An Australian resident, iced coffee and a murder that maybe never happened.

The 2016 trial of former Sydney-based graphic designer Jessica Wongso was an Indonesian media spectacle. 

It was likened to the O.J. Simpson trial's notoriety in the US; broadcast live on television and spoken about non-stop for the five months it played out.

Wongso was found guilty of poisoning one of her best friends by putting cyanide in her iced coffee at a cafe in Jakarta, Indonesia in broad daylight.

The only problem? She might not have done it.

Watch the trailer for Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso. Post continues after video.

What happened?

On January 6 2016, Mirna Salihin, 27, went to meet her friends, Jessica Wongso and Juwita "Hani" Boon, for coffee at the Olivier Cafe in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Wongso, also 27, arrived an hour early for their catch-up and ordered a Vietnamese iced coffee for Salihin as well as two cocktails.

After drinking her coffee, Salihin experienced convulsions and began frothing at the mouth. Staff at the cafe rushed to her aid, while Wongso stood there.

Salihin died on the way to the hospital.

Wongso was declared a suspect on January 29, and was arrested the following morning. She was charged with premeditated murder.

Indonesian police claimed the coffee Salihin drank contained cyanide, a fast-acting substance that is traditionally known as one of the deadliest poisons. 

Wongso's trial began that June.

What was the relationship between Jessica Wongso and Mirna Salihin?

Image: Netflix.

Wongso and Salihin had studied together at Billy Blue College of Design in Sydney, and according to the victim's father, Edi Darmawan Salihin, the pair had been close.

Wongso remained in Australia after graduating and started working as a graphic designer, while Salihin returned to Indonesia. 

Their friendship reportedly fractured when Salihin criticised Wongso's then-boyfriend. 

The prosecution alleged during the trial that the two women had a disagreement after Salihin told Wongso to break up with him; and that was Wongso's reason for killing her.

There were also claims Wongso was jealous of Salihin's happy marriage, and not being invited to her wedding the previous year.

What happened at Jessica Wongso's trial?

Wongso's trial was deemed highly controversial, due to the fact it consisted mostly of expert witnesses. All of the evidence shown was circumstantial and threadbare.

Prosecutors alleged Wongso had placed her shopping bags on the table to block the view of the CCTV cameras when she 'laced' the iced coffee.

No footage captured her actually doing it.

Prosecutors also pointed out that when the cafe staff came to help Salihin, who was convulsing, Wongso stood there, scratching her palms. According to experts, cyanide has a burning and itching effect on the skin.

Wongso's lawyers insisted nothing proved that she was the murderer.

During the trial, they opened and smelled the bottle containing the coffee allegedly laced with cyanide, claiming there was no poison in it.

A worker at the cafe also claimed to have tried the coffee after Salihin collapsed, saying it tasted "really rotten" but did not suffer any ill effects. 

Adding to the concerns over whether Wongso received a fair trial, Salihin's father asked for no autopsy to be conducted on his daughter, despite a formal request made by the police to the hospital to do so.

Instead, a toxicology test done 70 minutes after Salihin's death showed no cyanide in her gastric fluid, bile, liver and urine. 

Only small traces of cyanide were found in her stomach fluid several days after her death, but, as a forensic pathologist Jaya Surya Atmaja testified, this was probably from embalming chemicals.

After a five-month, highly-publicised trial, Wongso was found guilty of poisoning Salihin and sentenced to 20 years in prison. 

Due to her permanent Australian residency status, she was exempt from the death penalty.

Where is Jessica Wongso now?

Wongso is currently in prison in Indonesia, having served seven years of her two-decade sentence.

After she was found guilty in 2016, Wongso lodged an appeal against her verdict. However, it was rejected by both The Jakarta High Court and the Supreme Court.

The controversial trial prompted several documentaries including Netflix's Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso, sparking new interest and debate over the case.

"There has never been a similar case [in Indonesia] that has attracted as much public attention as this one," Hardly Stefano, commissioner of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission, says in the documentary.

Watch Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso on Netflix now.

Feature image: Getty.

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