars, are they? No. Jakarta, when I went to Indonesia, loved Indonesia. I had a fucking great time when I was there.

Didn't spend a lot of time in Jakarta because it was just very hectic. I think it's the most overcrowded place on the planet. I've heard that. And it's also sinking, which is like pretty bananas. But yeah, lots of very wealthy people live there. And the young people who come from affluent backgrounds, because this story, as we'll see, becomes very class heavy. The only other thing I know about Jakarta is it's where one of those poor girls

got picked up by the North Koreans to assassinate Kim Jong-Nam. Anyway, that afternoon, the one that we're earwgging on, was the setting for a long overdue catch-up for Mernar Sally Hinn, Hanigua, and Jessica Wonkso. The girls had studied together in Sydney, Australia, and while life had taken them in different directions after graduating, today was all about reconnecting. They expected gossip, laughter, and newlywed Myrna showing off her wedding snaps. But then,

Mernard took a sip of the Vietnamese iced coffee that Jessica had so thoughtfully ordered for her. And within seconds, she started convulsing and foaming at the mouth before collapsing. Mernard was rushed to hospital, but it was too late. Merna Sallaghan was dead at just 27 years old. Not a hundred like Muriel Jones. Tests on Mernor's coffee cup found that it contained almost 300 milligrams. of Sinai. Fuck me.

Many times the lethal dose. It looked very clearly like Myrna had been poisoned. But how? And why? And most importantly, by who? Suspicion quickly fell on Mernas' friend, the one who had ordered the drink,

Jessica Wongzo. A series of bizarre behaviours before, during and after Mernar's death, put the spotlight firmly on 27-year-old Jessica, and ultimately resulted in her conviction for premeditated homicide. To the Indonesian courts and media, it looked like a textbook case of a jealous frenemy, taking out her biggest rival. But beneath the frothy surface, a darker controversy was brewing.

Frothy coffee or frothing at the mouth because of sideline, poisoning or both. Whatever you want. Pick your poison. Well done. Thank you. The controversy that was brewing was one that suggested that Jessica might just be innocent. Thanks to Apache investigation and a sensationalised trial that was fuelled more by rumours than

hard evidence. So who really is Jessica Kamala Wongzo? An ice cold killer? Or the wrongfully convicted victim of a corrupt justice system? This story is anything but simple. So let's give you some background before we continue. Wayan Merner-Salihin was born into a wealthy family on the 30th of March 1988, along with her identical twin sister, Sandy.

Her dad was a successful industrialist who treated his girls like little princesses from day one, sending them to Jakarta's most prestigious schools and providing them with all the opportunities money could buy, which is all of them. Mernard grew into an attractive, popular and confident young lady who seemed to have it all, brains, looks, charisma and cash. So when the time came to fly the nest, like so many rich and ambitious students, set her sights abroad for further education. She enrolled on a graphic design degree at the Billy Blue College of Design in Sydney, and that's where, in 2008, she met Jessica Wongza.

They were the same age and had a similar privileged upbringing back in Indonesia. Jessica's father was known as the Plastic King. Just calling Ken. That would be funny, huh? missed a trick there. They really did. I'm here all week. Plastic King Ken ran a lucrative company that distributed plastics across Australia,

and that's where the family had moved to when Jessica was a teen. Probably just redistributing all the plastic we shipped to Indonesia. Yeah. He's like, I've used it all to make myself incredibly wealthy. And now I'm going to Australia. Because guess what? This place is full of fucking plastic. I'd love to know how much microplastics in my body. There must be some sort of scan you can do. I'm drinking some right now.

Apparently Orlando Bloom paid some bazillions of dollars to have all of the microplastic like flushed out of his body. It just seems like that's an impossible thing to achieve. I just would be like, how do you know that, Orlando? How do you know it worked? Yeah. Don't believe her. Suddenly him and Katie Perry make a lot more sense. Back to Jessica.

With a love for drawing and computer games, Jessica was described as a, quote, spoiled and reserved child who had an extremely comfortable upbringing just like Murna did. The pair were birds of a feather in the strange world down under, and they were determined to make the most of their uni years together. Basically joined at the hip, Jessica and Myrna loved to go out to cafes and take selfies together, like a classic pair of millennial besties. I have never done that in my life. Too busy taking my mum's digital camera to Shihana. This is the thing. This was the life we were living. Maybe this is like the Australia effect. Maybe, maybe.

Have you heard about the Australia effect? No. It's apparently when you move to Australia and you become like 10 times more attractive. Ah, okay. But I don't know. I've heard of the UK effect. Which is what? It's the opposite and you get way more depressed.

Ah, bummerino. Anyway, in Australia, Jessica and Mernet were a part of a wider friendship group of other Indonesian students who remember Jess as bubbly and a goofy kind of character. But then came graduation. A mat, millennial, bestie, photo-taking, bubble. tea-drinking bubble bust. While her pals, including Merna, returned to Indonesia, Jessica obviously stayed in Australia. That's where her family were. The girls naturally drifted apart due to their busy personal lives, work, and of course the distance. Back home, life was

pretty charm for Merna. She got engaged to her long-term boyfriend, Arif Somako, and started working at one of her dad's companies. Meanwhile, Jessica found a job as a graphic designer for the New South Wales ambulance service, and dated an Aussie guy, named. named Patrick O'Connor. But sadly, Jessica's situation wasn't exactly a fairy tale romance. It was a turbulent and toxic relationship with Jessica accusing Patrick of using drugs and being violent. Jessica found herself very unhappily in love

and in desperate need of a friend to vent to. So when her old BFF Myrna returned to Sydney for a holiday in June 2014, she confided in her over lunch about the problem she was having with Patrick. Now, Myrna was known for being opinionated and unafraid to dish out some tough love, and she didn't sugarcoat it, scolding Jessica for being dumb enough to stay with a guy who didn't treat her well and urging her to dump his ass immediately. But no matter how well-meaning it may have been, Marna's girl talk backfired.

Jessica fell completely quiet, seething in silent rage, before getting up and walking out of the restaurant without saying a single word. After that frosty lunch, things between Jessica and Merner were never quite the same. Their communication dried out with Myrna telling her fiancé Airef that she wouldn't feel comfortable meeting Jessica alone again. If she had to, she would bring someone else along. Much has been made of this remark in the context of what ended up happening to Merner. Arif himself later claimed that Merner developed a fear of Jessica from that moment on. And whether that's actually true or if she just wanted a buffer for the inevitable awkwardness,

it was clear that the incident left a permanent scar on Jessica and Myrna's friendship. And when Myrna Anarief threw an extravagant Bali wedding in November 2015, Jessica was conspicuously not on the guest list. That is going to sting. Yeah. But just a month later, Jessica spontaneously returned to Indonesia. Now no longer dating Patrick O'Connor and out of work because she'd actually lost her job back in Australia,

it was unclear how long she planned on staying. But it seemed like she was on a mission to repair her burned-out bridges. Over a year had passed since her awkward restaurant stormout. After reaching out by text, Jessica actually went for dinner with Myrna and her new husband, Arif. It was an olive branch to rebuild their formerly close relationship

and one that Myrna seemed to tentatively accept. In a WhatsApp group with the other Billy Blue girls, Jessica was keen to bring the old gang back together for an IRL catch-up while she was still in Indonesia. With everyone busy over the chaotic New Year's period, they eventually managed to set a date for Wednesday the 6th of January.

Merner, Jessica and Haney were all down to meet up at 5pm, with another friend, Vera, planning on joining them later since she couldn't leave work until 6. Jessica was the one who suggested the Swiss Olivier Cafe, And though she didn't know it yet, Myrna's fate was sealed. On the day itself, self-appointed social sec, Jessica, texted the WhatsApp group at around 1pm to ask what drinks the girls wanted.

