Posted by The Asunta Case has landed on Netflix, presenting the true story of the girl killed in 2013: why was she killed, what was the real motive?
When you watch The Asunta Case on Netflix, you immediately share the same doubts and perplexities people had in Spain back in 2013: the TV series does a great job showing the controversial aspects of that case, the impact of the media, and the fact that the sentence was mainly based on the fact that the defendants didn’t have a valid explanation, and no alternative scenarios could be defined. Still, it’s natural to doubt.
In this article, we will explore the true story of Asunta, what happened in 2013, and we will present an overview of the possible motives that led to her death.
The Asunta Case: why was she killed, and what was the real motive?
Asunta Yong Fang Basterra Porto was found dead in September 2013 on a mountain road in Teo, about 5 km from the country house owned by her adoptive mother. Asunta’s adoptive parents are Alfonso Basterra Camporro and Rosario Porto Ortega: they went through the adoption process when Asunta was one year old, but they separated at the beginning of 2013, when Asunta was 12. The reason for the divorce was Rosario’s infidelity. However, even after the divorce, Alfonso took care of Asunta and Rosario, helping his ex-wife with the medicaments she needed: she suffered from lupus and depression, and she needed help in her daily duties. In exchange, she supported Alfonso financially, in a balance that lasted for months.
The lengthy investigation proved several things: Asunta was drugged when she died, and the autopsy determined she was given 27 Lorazepam pills, a psychoactive drug that was part of her mother’s regular medicaments. It was also proven that Asunta had been receiving that drug for months before her death, and witnesses testified that the girl was often dizzy; both parents were aware of those episodes; Alfonso justified them with the music teacher saying that the girl was having an antihistamine for her allergy. Before she died, Asunta told her music teacher that “her parents were giving her drugs,” involving both adoptive parents. Asunta died of suffocation: someone prevented her from breathing, covering her mouth and nose while she was drugged.
Although it was clear that the parents had been drugging Asunta for months, the dynamics of her death left many doubts. The assumption is that Rosario killed Asunta in her country house in Teo and then left her body on the side of the road. Alfonso’s presence in that place has never been proven. The orange ropes found next to Asunta’s body were also found in Rosario’s country house, specifically in the trash bin of a bedroom. Rosario and Alfonso always declared themselves innocent and were sure someone else kidnapped and killed their daughter. Another element that confused the investigation was the alleged murder attempt that occurred some months before Asunta’s death: according to Rosario, someone broke into their house and tried to strangle Asunta. Her parents never reported the aggression to the police, though.
The trial condemned Alfonso and Rosario as responsible for Asunta’s death. The verdict considered the results of the autopsy, the cameras that placed Asunta in her mother’s car some hours before her death, and some elements that contradicted the parents’ statements. However, the motive was never explained, which is the reason why this is the central question that remained after the trial: why was Asunta killed?
We surely know Rosario had mental health issues: she suffered from depression, and she attempted suicide already before Asunta’s death. The forensic psychiatrist who examined Rosario after Asunta died pointed out that Rosario seemed to have lost interest in taking care of Asunta, especially after the divorce. Asunta was a teenager, Rosario had custody of her, but she also had a lover. Adding up her psychological issues, we can assume that the adoptive mother could have considered Asunta an obstacle to her happiness. This would also explain why they were sedating her. After Asunta’s death, Rosario has always expressed profound grief for her loss, a deeper depression that ended with her suicide in 2020: from this point of view, Rosario could have killed Asunta in a psychotic attack and then dissociated her conscience from what she did.
Other motives have been investigated after Asunta died, including the economic motive (Rosario’s parents died some months earlier, leaving the inheritance to Rosario) and the possible sexual motive (based on the photos found in Alfonso’s laptop, considered inappropriate). The presence of traces of semen in Asunta’s shirt has never been explained: the semen belonged to a man who resided in Madrid and was previously investigated for sexual assault, but there was no other evidence of his involvement in Asunta’s death, so the judge concluded that that element was the result of evidence’s contamination.
The Asunta Case became famous in Spain as a murder that ended with the imprisonment of her adoptive parents. However, both Alfonso and Rosario always declared themselves innocent, accusing the influence of the media and the biased investigation as the real reason why they were condemned. This fueled the discussion for years after the murder, and that’s why the real motive is still unclear in the Asunta case: people still wonder why Asunta was killed, and neither the sentence nor the TV series have been able to provide a definitive answer.
You can discover more about The Asunta Case on Wikipedia and in the archive articles in the Spanish newspaper, like the many news published by El Pais over the years and this interesting overview published in 2020 by El Confidential.
