Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Asunta Case’ presents the events that followed the discovery of 12-year-old Asunta Basterra Porto’s dead body a few miles away from her mother’s family home. The tragic incident turned into a full-blown scandal when her adoptive parents were accused of the crime and went through a trial, as much in the court as in the public, that uncovered some shocking truths about what had been going on in the family a few months prior to Asunta’s death. All the discoveries culminated in a court order that sealed the couple’s fate.
Alfonso Basterra is Still in Prison
Alfonso Basterra Camporro is currently serving his 18-year sentence following his conviction in Asunta’s murder in 2013. Of this, he had already served two years in preventive detention at the Teixeiro Penitentiary Center in A Coruña, where he will remain till the end of his sentence in 2031. While he has been crucified by the media and has his guilt proven in a court of law, Alfonso continues to maintain his innocence, claiming that the day Asunta was murdered, he was at home, having spent his afternoon cooking zucchini and meatballs and reading ‘Gordo’ by Jesús Ruiz Mantilla.
He and his ex-wife, Rosario Porto, had initially been placed in the same prison complex, though in different sections of it. In 2013, when Alfonso requested a meeting with Rosario, she denied the request in harsh words. She died in 2020. After making several appeals, Alfonso’s sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2016, ruling that while Alfonso may not have been directly involved in the murder, there was no denying that he was the “material author” of the murder and without his complicity in the premeditated plan, it probably wouldn’t have happened.
The court ruled out the evidence, or lack thereof, through which the prosecution tried to prove that he had traveled to Teo with his ex-wife and daughter, where the latter was allegedly murdered. The court called the prosecution’s theories surrounding it “incompatible with the logical criteria of induction based on proven facts” and said that they were not rational enough to be taken into account. However, this was also not seen enough to free Alfonso of his guilt in Asunta’s death, especially considering his involvement in the purchase of large quantities of Orfidal (which contains lorazepam) to drug the victim. In 2017, Alfonso’s lawyer, Belén Hospido, resigned as his defense lawyer, and his representation was taken over by María Luisa Manzano Recio, who said that there was no specific reasoning behind Hospido’s decision.
Alfonso’s Behavior in Question
Having served more than a quarter of his sentence, Alfonso has been eligible for weekend leaves from prison but has not been permitted by the Treatment Board of the Teixeiro prison and the Penitentiary Surveillance Court of Galicia. While official reasons behind the denial remain uncertain, it has been assumed that it might have something to do with his behavior in prison. For the most part, he keeps to himself, spending his days reading books and maintaining a distance from others. There have, however, been a couple of incidents. Reportedly, he was once caught “passing” an illegal object to another inmate, using his position as the librarian. He was once also sent in solitary after riled-up confrontations with other inmates and the guards.
Alfonso has been described by some of the staff in the prison as rude and thinking too highly of himself. He is also found to have been closed off and has difficulty expressing his feelings. He also has almost no connection to the outside world. He barely, if ever, receives any visitors or correspondence. Since his arrest, his family has cut ties with him, offering him no support. For a while, however, he did serve as a support partner to a couple of inmates as part of the anti-suicide protocol. He himself hasn’t been considered to be at risk of killing himself, though as a precautionary measure, he was given a support partner after the news of his ex-wife’s death was broken to him. Reportedly, the news didn’t have much effect on him as he remained his usual self, and it looked like Rosario’s suicide wasn’t as unexpected for him.
While it is generally believed that Alfonso will continue to live out the rest of his sentence, an intention he has made clear, it is also noted that he has talked about taking his own life on several occasions. According to El Correo Gallego, he wrote a letter to Rosario a few weeks after he was put in Teixeiro prison, in which he expressed his intention to take his own life when he was released from prison, imagining himself next to his daughter, his “little peponcita” whom he missed very much. Reportedly, he also wrote a letter to the producers of ‘What the Truth Hides,’ a documentary about the case, stating that he had every intention of disappearing once he was out of prison and that the only reason he was staying alive was to “be a free man again.”
He claimed that he had already thought about the how and the where of it all; it was the when he needed to focus on now. Despite his claims of suicidal intentions, it has been reported by the prison staff that Alfonso seems pretty well-adjusted with his life, hasn’t yet shown any leaning towards committing the act, and will live out the rest of his sentence, which ends in 2031.
Read More: The Asunta Case: All Shooting Locations of the Netflix Show