She said that since she planned to arrive a little early, she would get around in. Merner and Hanny said that there was no need. They could order what they wanted when they got there, but Jessica insisted urging them to pick their poison. Mirna replied that she'd like the Vietnamese iced coffee and Jessica confirmed that she would have one ready for her. As for the fateful coffee date, we're going to go through each moment as it happened

and take a look at the actual CCTV footage from the cafe. If you are watching us on YouTube, hello, we know that the footage is a bit grainy, but it's still important because the video we're about to watch is a crucial piece of evidence and it plays a big part in the trial later on So it is worth our time, worth examining. If you are listening in your ears only,

do pop over to YouTube and join us there and have a look. And if you can't possibly, maybe you're outside in the world and you can't sit down. That's fine. We'll explain it. So it turns out that Jessica wasn't kidding when she said that she would be there early. She rocked up at the Olivier Cafe at 3.30pm, a whole hour and a half before Hanny and Marna were due to arrive. I do quite like to do that. I love to do that.

But what she does is she buys the fucking drinks. An hour and a half before she knows they're going to arrive. Okay, I'm not going to do all of that. I'm just going to make sure I'm in the correct seat. Yeah. My clothes aren't touching me. Not going to have a meltdown. No.

I'm not ordering drinks. No. That's the ridiculous part. So yeah, she gets there an hour and a half before. And she doesn't buy the drink straight away. That's unfair. Let's follow the pattern of what actually happens. She gets to the cafe an hour and a half before.

But she leaves two minutes later. and goes back into the Grand Indonesia more, presumably to do a bit of shopping, kill some time. But then Jessica returns about 45 minutes later, now toting three large shopping bags from bath and bodywarks. Each contains just a small bottle of soap, which she'll later claim a gifts for her friends. She then goes to Table 54, which is a circular booth,

and pops all of these big shopping bags down. Again, where she puts these bags is important, we'll come back to it. But despite still at this point being incredibly early, she's still 45 minutes early to meet her friends, Jessica walks up to the bar and orders the drinks at 4.18 p.m. She orders a cocktail for Hannie and a Vietnamese ice coffee for Myrna. Both drinks that are meant to be served cold. 45 minutes ahead of time. Now she asks to pay the bill straight away, which is apparently quite unusual.

in Indonesia. But it's not that odd in Australia. So I don't know, some people make a big thing about that. But she had lived in Australia for a lot of her life at this point. So I don't find that bit too weird. She's not just done a couple of years like studying abroad. She's been there since she was a teenager. So then she takes a minute to walk around the cafe. And you can see this in the CCTV footage. She's peering into corners and you can see her glancing up at CCTV cameras a few times. Like she's checking where they are. Now again, all of this might not look weird if what happens next doesn't happen. But it is very obvious.

She is going around and looking in corners of the bar. Eventually, Jessica seemed satisfied with the booth that she had already chosen and sits down. We should point out as well that this table, the nearest camera, is partly obscured by a large overgrown plants. So did she choose it on purpose or is it just a coincidence? Don't know. because there is still another camera across the restaurant with a clear, if grainy view, of the table, which is what we are watching right now. Why are we telling you all this? Because those convinced of Jessica Wongzo's guilt say that this was her scoping the place out for CCTV and deliberately choosing a table as obscured from view as she possibly could.

Olivia's barrister, Rangas Saputro, prepares the Vietnamese iced coffee materials and hands the tray directly to, to a waiter to take over to Jessica's table at 4.24pm. Because this is a pretentious and boozy place, the waiter does the whole routine of pouring the hot water over the espresso grounds, so it drips through into the glass of condensed milk and ice beneath. It takes ages, makes you feel fancy. And if I had spent a day's wages on it, I want it gold-plated. I want him to do a dance.

I want him to feed it to me. Except please don't touch me. Following the cafe's hygiene regulations, this waiter places a plastic straw with the paper wrapper still covering the top pot on the table beside the drink. Yes. You can touch me, that's fine, don't touch the straw. Especially don't touch the top of a straw. That's my worst thing. When somebody hands you a straw in a bar or they put it in the drink and they picked up the top and I'm like, oh.

You're disgusting. My favorite thing is I was in a pub recently. And like, we weren't drinking. We were having a meal. and this waitress who was obviously very new she brought our drinks over but she was carrying them like this and she came and put it

and if you can't see it she's got her fingers round the rim of the cup and she came and she put them down on the table and I just looked at her hand I didn't say anything I just looked at her hand she put it down and then she went like this and put her hands around the side of the cup

picked it up and put it back down I was like it's fine I can see the smudges of your fingerprint so I just won't put my lips there but thanks very much for the drink Or can you get me a straw and don't touch the tip? I understand the like theatrics of it, right? But when I worked in other restaurants, it always made me laugh because I was like, out of interest,

what do you think the chefs are using to prepare their food because it's their hands? Oh, wow, wow, wow. I know. Like, you just can't see it happening so it doesn't bother you. Don't want to see it. Don't want to see it. Fuck and I'll. Don't watch the sausage be made.

Don't watch the food be touched. That's my motto. Then, another way to follow shortly after and brings over the two cocktails. And once she is all alone and the coffee theatrics have ceased, Jessica can be seen on the CCTV footage arranging her shopping bags on top of the table in a strange way. Now again, this is a big talking point in this case. Why has she got three big shopping bags on what is essentially like a booth table when she's expecting other people and there's like empty seats next to her when you just put them on the floor,

when you put them on the seats? Why would you put them on the table in front of yourself? Like, is that a weird thing to do? Yeah, kind of. In the grand scheme of weird things people do, not really, but again, it's all the little bits together. Because, you know, why are you doing that, if not for some nefarious purpose? I don't know. The only reason I would put a bag on a table, which I do have to do quite often, is because if I put it on the floor,

Mabel will be in there in seconds. Yes. But Mabel's not in Jakarta famously. Jessica fiddles with these bags and tweaks their positions multiple times. And as we have said, whether that's intentional or not, not sure, but the bags do end up obscuring the drinks from every single CCTV camera. Yeah. So I guess the question is, does she come to Olivier's first when she arrives an hour and a half early? Does she have a little look inside?

She clocks like the booths. She obviously can't know the CCTV for sure yet, but does she think? think, let me go for a shop, buy some big bags of stuff so I can come back in here. Like, is it all that premeditated? Maybe, maybe not. We can discuss that later, but it's just to start putting some of these pieces together. Jessica can also be seen moving her hands behind the bags like she's doing a magic trick. But you can't see exactly what she's doing.

But if you are on Team Guilty, it is this moment when Jessica slips a lethal dose of cyanide. into her former bestie Merner's drink. Let's now fast forward to 5.16 p.m. Myrna and Hannie arrive at Olivier's about a quarter of an hour late. So these drinks, by the way, have been sat there for an hour. And Arif actually dropped Merna off at the mall closer to 5pm, so she would have been on time. But she was actually so wary of meeting Jessica alone

that she waited for Hannie to turn up to go into the cafe with her. Inside the cafe, Jessica has been waiting with the drinks, as I said, for 52 minutes by this point. The ice in their drinks have totally melted. But then again, the girls were more interested in thawing the ice between them, allegedly. Now the two women, when they turned up, go straight to Jessica's table, where they hug each other before settling down at the booth with Myrna in the middle. Now, before the gossip can get started, Meirna takes a gulp of her Vietnamese iced coffee through the straw.

And something is immediately wrong. In this CCTV footage, you can see Myrna waving her hands in front of her face and grimacing. She tells Hanny and Jessica that the iced coffee is bad, and you can see her urging them to taste it, to try it. And Jessica refuses. But Hanny dips her own straw into Mernas coffee. and licks off a tiny drop. She doesn't take a gulp, she just takes a little taste.

