In the spring of 1992, Gina Sutan Aswar, a 30-year-old Indonesian student, saw a promising future in the United States. A fellow countryman, Harnoko Dewantoro, known as "Oki," had painted a picture of a lucrative business partnership in Los Angeles. Trusting him, Gina traveled to California with a substantial sum, around $200,000, ready to invest. Her decision to trust Dewantoro, a man who appeared to be a successful expatriate from a prominent Indonesian family, would have fatal
consequences.
Gina was an intelligent and worldly woman. After arriving in Los Angeles, she took a trip to Paris. Upon her return in the fall of 1992, something had changed her mind about the business venture. On November 3, she informed Dewantoro that she was backing out of the deal. This news, delivered on Dewantoro's 28th birthday, sent him into a rage. He lured Gina to a house he was renting in Brentwood and bludgeoned her to death. In a horrific attempt to conceal her identity, he then mutilated her body.
For nearly two years, Gina’s fate remained a mystery. The truth began to surface on August 10, 1994, in a Northridge storage locker. A man who had purchased the contents of an abandoned unit at a public auction was met with a horrific smell. Inside, he found a body wrapped in plastic and duct tape. Police were called to the scene and soon discovered two more bodies. The remains were so badly decomposed that it took forensic experts a month to make identifications. One of the victims was Gina Sutan Aswar, identified through her dental records. The other two were Suresh Gobid Mirchandini, 40, a businessman from India, and Eri Triharto Darmawan, 26, who was Dewantoro's own younger brother.
The investigation into the gruesome discovery quickly pointed to Harnoko Dewantoro. He had rented the storage unit, and detectives found checks used for payment, one mailed by his mother and another covered in his fingerprints. By the time the bodies were found, Dewantoro had already fled the United States in 1993, using aliases and false passports to return to his native Indonesia. The case became a sensation in both the U.S. and Indonesia, described as the "O.J. Simpson case of Indonesia." The international publicity helped investigators, and in January 1995, Dewantoro was arrested at a relative's home in Jakarta.
During interrogation by Indonesian authorities, in the presence of a Los Angeles Police Department detective, Dewantoro confessed to killing Gina and his brother. He claimed he became enraged and killed Gina when she withdrew from their business deal. He also admitted to bludgeoning his brother to death during an argument in December 1992, likely to silence the only person who knew of his other crimes. He denied killing the third victim, Suresh Mirchandini, blaming his brother instead—a claim police did not believe. Investigators determined Dewantoro had shot and killed Mirchandini in August 1991 over a soured business deal involving a dry-cleaning establishment.
Because the United States and Indonesia had no extradition treaty, Dewantoro could not be returned to Los Angeles for trial. Instead, he was tried in an Indonesian court for the three murders he committed on American soil. In an unusual move, LAPD detectives and other American witnesses traveled to Jakarta to testify, bringing evidence such as guns, bullets, and crime scene photos. In 1997, Harnoko Dewantoro was found guilty of all three counts of murder and sentenced to death. Gina's family traveled from Indonesia to Los Angeles to claim her body and bring her home.
The sentence, however, was not the final chapter. After years in prison, Dewantoro's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Then, in a move that shocked many, Indonesian President Joko Widodo granted him clemency. In November 2019, Harnoko Dewantoro was released from prison on conditional parole, having served time for the brutal murders of three people who had once trusted him.
