It was the case that rocked Spain in 2013 and if you’re wondering where Alfonso Basterra is now after watching Netflix’s The Asunta Case, we have all the details. The 6-episode series is based on the true story of Basterra and his wife Rosario Porto, who were charged with their adopted daughter’s murder.
Asunta was adopted at 9 months old from Yongzhou, China, making her the first Chinese child ever to be adopted in Santiago, Spain. Her parents were affluent and rather well-known—Basterra was a journalist and Porto, was a lawyer from a prominent Galician family.
On September 21, 2013, just days before Asunta’s 13th birthday, her parents reported her missing. They appeared to be concerned. The very next day, however, Asunta was found dead in a forest near a country house owned by her family. Bound in orange twine, her body was discovered by a passer-by.
Porto was arrested and charged with Asunta’s murder on September 24, while Basterra was apprehended a day later. The trial for the murder of Asunta Basterra Porto lasted for several weeks, beginning in September 2015 and concluding in October of the same year. The parents were found guilty and each was sentenced to 18 years behind bars. Here’s where Alfonso Basterra is now.
Where is Alfonso Basterra now?
Alfonso Basterra continues to serve out his 18-year sentence at the Teixeiro prison in Spain. He will be eligible for what’s known as an “open regime” in 2025, after serving two-thirds of his sentence, which will grant him more freedoms and privileges but he’ll remain behind bars until his full sentence is up in 2033.
In 2015, El Correo Gallego reported that Basterra sent a letter to Porto in which he stated that he planned to die by suicide after being released from prison. “I want you to imagine me next to the little bird, my little peponcita, whom I miss so much,” Basterra wrote. He doubled down on this when he wrote a letter to the producers of the documentary Lo que la verdad esconde: el caso Asunta.
“When I regain my freedom, I have the firm intention of disappearing, no one will hear from me again, not even Rosario Porto,” he said, per El Correo. “I only have one reason to stay alive, which is none other than to be a free man again and reunite with my girl, never before. In fact, I’ve already thought about how and where, I just don’t know when, but everything comes [eventually].”
What happened to Rosario Porto?
Rosario Porto died by suicide in her prison cell in November 2020 after multiple attempts.
Asunta’s autopsy results
An autopsy of the girl’s body found that Asunta had been given at least 27 Lorazepam pills on the day of her death, with hair strands revealing she’d been given it periodically for around three months leading up to her death. It’s the main ingredient in the anxiety drug Orfidal, which Porto had been taking, and causes drowsiness.
During the trial, it was revealed that Basstera had obtained 175 Orfidal pills over a 10-week period. One of Asunta’s teachers testified that the girl had appeared drowsy in the weeks leading up to her death, with one witness claiming that she said, “My mother is trying to kill me.”
The case against Alfonso and Rosario
Detectives were suspicious of Porto’s behavior. When the police searched their home, she excused herself to go to the bathroom, only to be caught attempting to retrieve the orange twine from a wastepaper basket. While forensics couldn’t determine if it was the same twine used on Asunta, CCTV also revealed that Porto had been spotted driving towards the country house with a long-haired girl beside her when Porto had said her daughter had been at home.
The motive behind the murder remains unclear, but there were suggestions of financial gain and conflicts within the family. The Guardian reported that, in 2009, Porto had a two-night stay at a psychiatric hospital, saying she felt suicidal, apathetic, and guilty. Her psychiatrist wrote that Porto “gets very irritable with her daughter, who is a bother.”
The prosecution insisted the pair had spent months “devising a cold-blooded conspiracy to eliminate their own daughter—though they eventually downgraded the charges against Basterra, depicting him as an accomplice to his ex-wife’s murder plot,” The Guardian observed. “I think they wanted to project the stereotype of a happy family,” said one investigator. “If [Porto] wants something, she thinks she can just buy it. And if she doesn’t want it, she gets rid of it. He helps her to satisfy her whims. But when she is dependent, he becomes violent.”
The Asunta Case is available to stream on Netflix.