Later, Hanny would claim that it tasted bitter, burning and spicy, like no coffee she tried before. Just seconds later, Myrna's head slams back against the booth in a violent seizure. And you can't see this detail on the tape, but she's foaming at the mouth and convulsing. Myrna collapses and chaos breaks out in the restaurant as the staff race over. They move tables out of the way and try bundle Mirna into a wheelchair,

while a panicking hanny calls out to Myrna and tries to help her. Meanwhile, Jessica, however, can be seen very clearly in the CCTV footage, standing at a distance, silently wringing her hands together and appearing to scratch them. She makes absolutely no attempt to have. help Mirna. And she also doesn't seem visibly distressed. Also, just important to point out, she had had first aid training in Australia. And I'm not saying everybody who has that training is immediately going to kick into action, especially when it's your friend and it's happening in front of you. But the fact that she makes no attempt whatsoever to help, I don't think

is unimportant. So again, if you believe that Jessica Wongzo is the killer, then this is the part where she calmly watches as her own murder plot plays out in real time. I think we've definitely covered this 100 million times before, but cyanide has this, because of it being such a popular, like, way out of trouble in World War II, it has this reputation as being quick and easy. Quick and easy. You can slip it into anything. No, you know about it.

It's very strong tasting. That's why people use it to kill themselves rather than other people. people because it is so obvious. And it's a horrible way to go. And also may or may not be featuring in my musical. Now it's time for another quite big red flag, pointing towards Jessica being a murderer. This was the one that I was like,

okay, if I was there, this is the first one that would make me be like, what? Because her standing aside, putting the bags there, looking at CCTV, okay, okay, okay. But this one, it speaks to a consciousness. of guilt for me. Oh, okay. The manager of the cafe,

a very chic lady called Devi Saigian, says that while Merner was still having fits, Jessica turned to her and demanded, what did you put in her coffee? Why would that be the first thing you ask? Within seconds of your friend convulsing? If we were out having coffee and you started convulsing, I wouldn't be like,

what did you put in her drink making accusations to restaurant staff? I'd be like, oh my God, Like, I would just think you were having a heart attack or like you were having a stroke or a seizure or something bizarre. I wouldn't think you'd been poisoned. No. And that's what I mean. It speaks to somebody who is already several steps ahead of everybody else in that scenario. Totally, because nobody else on the scene had made the connection between what was happening to Myrna and the coffee that she had just drunk.

And if it turned out she had just had a heart attack and somebody had asked that, okay, then you'd be like, you're just quite a paranoid person. Yeah, right. But when you put those things together and she was poisoned, it makes you look fucking guilty. because everybody there is assuming what normal people would assume, you know, if they don't know who she is, maybe she has epilepsy. But that comment stuck with manager Devi for obvious reasons. And finally, the CCTV shows Merner, Sally Hin being wheeled away in her final moments. An ambulance took her to Abdi Waluyo Hospital.

But Merna died before she could even get there. So let's go back to exploring the rest of the time. of the story. While Myrna was being rushed to hospital, cafe manager Devi just couldn't shake that comment that Jessica had made about the coffee. This was way more serious than some sort of snooty review. It could be a matter of life and death.

This does get quite complicated later, but I do think Devi does the right thing here. She basically instructs her staff to cover Merner's iced coffee and put it aside with strict orders for nobody to touch it. Smart lady, yeah. She noticed as well at this point that the coffee had a strange yellowish colour. It looked more like a turmeric latte than the expected creamy beige shade of a Vietnamese coffee

that had been sat on that counter for over an hour by this point. Both Devi and her barista Ranga reported that it also smelled pungent, almost like glue. And Devi even tasted a tiny bit of it with her fingertip, which I'm like, that's bold. But in doing that, she did prove to herself that that. it did taste rancid. And she and the others who tried a drop of the coffee had a lucky escape, because remember Hannie also tried it. When the police conducted tests on the glass, as we told you at the start, they found that it contained a whopping 298 milligrams of cyanide. Just to put that into context, you basically need around 171 milligrams per litre to poison someone who was Merner's weight.

So they were really going for it because she wasn't drinking a liter of Vietnamese coffee and it was already double the amount. Mernes' sudden death left everyone who loved her utterly shell-shocked. She was a vibrant, healthy 27-year-old woman who was newly married and excited to start a family. And just like that, she was gone. So do the thing. Don't wait, do it now, do it today. But as tragic as the idea of a freak medical episode would have been,

the news of cyanide lacing her final drink was even harder to swallow. cyanide isn't the sort of toxic that you have lying around your kitchen anymore. There was a period of time. Notoriously deadly, it was the poison of choice for suicide on Nazis hold up in their bunkers after the collapse of the Third Reich. Including Mrs Hitler herself, Ava Braun, I always forget about her. I always get stuck on Gerbil's children. Ava Braun chewed on a capsule to seal her own fate down in the furor bunker. death from cyanide poisoning is fast, but it's cruel and also catastrophically efficient.

How it works is it binds cells to starve the human body of oxygen, which triggers convulsions, respiratory failure and ultimately death in a matter of minutes. Fast, not easy. So this couldn't be an innocent mix-up with cleaning supplies or rat poison. This was a deliberate and intentional act. with no other motive but to kill. But why, Myrna? She was beautiful, clever, popular and successful,

and as far as anyone knew, she shouldn't have any enemies. Surely no one could have hated her enough to take all that away from her in just one sip. But, as it turned out, Myrna's picture-perfect life might just have been the very thing that put a target on her back. Indonesian investigators and armchair detectives alike

formed an irresistible narrative based on hatred, jealousy, though I actually think it's envy, and resentment that had been brewing for months. From none other than Myrna's ex-bestie, Jessica. Right from the start, Jessica's behaviour got people talking and not in a good way. Myrna's twin, Sandy, said that shortly after her sister died, Jessica sent her a news link about someone being killed by poison. This aroused Sandy's suspicions, since at this point they were all still in the dark about what had caused Mernas death. Was it, what's a face?

Chinese university poisoner. Oh. Tsuling. Oh, yes. That was a horrible case. Maybe. But she sends her this. And again, I'm like, why?

Why are you doing this? Nobody knows yet what has caused Merners death? What are you doing? But as we'll go on to see, I don't think that Jessica is like, A-okay. So yes, while the police never actually searched Jessica during the chaos of that day, it came out that later she had got her family's housekeeper to chuck out the jeans that she was wearing that day, claiming they were too tight for her. Was it a coincidence or a convenient clean-up? Who knows? And as the investigators combed through the CCTV footage from

Malivier, more strange little details started to stack up. Arriving absurdly early, scoping the place out, allegedly, arranging her shopping bags on the table to block CCTV, maybe, who knows? But nobody actually saw Jessica slipping the poison into Myrna's drink with their own eyes. However, it was getting harder and harder to ignore what looked like quite a lot of telltale signs of her kilt. Unsurprisingly, the scandalous coffee killer story absolutely blew up in Indonesia. We're talking wall-to-wall coverage, with two TV channels purely dedicated to following the case and speculating on Jessica's alleged motives.

I mean, it's the perfect story. Oh, yeah. It's like young, attractive, 20-something-year-old women, you know, from the upper echelons of society. and the backdrop is like a fancy cafe and they're drinking fancy expensive drinks and one of them gets poisoned and it's just like the perfect unbelievable story. And we like poisonings

because even though it is a horrible way to go like Mushroom Lady it's just a bit more of the like fun frivolous story when it's poison rather than stabbing or shooting or like we like it more which is why it's in the musical. Yes. I also wonder if it's because more of us can see

how do I say this more of us can see ourselves doing it not that we would do it but when you hear a story about somebody you know murdering like stabbing a bunch of people or like shooting a bunch of people or chopping their bodies up and chucking them into the fucking sea you're like I could never do that

but could you just tip a little powder into a drink and take a step back and like disassociate from that and have your desires play out maybe it's that we recognize it as something that's more quote unquote doable. Yeah, I agree. But yeah, it was a big, big story. And also, like I was saying at the start,

it created a real, like, divide and opinion based on class in Indonesia. So a lot of the people who were sort of in the upper echelons of society, the class, I guess, that Merna and Jessica both belonged to, all thought that Jessica was innocent. And the people who were not all believe she was absolutely guilty because they kind of felt like this sort of,

