For a time, it seemed as if Eri Triharto Darmawan, a 26-year-old Indonesian man, was simply missing. He was in Los Angeles on a student visa, just like his older brother, Harnoko Dewantoro, who was known to friends as "Oki." But by the end of 1992, Eri was gone, his life cut short in a brutal act of violence that would remain a dark secret for nearly two years.
His death was not an isolated tragedy but the final, desperate act in a series of murders committed by his own brother.
Eri was the last of three people killed by Dewantoro in the Los Angeles area between 1991 and 1992. The first victim was Suresh Gobid Mirchandani, a 40-year-old businessman who had purchased a dry-cleaning business from Dewantoro. When the deal went sour and Mirchandani abandoned the business while still owing money, Dewantoro, enraged, shot him to death in August 1991 and buried his body in the yard of a rented home in Northridge. The second victim was Gina Sutan Aswar, a 28-year-old Indonesian student whom Dewantoro had convinced to invest $200,000 in his business ventures. When she backed out of the deal on November 3, 1992, Dewantoro lured her to a house in Brentwood and bludgeoned her to death.
Just a month later, in December 1992, Dewantoro turned his rage on his own family. Inside a West Los Angeles apartment, he and Eri had a violent argument. The exact reason for the dispute remains unclear, but it ended with Dewantoro bludgeoning his younger brother to death. Investigators believe Dewantoro killed Eri not only in a fit of anger but also to eliminate the one person who may have known about his other horrific crimes. After the murder, Dewantoro fled the United States and returned to Jakarta, Indonesia, leaving a trail of death behind him.
The gruesome truth began to surface on August 10, 1994. At a U-Haul storage facility in Northridge, the contents of an abandoned locker were sold at auction. The buyer made a horrifying discovery: the decomposing bodies of Eri Triharto Darmawan, Gina Sutan Aswar, and Suresh Gobid Mirchandani stuffed inside trunks. Los Angeles Police Department detectives investigating the case soon focused on the locker's renter, Harnoko Dewantoro. A crucial break came when they discovered he had continued to pay the rent on the unit even after fleeing the country, telling his mother in Jakarta that his brother Eri was still using it. One payment was mailed by his mother, and another check was covered in Dewantoro's fingerprints.
Using the mother's address from the check, LAPD detectives tracked Dewantoro to Jakarta. In January 1995, Indonesian authorities arrested him. During interrogation, with LAPD Detective Ted Ball present, Dewantoro confessed to killing his brother Eri and Gina Aswar. He initially tried to blame the murder of Suresh Mirchandani on his dead brother, a claim authorities did not believe. Because the United States and Indonesia had no extradition treaty, a complex international legal situation arose. Indonesia refused to send Dewantoro back to Los Angeles for trial, insisting he be tried in his home country for the crimes committed on American soil.
The trial became a media sensation in both nations. LAPD detectives traveled 8,000 miles to Jakarta to testify, bringing evidence such as guns, bullets, and crime scene photos into the Indonesian courtroom. In 1997, Harnoko Dewantoro was found guilty of all three counts of murder and sentenced to death by firing squad. He was sent to Indonesia's Cipinang Penitentiary Institution to await execution. However, the death sentence was never carried out. After years of filing petitions for clemency, his sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment.
In a final, stunning turn of events, Dewantoro was granted conditional parole and released from prison on November 20, 2019, following a grant of clemency from Indonesian President Joko Widodo. The prosecutor who had handled the case supported the decision, noting that Dewantoro had been a well-behaved prisoner who taught English classes and was the last surviving male in his family line. The man who murdered his own brother and two others in Los Angeles walked free, leaving behind a legacy of betrayal and unresolved grief across two continents.