as we're going to talk about the motive, this kind of privileged, petty, vindictive nature. They kind of saw it as akin to people who belonged in that class, the mentality of people who belonged in that class. Not, of course, that Mernard deserved anything that happened to her. But, yeah, there was more like, yeah, of course they're all like that kind of thinking. And here's one of the wildest stories that was doing around emphasis on story. Jessica and Merner had been Lovellas in Sydney, and after Myrna got married, a lovick Jessica decided

that if she couldn't have her, nobody could. The classic lesbian plotline. If my musical wasn't full of men, I'd have one too. When we were a... What was it? I was very drunk. We had a lot of cocktails at night. When we were doing that Six by Nico murder mystery with our team, what was it that there was like a whole joke with Katie, our producer,

about like a lesbian, lesbian killer? And how that's always a plot line and things? No, it was her just like at every turn being like, but lesbians. Maybe she's a lesbian. Maybe she's a lesbian. Okay, I got it. So that's what they're doing here. And also, not to bang on too much about Islam, but like what you were saying about

the sort of class divide, also kind of like, oh, well, she left and she went to a non-Muslim country where everyone is debauched. And that's why this happened. Yeah, yeah. And she came back and, you know, she was only a lesbian while she was there because she could be. Yeah, gay for this day. Straight at the gate. This particular rumour was fuelled partly by Myrna's father, Eddie Damawan, who, let's just say, like most very rich people, bit of a character.

And he does appear in a Netflix documentary on this case, armed with a gun, bragging about how famous he is all over Indonesia for being Murna's dad. And theatrics aside, one thing is clear. Mernas father 100% believes that Jessica Wongso killed his daughter. He claims to have seen WhatsApp messages from Jessica to Mernar where she allegedly said, Mer, I want to kiss you, it's been a long time. That might sound casual in English, but in Indonesian it's quite a lot more loaded. Friends just don't really speak to each other like that. Needless to say, this theory spread like wildfire on Twitter,

where Indonesians had a field day speculating about the doom. lesbian lover's scenario. Jessica firmly denied it, later insisting in court that she was only interested in men. Myrna's sister Sandy agreed that it was complete nonsense, while Hanny, the close mutual friend, also testified that she had never seen any hint of a romantic relationship between the two of them. Yeah, and as for that text, like, I get that that's just like an unusual way for Indonesian people to speak to each other so it doesn't make sense, but they were very westernised. And like Jessica lived in Australia for a long time, and Murmur.

Mernar, she grows up very privileged, probably very westernised. She goes to Australia for college. Like, I think it's being seen in a way that feels unusual in Indonesia, but I don't think would have been unusual for the girls to communicate that way. Just I don't believe the lesbian love theory, basically. I don't believe that. No, me either. But the gossip machine wasn't switching off any time soon.

Another theory soon emerged that Mernar was actually Jessica's love rival rather than her love interest. But the idea that Jessica was crazy about Merner's husband Arif, it soon fell flat. Mainly because they'd literally only met each other once that December. So they'd have to have to have moved pretty bloody fast to be embroiled in a murderous love triangle by early January. So, I don't know. Not impossible, but feels improbable to me. So next, let's look at revenge. Word quickly spread of the falling out between Jessica and Myrna in June 2014

and how Jessica hadn't been invited to Myrna's wedding that had taken place just a few months before her murder. Had Jessica wanted to get back at Merner for criticising her relationship with Patrick and had she felt resentful for being excluded from Myrna's Big Day? Possibly. It might sound petty, but for someone with a grudge, perhaps being taunted by glossy photos of the lavish celebration, could have been enough to tip the scale to murder.

Because, yes, I think that Jessica has a lot of psychological problems. And I think it could have honestly been anything. I think it honestly could have been anything. Don't think it even needs to be something as big as the wedding. It could have been any form of perceived slight. But to be honest, while I think any of these theories fit, or it could have been something else altogether that we can't even wrap our heads around, for me, I think the motive of envy is the one that fits the best with this.

crime. And it's actually quite interesting because it's not one we get to speak about regularly, but it is definitely all too real. And I think it's important to point out the difference between jealousy and envy. Yes, please. A lot of people say this crime was motivated by jealousy. But I don't think so. I think it's about envy because jealousy arises from a perceived threat of loss, whereas envy is a desire for something someone else has. And chronic and intense envy can absolutely be a powerful motivator for murder. So, for example, jealousy is like, I'm worried you're taking my partner away from me. And that is the perceived threat of a loss I am going to endure because of you. Whereas envy, because obviously, coveting your neighbor's wife. Exactly. It's like

jealousy, I guess the best way to explain it is maybe with jealousy you see as you have something to lose and the other person is going to gain from that. Whereas with envy, you could just be envious of somebody else's success, but that success they have doesn't stop you being successful. But if you're jealous that they're going to steal your partner, them stealing your partner would stop you having that partner. So yes, a jealous offender who is maybe someone who kills a perceived love rival. And yes, like we said, that could have been the case here, but I like really don't think so. Personally, I think that Jessica fits much better with the envy type killer, somebody who has

this like chronic anger and resentment towards somebody else's success or happiness or whatever. And typically these type of killers, they are younger, which again fits, Jessica's only 27 years old, and they tend to exhibit quite grandiose and narcissistic traits, which again, as we will go on to see, Jessica has in fucking bucket loads. And they usually have also a desire for fame or infamy or attention. Again, we will see. Jessica certainly has that. And they resent feeling ignored or ostracized and they absolutely resent the success or happiness of others. And when they act to kill out of envy, they're doing it obviously, yes, to hurt the other person, to bring that person down, but also to make themselves feel better. So I've taken that thing away from

you. You're not so big now. And they will also use that situation if they can to boost their own social status and draw attention to themselves, because they believe that's something they rightfully deserve. And again, as we were going to see, Jessica certainly does that. From day one, Jessica Wongzo became Indonesia's most hated woman. For the riveted public, the story had all of the hallmarks of a soap opera script, with Myrna cast as the tragic beauty and Jessica as her plain, jealous friend. Many Indonesians were convinced that Jessica and Jessica alone could have killed Mernar. But hang on.

Surely, investigation-wise, Jessica couldn't have been the only person in the frame. What about Hannie? The other girl at Table 54, that fateful afternoon, had a manager who called me Hannie. Oh. Or Hannibal. Do I look like a fucking Hannibal? Is that a name? No.

I don't like Honey for you. I have never felt like Hannah, ever. But my most hated thing about it is that you can't shorten it. Yeah, it's a tough one to shorten H. Age bomb Age bomb Age drain The big H

H dog I just think H is a bad letter H H No I don't know We'll work on it The only good thing about being called Hannah

Is when someone asks how to spell it You can say two of everything darling And it's a palindrome That's fun It is and as a letter it is symmetrical I like that And I'm a Libra Yeah it all fits

Anyway This Hanny was actually questioned by police for over 12 hours before being ruled out. And there are a few good reasons for this. Firstly, she was never alone with the drinks. It would have taken incredible sleight of hand to slip the poison into the coffee right under Merner's nose. Secondly, police believed that Hannie's behaviour at the scene was consistent with someone who was genuinely shocked and distressed as she tried in vain to help Murna.

Of course, this on its own is never enough, but. But it only served to make Jessica's behaviour that day look even more odd. And thirdly, Hanny had actually tasted the coffee herself, and Jessica had not. And she was reportedly terrified that she would die just like Murna. I fucking would be too. And so, all of the attention was squarely on Jessica Wongzo. Police finally arrested Jessica in a hotel room on the 30th of January 2016. Her bags were packed, suggesting that she was.

ready to head back down under. And to be honest, whether she did it or not, I can't really blame her. Because it looked like in Jakarta, Jessica would likely face a bit of a kangaroo court. As Indonesia's trial of the century prepared to kick off in June 2016, it was absolute chaos.

Forget everything you think you know about solemn courtroom dramas and instead imagine a crowded room filled with flashing cameras and heckling reporters. The whole thing was also broadcast on national TV with breathless commentators analysing every single bit of the action

like some sort of football match. Like what TV? Yes, but it's like the judge isn't in control. No one is in control. It's just like an absolute frenzy, what's going on in there. And Twitter went absolutely wild for the handsome prosecutor,

Sandy Handika. With half the country, focus more on his winning smile than the evidence. This is what Jessica was up against. But she came out swinging, using her family's wealth and connections to lawyer up hard. Her defence team was led by hot shot celebrity lawyer, Otto Hassibon, and bolstered by one of her very own uncles, Udiwobo. The trial had one question to answer. Did Jessica poison Merner by putting cyanide in her iced coffee that day. Simple. No. Things are going to get weird. Yeah. When I read this, I was like, what? Murna's coffee contained way over double the amount of cyanide it would

take to kill a person. But her body, not so much. Doctors at the hospital observed alarming markers on Merner's body, like blackened and bluish discoloration inside her mouth and signs of bleak. in her stomach that appeared consistent with ingesting a corrosive agent. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's what happens when you drink bleach. In other words, it looked like she'd been poisoned. But an autopsy would be needed to confirm that for certain. But here's the catch.

In Indonesia, for religious and cultural reasons, full autopsies can't be conducted without family consent. Which is fucking bonkers. What if your family fucking murder you? And then they're like, no, no autopsy. And they just have to be like, okay, we'll just take your word for it that you didn't murder her. Yeah. And even if you didn't do it, like, this is a situation in which I don't think Meernas family were involved at all.

They're horrified by the death of their 27-year-old daughter and Arif by, you know, his new fucking bride. But like, even they don't allow it. And you're like, that's what's going to help catch her killer? Yeah, it's tough. Merner's family only allowed a partial autopsy which involved just taking small samples from her stomach, bile and urine which like if it's a religious and cultural thing, right? They're already in there.

Just let them do the, you know, it doesn't really make that much different. They're going to put her back together. This is why I just think the law in places has to intervene to override emotional decision-making in cases like this. This is why the law needs to be dispassionately applied, right? Because the family will be like, our daughter was already horribly murdered. My wife was horribly murdered. Of course, I don't want to contemplate the idea of her being on like a cold slab being chopped at

and, you know, whatever else comes along with an autopsy. I can understand that, especially, you know, religiously, culturally, all of those things. And it would be hard to take that step and understand that that is vital to catching the killer. If you're a layperson, possibly. And that's why the law has to be like, there's no choice. You don't get a choice. this is what we're doing. This is the fundamental tipping point that stops just as being done in a clear way.

We're going to need a drum roll for this one. You can do it yourselves at home. My hands twitch to go do it when you were like, you can do it. You can do it if you want. Because guess what the initial samples taken just an hour after Myrna's death found. zero cyanide. Nothing, not a bit. Meanwhile, the official partial autopsy that was conducted three days later

detected just 0.2 milligrams of cyanide in Myrna's duodenum, which is the first bit for small intestine. For context, an apple pip contains up to 0.6 milligrams of cyanide, which is why you shouldn't give them to your dog. Mum. Hardly a lethal dose, though, for a human. And some scientists even suggest that it likely came from the embalming chemicals. And there was also no, the asinate, which is the usual byproduct of cyanide poisoning. None of that was found in any of Myrna samples.

So what the hell does this mean? Did cyanide kill Merner or not? Well, this is a bit complicated. and we don't want to sound like a mouthpiece for the prosecution here, but just hear us out while we try to explain. Just because cyanide wasn't found in Myrna's body, it doesn't necessarily mean for certain that cyanide isn't what killed her. Cyanide is a notoriously volatile compound that can break down easily under the right conditions,

or wrong conditions, however you look at it. In other words, if the samples weren't handled perfectly, it could easily have evaporated. And the toxicologist, who did the autopsy, argued that Myrna died so quickly that her body didn't have time to metabolize the cyanide into the byproduct that you would sometimes find thiosyanite, which would explain why none was found. Crucially, a full autopsy would have given a much clearer picture of how much cyanide, if any, was in Merner's body. The examiners didn't have that, though. But did they let that stop them? No.

They went ahead anyway and concluded that Mernas official cause of death. was cyanide poisoning, which is definitely problematic because you're saying that her cause of death is cyanide poisoning, but you can't prove in a real way with a toxicology report that her cause of death was cyanide poisoning. All they essentially have, and I'm not saying this is irrelevant, this is very, very important. And medical examiners should look at the wider context of a crime or a situation that they're looking at. You have a coffee cup that she was drinking from that has cyanide in it. She has the hallmarks of being poisoned like a black mouth and black tar. and, you know, various other physical markers of cyanide poisoning.

But there's no actual cyanide in her body. So, yes, that's a very tricky hill to climb to then say officially cause of death is cyanide poisoning. It's very hard. And I can also believe, because people are like, there was no cyanide in her body, therefore she cannot have died of cyanide poisoning. But my problem is they didn't do a full autopsy,

so I don't think you can say there was no cyanide in her body. They didn't find it because they didn't do a full autopsy. Also, it is a very volatile compound, which makes it hard to identify sometimes. And also, I'm sorry, but the amount of botched shit in this investigation and in this trial as we're going to go on to discover, I could also just believe they did a bad job of the partial autopsy that they even did. They could have lost the results. So many things could have happened that I don't have real full faith. For me, it's like you've got the coffee cup with the cyanide. You've got the physical indications of poisoning, but no clear-cut toxicology report that proves it.

Two out of three, absolutely, in my opinion, Mernet died of cyanide poisoning. But it's a difference between what you believe and what you can prove in a court of law. So, yeah, very, very tricky stuff. Forensic uncertainty became the defence team's smoking gun. It is handed to them. Yeah, I mean, you can't get much more clear-cut forensic uncertainty than literally not finding the chemical or poison agent. that you say killed that person in their body. And Jessica's lawyer, Otto Hazibon, argued that not only could the prosecution not prove that Jessica spiked the coffee,

they couldn't even prove that it was cyanide that killed Merner. Respected toxicologist Dr. Ben-Beng-Beng-ong fantastic. Testified that cyanide ingested orally usually takes longer than a few seconds to take effect, and such a high dose would likely leave more significant traces that even a partial ordeal, autopsy would pick up. Australian expert Michael Robertson put it even more bluntly declaring there is no toxicological

evidence for the ingesting of cyanide. And yes, maybe, but they didn't do a full autopsy. And she had a coffee that cyanide didn't have, her mouth is black. Yeah. But again, I'm not arguing that they should have been allowed to get away with it. I just mean they're not being able to do the full autopsy and not having the proper results

really scuppered the trial. Is the problem. All of the defence's expert witnesses agreed that without a full autopsy, it is impossible to conclusively prove or disprove any cause of death. Hazabowan argued that Myrna could just as easily have died from natural causes, but that was just never investigated. From day one, in the eyes of Indonesia, it was cyanide and it was Jessica. Yeah, and look, Jessica Wong, though, unbelievably,

because I've tried to hold on to what I actually think happened for as much as I could throughout this. case, maybe poorly. But Jessica Wongzo, unbelievably, has a lot of supporters who think she is innocent. I would have more time for it if, say, they had like, and this is real stretch, but like, say, found some cyanide traces in her room or on her clothes and Murna had died. There was no cyanide in the coffee. There was no cyanide in her blood. And you're just saying, well, she had traces of cyanide like on her jeans for whatever reason. And her friend was poisoned.

It must have been her get her. Like I could see more of the gray area. There's fucking cyanide in the coffee. And the coffee was sat there for an hour with only Jessica Wongzo sat there. And I get it. The bar has to be high in a criminal court. I understand that. But it is.

They're just handing shit to the defence here. And yes, the shaky forensic evidence gave Hassiband the perfect springboard to launch his boldest claim yet. The whole thing had been a stitch up against Jessica from the very start. Sinide poisoning, he argued, was exactly what Myrna's family wanted. wanted everyone to believe, and they may well have had a hand in making it look that way. Namely, Hasiband suggested that Mearnas' wealthy and well-connected dad, Eddie Damawan, could have paid people off to ensure the story fit, pointing to an alleged meeting that Damawan held with the Olivier Cafe staff after

Meena's death to help them get their stories straight. Hassaband argued that money could have changed hands to push the needle towards Jessica. He also highlighted the coffee's dodgy chain of custody, noting how it was passed between cafe employees and not properly sealed, and left open to potential tampering either by the police or another party who could have added the cyanide later. And yes, I take that point. They handle it very poorly, so if somebody had just added it later, sure. But if you're going to go to that step of tampering it, why wouldn't you tamper the toxicology report or the forensics reports to say, yeah, we found a shitload of cyanide in her bile or whatever? It feels like a half-ass way to carry out a conspiracy. Yeah.

To leave such a gaping hole. And look, I'm not saying that Myrna's dad is an angel. He had his fair share of dodgy moments in court. Like when he presented judges with an obviously photoshopped post-mortem photo of Murna, where his daughter's skin had clearly been edited to have, like, the classic cherry-red hue that sometimes associated with cyanide poisoning. Like, he literally doctored as a photo to show the judges, which again, just shows you how fucking ridiculous this trial was. That wasn't presented as official evidence from the state

taken by the medical examiner. Her dad just shows them a photo that he has clearly just like turned up the red on. It's weird because it goes against the bluish tinge that is very visible in Myrna's skin in the photos taken by hospital staff. And he's obviously trying to do this to prove that she was killed by cyanide poisoning. But ironically, it would have been irrelevant anyway because some studies have suggested that only around 11% of cyanide poisoning victims have cherry red skin. But that does make us question the integrity and rigor of the evidence handled in the trial.

And by Otto Hasiband's reasoning, cast doubt on whether Jessica really got a fair shot. The thing is, we can understand a grieving dad resorting to some dubious methods to ensure justice for his daughter, but if Hasabanz claims that the cyanide was planted in the coffee were true, that would imply a conspiracy from the very start to frame one of Mernard's friends, no less. But the big question would remain, why? And also, again, like I said, if you were going to have a conspiracy

because you're just saying you believe that Jessica did it and you want to pay the cafe staff off to say Jessica asked this crazy question she was acting weirdly, even though it's on CCTV, and you were going to tamper with the photographs to make it look like cyanide poisoning, you were going to pay somebody to put cyanide in the coffee sample, why wouldn't you go the whole hog and also pay off the ME to say that cyanide was found in the body?

Hmm. So I don't personally believe, while Myrna's dad definitely does some weird shit, I don't believe it was a conspiracy. Doesn't seem that way, doesn't it? It just seems like you're missing out the most obvious part you would need to have delivered on. Still, the defence had another big spanner in the works. Hasabowan asked, if Jessica did. to poison murder. How was she supposed to have got her hands on cyanide? It's not exactly something

you can get over the counter. At this, the prosecution were actually stumped. They couldn't provide any evidence of a digital or paper trail of Jessica procuring cyanide. Instead, they just shrugged and said that she was known to be a resourceful and determined person who could have sourced it in Jakarta. They vaguely alluded to her family's company having possible links to chemical plants. If her dad was the plastic king, that made Jessica the plastic princess. But ultimately, the prosecution never could explain how Jessica actually got her fingers on the so-called murder weapon. It's not that hard. Yeah, I feel like if you really want it to. In Jakarta? Yeah. Come man. I reckon, right? And she's got money? Yeah. I could probably

get my hands on some sign-eye by the end of the day. So you just need to determine. nation and some cash and probably to be in Jakarta. Then there's the fact that Meherna wasn't the only one to try the apparently poisoned coffee. And this is something both sides used to try and prop up their case, right? Because along with the manager, Devi at the cafe, a waiter named Marwan Amir also is said to have tried a drop of the coffee and said that it tasted incredibly bitter. He complained of nausea, headache and a burning taste. he spat it out and actually made himself throw up, rinsing his mouth out with water.

And after reassuring a terrified hanny that she wasn't presenting with any symptoms of acute poisoning, a doctor prescribed her with a laxative to flush out any toxins just in case. So what, if anything, does this prove? Well, on one hand, the weird taste, smell and minor reactions reported by multiple people who interacted with the coffee could point to poison, and also could point or should point to, to the idea that it probably wasn't added later by a nefarious cop. It seems to have been in there at the cafe. On the other hand, the fact that none of these other people who tasted the coffee

got seriously ill or died was attempted to be used by the defence to say there was no cyanide in there at all. To me, I just think it fits more for the prosecution really, because none of them tried that much. They only tasted a bit and they all said it tasted horrific. Yeah. So yeah, the whole thing was a mess. And we're frustratingly no closer now than we were in 2016 to knowing for certain if Murna was actually poisoned with cyanide or not. With all of the confusion over the cyanide,

the prosecution pivoted away from hard facts and leaned on a narrative built mostly on circumstantial evidence. Their logic was, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck. Merner convulsed and foamed at the mouth within seconds of tasting her drink. She said it tasted awful and that same drink later tested positive for cyanide. Ego, Murna must have been poisoned. And her symptoms matched those seen in cases of cyanide poisoning.

But here's the thing. Symptoms alone aren't proof of any one cause, especially when no other causes are seriously considered. and in a court of law, the burden of proof should probably rely on more than just duck-based logic, or dare we say, quackery. Quite. Still, the prosecution plowed ahead on the basis of this unproven and unprovable fact, and started tightening the net on why Jessica was the only person who could have killed murder. The prosecution's case leaned heavily on what they saw as Jessica's dodgy behaviour

before during and after Murna's death. According to them, her activity in the group WhatsApp chat indicated premeditation. Earlier that week, she'd even asked the girls if there was a doctor at the mall where Olivier's was based, which you could interpret as her wanting to maybe double check that nobody could sweep in and save the day when she poisoned Murna. And it was undeniably odd that she had insisted on ordering the girl's drinks so far in advance. Because yes, they were late, but she had already ordered it like 45 minutes before they were even meant to be there. Which is weird, because by the time they would have arrived even if they were on time, all the ice would have melted.

And clearly the real crime here was a watery coffee and cocktails. Here on crime and cocktails or crime and coffee or whatever this show is now called. There are enough drinks-based true crime podcast. man, fuck me. I'm so glad we never went down that road. Oh my God, me too. Not that, you know, taking away from, you know, all of the other drinks-based crime shows, I just can't, I just can't commit to that many drinks.

What if that day I don't want a cocktail or a coffee or a crime? It's hard enough to make you drink turbo wine these days. Oh, my bowels can't take it. So, yeah, lots of stuff adds up, right. And the CCTV footage was an absolute gold mind for prosecutors who pointed to Jessica's fidgety little. little movements behind the bag at the time they believed Myrna's drink was likely spiked. They also pointed to Haney's testimony that when they arrived,

Merna straw, and this is quite a good one, Merna straw was already in her iced coffee, while the waiter had placed it as per Olivier's protocol next to the drink with the wrapper still intact. Why would Jessica, who sat there with this melting coffee next to her, pick up that straw, take off the wrapper, put it in the coffee, and wait. It seemed a lot like Jessica had chucked some cyanide in and then used the straw to stir her little secret ingredient into said coffee. Don't know.

I guess on its own, none of it matters, but put it all together. And then, most damningly, Jessica couldn't really give any straight answers about why she'd done all the little oddities that she'd been caught on camera doing that day. She said it was just her being her. But who was Jessica Wongzo? If you were to ask the prosecutors, they would tell you that she was a heartless killer and attention-seeking narcissist.

And Jessica didn't really help herself on that front. Her demeanour in front of the cameras was honestly bizarre. This girl just could not stop giggling and smiling to save her life, which since she could potentially feel, face Indonesia's notorious execution by firing squad if convicted. She literally was. Jessica became known as the smiling coffee killer. She rarely seemed stressed or upset.

In fact, she seemed to actually enjoy the attention that the whole saga brought her. We get having a nervous giggle or a weird cartwheel like Amanda Knox, but Jessica's attitude seemed to be seriously disturbing for someone who was on trial. for allegedly murdering their best friend. And like you really have to see the footage to believe it. We're not just talking like awkward smiles every now and then or like what you'll see some people who are on trial doing is like trying to come across as friendly and so maybe they'll smile a bit too much.

Like Aaron Patterson does this a lot. The mushroom poisoner, she'll look at the jury and smile because she wants them to like her because she doesn't quite like read the social cues so she's going too far with it and it comes across as weird. No, no, Jessica Wongo is actively laughing. Not just during the trial, but like during subsequent interviews, pre-trial interviews, like, it is really a sight to behold. She's talking like she's being interviewed about a new rom-com she's starring in.

It's so fucking strange. I've never seen anything like it. And some commentators have pointed to Jessica's ever-present, Cheshire Cat Grin, as a example of duping delight, which is the euphoric buzzer narcissist gets. from lying and being believed. But if they wanted to roll with their branding of Jessica as a narcissist, prosecutors would obviously need to prove that through psychological analysis.

Enter Dr. Ronnie Nittibaskara, the prosecution's expert psychologist. But this guy didn't even interview Jessica Wongzo. Want to know what he did instead? He used physiognomy. literally reading Jessica's face, like some dodgy Victorian asylum throwback. He reads her face to establish her criminological profile. Can you believe it? You can't make this shit up.

This trial was taking place in 2016. According to him, Jessica's eyes didn't sparkle, quote, like Julia Roberts or former US President Jimmy Carter's therefore she. She can't be trusted. That's a quote. He based his judgments on the distance between Jessica's eyes, the shape of her chin and other eyebrow raising facial details. Jesus.

His verdict? Not quite a psychopath, but definitely narcissistic and emotionally unstable and brace yourselves likely to have homosexual tendencies. All that from her face. On a scale of lesbian psychopaths to Julia Roberts. Where are we? A strong eight. Now some people online say that this sort of practice carries a lot of cultural significance in many parts of the world.

And you see people, and it drives me mad, you see people being like, well, who are you to criticize? That's like a cultural aspect in Indonesia. And so, of course, they're going to use that kind of thing in a court. No, no, no, look, shut the fuck up. Because getting your palm red by your nice little Indonesian auntie to, you know, tell you're going to be when you get married or some shit is a little bit different from being branded a narcissistic, homosexual murderer in a fucking trial for your life because you don't have the right dimples. Like, please spare me. And the fact that an actual courtroom accepted this pseudoscience as real evidence is pretty bloody terrifying. And once again, you know, people who make that excuse is the bigotry of low expectations

because you're just like, well, what do you expect? That's just how those people are. Like, they're obviously going to believe in that shit. Are you fucking kidding? Are you telling me that these lawyers and the judge think that that's acceptable? Well, if they do, like, we need a whole fucking restart. Because that is diabolical. And the reason I get so angry about it is because you can understand why that then leave so

much scope for people to say that Jessica Wongzo was actually innocent. when she so fucking clearly is not innocent. But yes, if I were her appeals lawyer, I would argue with all this passion that she should be released from prison because this is the kind of shit they were using to convict her properly. It's your sweet as bad.

Yeah, truly. In their bid to prove that Jessica was exactly the sort of person who would spike her friend's coffee with cyanide, the Indonesian authorities were keen to access her records from when she was living in Australia. Criminal, medical, all of those type of things. And the Aussies agreed to share that information with one very reasonable condition that if Jessica were convicted, they wouldn't execute her by firing squad.

They did the same thing with the Bali nine. And Indonesia said, sure thing, buddy, cross our hearts. But once they got their mitts on them files, they uncrossed their fingers and were like, yeah, we are going to shoot her. Oh, sorry, sorry, I did, you know. What would he got the guns loaded? It did have my hand behind my back, but, you know. And look, they're so ready to go.

We've already got the blindfold. We've got all the guns. And look at her face. And also in Indonesia crossing our fingers, it's like really culturally significant and therefore completely legal. And are you saying that that's not a fair thing for us to do, you Australian racists?

And when they did get them files, they really hit the mother load because those records were damning. Jessica's life was going totally off the rails in Australia. She had a long rap sheet, racking up 14 run-ins with emergency services in the last year alone. Most of these incidents were linked to her tempestuous relationship with her ex-Patrick O'Connor, who despite their split alleged that Jessica continued to harass him and make alarming threats of self-harm all the way through 2015.

She was hospitalised five times that year for suicide attempts. On one of those occasions, paramedics found three letters where she said goodbye. her family and friends, and blamed Patrick for her death. In August 2015, Jessica's instability put others at risk in a serious way. She plowed her car into an elderly people's nursing home while she was drunk, just metres away from residence bedrooms. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Jessica, though, had a few cracked ribs.

And there's an interview with her where she's asked about this particular incident, where she drunkenly drives her car into an old people's home. And she laughs. She's laughing. There's no like, it was the worst moment of my life. I can't believe I did that. You know, it was awful. I'm so sorry. She's laughing. Fuck. That November, the very same month that Myrna tied the knot in a magical ceremony in Bali,

Patrick actually had a restraining order, put on Jessica. He told the police that she was mentally unstable and that her behaviour was escalating. Clearly, Jessica's life was on a downward spiral. Her boss at the New South Wales Ambulance Service, a woman named Christy Charter, remembers visiting Jessica after one of her many suicide attempts, and being unnerved. Jessica reportedly complained that the hospital staff

were treating her like she'd killed someone. But if she wanted to kill someone, she could because she knew the right dosage. Fucking hell. And searches of her laptop during Menna's case also showed that around this time, Jessica was actually writing emails to herself where she chillingly said that Christy, her boss and Christy's mum,

both needed to die. Christy didn't know about any of this and she didn't actually find out until she was called to testify at Jessica's trial in 2016 and understandably it freaked her the fuck out. But she did tell police that from her attitude, hatred and nature of her craziness she had absolutely no doubt that Jessica was more than capable of hurting or killing another person. Jessica's long history of insane behaviour in Australia was a huge gotcha for the prosecution, who insisted that it indicated Jessica's character and capability of murder.

And that's tricky because technically Jessica had only ever caused harm to herself, but in the Jakartan courtroom, it all painted a picture of a desperate woman on the verge of doing something horrifying. And by late 2015, that time finally came. Jessica was sacked from her job on the 1st of December just five days before she travelled back to Indonesia. The prosecution argued that this wasn't just a holiday for Jessica. It was when she planned to take her petty revenge on Mirna Salihin.

She hated Mirna for having the perfect life while hers was falling apart. And Jessica blamed Merner for the breakdown of her relationship with Patrick Pernor. because of that dinner. And so what if they didn't have conclusive proof that Jessica actually poisoned Merner? The shoe fit. So, if the judges really wanted to avenge the tragic princess's death,

they would have no choice but to convict the ugly step-sister, Jessica Wongzo. Now, Indonesia's justice system doesn't work like most others. Don't I know it? Yeah. Firstly, there's no jury of peers or need for beyond recent.

doubt. It's just three judges who must ultimately agree on whether they basically reckon someone did it or not. The standard is that the judges need to be convinced that that person did it, which is a very, very, very vague concept. And in Jessica's case, they decided that she did. They were convinced. In spite of all the ambiguity around the toxicology results, they all stood firm that Murna was most likely poisoned with cyanide that date. It's basically the level at which I am happy to state my opinion on this podcast, but I wouldn't feel happy if a state is using that level of reasoning to execute somebody. Yes, like I'm convinced.

Yes. But I'm not in charge of a firing squad. Exactly. Yet. Yet. Jessica was considered to be the only one with the means, motive and opportunity to poison Murner. Add in the history of unstable behaviour and a few anecdotes of lingering. resentment to establish a potential motive, and it was more than enough to paint her as the

culprit. In other words, Jessica probably did it, even if they couldn't technically prove it, and in an Indonesian court of law, that's all it takes. So Jessica Wongzo was found guilty of premeditated murder in October 2016. But she did escape the firing squad, and she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Her immediate appeal was swiftly rejected in June 2017, with the Cassation panel ruling that the court had not erred in applying the necessary principles of guilt, motive, premeditation and enough circumstantial evidence to present a cohesive narrative.

The point is, under their system, they're right. They did everything that they needed to do. The judges needed to decide whether they were convinced. They were convinced. They felt she had a motive, there was premeditation, and enough circumstantial evidence. And so the appeal, I understand why it failed. And the verdicts may have held up under Indonesian law, but in the rest of the world, not so much.

Indonesia has a long and pretty dicey reputation when it comes to its justice system. Sentences are notoriously harsh, with foreign tourists facing execution by firing squad for smuggling in drugs, usually Australians. Happless hippies getting high in Bali aren't safe. It's not worth it. Don't bother. They will kill you. Yes. Yes, they literally will.

But if you are Jessica Wongzo and you killed somebody there, I won't point it, but she doesn't do 20 years in prison, let's just say that. She opens a weed farm and barley. Former president, Jokoie, famously declared that he was cracking down on a moral epidemic and made it clear that he'd turn down any clemency requests without even reading them, a move that was slammed as a clear human rights violation. but Indonesia is very tactically placed for trade. So like they can just fucking say things like that.

Nobody is going to sanction them. Anyway, for many critics of the Indonesian system, the outcome of Jessica Wongzo's trial was hardly a surprise. But outside of Indonesia, the details of the case were not well known. Until 2023, when Netflix dropped ice cold, colon, murder, coffee and Jessica Wongzo. The documentary, a shocker, leaned heavily in Jessica's favour. The only thing that would make it better is if it was presented by iced tea.

Absolutely. I really hope his series is still going. And imagine if she had put Sinaied in just a cup of ice tea. Anyway, the documentary does the classic thing, right, of a terrible conviction. Justice Conorri. or innocent woman. And it basically does a lot of highlighting of the flaws in the trial, of which, do not get me wrong, there were many. And you can absolutely do that. But they also gloss over a lot of the inconvenient details that absolutely support Jessica's conviction.

This is my problem, right? I just think when you are a journalism, you can just say the things that make it look right or make it look wrong, like we try to do on this podcast. I'm being honest with you that I think she did it, but I'm also being honest with you in terms of all of the things that the prosecution did wrong. But they don't do that. They're just like, here are all the things the prosecution did wrong. Let's not talk about the things that make sure. I don't get why they don't see that that doesn't weaken the show.

And I think that really fueled a lot of people thinking she had been wrongfully convicted. She wasn't. She was badly convicted. But yeah. Indonesian film expert, Hickmat Damawan, no relation to Manor's dad, pointed out that the doc was highly sensationalized and lacked journalistic discipline. and I would agree with him. Rather going for the classic Netflix technique

of titillating the viewer with a conspiratorial narrative. Even so, the Netflix dog did shine a light on all the dodgy stuff that had taken place in 2016 and even convinced many former die-hard haters that Jessica didn't get a fair trial, which I would also agree with. Almost overnight, the tide of public opinion turned and Jessica went from public enemy number one

to an unlikely heroine. Not long after the doc's release, Jessica was unexpectedly released after just eight years for good behaviour in prison. And some people believe that the sea change around her public reputation was absolutely the trigger for this. And Netflix did the dirty on my. Please give us a deal, though. Love you. As part of her parole conditions, Jessica isn't allowed to return to Australia until 2032.

Not that she probably minds because in Indonesia, She's a star, baby. She's recognized everywhere she goes, and she's got a new job. She's an influencer now. Yeah. With 139,000 followers, she's already chasing brand deals for fashion tech, and... In ice cold blood with ice tea. No, coffee. And also sausages, I heard.

But the coffee's the one that gets me. You're going to have Jessica Wongso be a brand ambassador for your coffee. Why? I mean, sure. Imagine being Sandy and having to see the woman who absolutely murdered your sister, profiting off the thing that killed her. It's horrific. But whatever Jessica does with her new freedom, one thing she absolutely cannot do is go back to the Olivier Cafe. It went out of business in February 2020, having never quite lived down its reputation as the coffee murder spot.

and I would imagine the pandemic didn't help. Yeah. And before we wrap this episode up, we just want to quickly look at this particular interview that Jessica did with 60 Minutes Australia. Oh, baby. Earlier this year. 60 Minutes Australia?

I love her. Never misses. I love it. Just straight shots. Bop, pow, pow, pow. So yeah, prepare yourselves because this is some seriously uncomfortable viewing. So here's the key question.

If you didn't do it, who put the cyanide in, Oh, you know, I'm not allowed to say that. I'm not allowed to answer the question. You're allowed to have an opinion? No, no, I'm not allowed to have that kind of like I'm not, I'm not supposed to voice my opinion publicly. Yeah, I'm sorry, I can't answer that. But if you didn't do it, somebody else did, right? Maybe. I can only say maybe. This would have been such a good live show. Oh, yeah. Fuck! Oh, that is annoying.

Don't worry. It's my task. I'll find one. So there's a lot to unpack there. And we know we've spent a lot of this episode explaining why Jessica's trial was unfair. And she probably shouldn't have been convicted on the strength of the evidence. But there's something about Jessica that is just so incredibly unsettling. It's them untwinkly eyes.

That's what it is. Yeah. She just doesn't have that Julia Roberts' star appeal. She's got that I've escaped Scientology. like deadness. Yeah. It's like every situation you see her in where she's being spoken to about the murder,

she seems so at odds with a person in that situation. She seems like she's being asked about like she's an actress who's being asked about a scandal, you know, some sort of like extramarital. She's just like, I can't talk about that. Not like being asked who murdered your ex-best friend. And everybody thinks it's you. Unnerving, unsettling.

And while we obviously can't say for sure, does feel like she's lying through her teeth. She can't stop smiling. She literally cannot stop smiling. And here's a few particularly telling moments just to round off. Giggling, smiling, laughing, even when discussing serious matters like Myrna's death or her almost mowing down a load of pensioners in Sydney, you know, is not conducive to like ingratiating people towards you. She also stumbles over her answers during this interview and struggles to give a straight response, claiming that she doesn't remember stuff and nervously shrugging it off when the interviewer calls her out. Also, she tells blatant lies, saying that she and Myrna were never that close. And she claims that she doesn't remember if Myrna invited her to her wedding or not. It's just a lot of bullshit. Any girl remembers if she got invited to her friend's wedding or no matter how distant. I remember which girls in Year 9 didn't invite me to their birthday parties.

She remembers. So, made it pretty obvious. Jessica did it in our humble opinion. but it's a really unsafe conviction. Yeah. They got the right verdict, but via the worst possible means, apart from Johnny Cochran.

But let's be clear. The Indonesian court did not prove Jessica Wanzo's guilt by any stretch, let alone be on a reasonable doubt. The investigation was botched. The trial was a shit show. If this case had been tried in another country with the evidence presented, it is fair to say that Jessica Wanzo most likely

would not have been convicted. Still, we're not going to go for a coffee with it. No, thanks. Or follow her on Instagram. Yeah. All those microplastics and cyanide. No, thank you. And a fucking melted Vietnamese coffee.

If I'm going to drink all that, condensed milk, and make myself feel like shit, it better be a fucking fresh one. I'm just very anti-milk. I'm anti-milk, but I do love condensed milk. It's so tasty. But I'm not a baby cow. Oh, you're not. Don't drink it.

And that, guys, dear friends, dear listeners, happy Valentine's Day, go for coffee dates, don't poison each other, and you know, if it looks like a turmeric latte and you didn't order one, don't drink it. Go to patreon.com 4 slash red-handed instead, where we definitely won't poison you. No, absolutely not. And Patreon makes an excellent Valentine's Day gift. Just saying. Bye. Goodbye.