Kriti Mehrotra
When Chinese-born Spanish tween Asunta Yong Fang Basterra Porto suddenly went missing on September 21, 2013, it honestly left everyone in the community of Galicia baffled to their core. After all, as carefully explored in Netflix’s true-crime thriller ‘The Asunta Case,’ she’d actually been heinously murdered — she was merely 12 when everything was snatched away from her.
Asunta Basterra Was Drugged and Asphyxiated
Although born Fang Yong on September 30, 2000, in Hunan, China, Asunta proudly grew up in Santiago upon being adopted by an affluent local couple when she was just nine months old. It turns out she was the first of her background to be adopted in not only this city but also the entirety of Galicia, making her rather well-known all across the area from her early days itself.
The truth is this grew further as time passed because Asunta was gifted too — she was so bright she skipped a grade, all the while juggling her talents as a dancer, pianist, as well as violinist. Therefore, of course, she knew not to leave home without informing anyone beforehand, even if she was going through a rebellious phase, which is precisely why her parents reported her missing.
It was roughly 10:17 pm on September 21, 2013, when Maria del Rosario Porto Ortega and Alfonso Basterra Camporro approached the authorities to let them know of their little girl’s vanishing. According to their initial narrative, the former had left home for the family’s massive country house in Teo at around 7 pm, leaving Asunta behind because she wanted to finish her homework. She then claimed to have returned by 9:30 pm, yet by this point, there was no sign of her 12-year-old anywhere; this young girl wasn’t even at her father Alfonso’s apartment a few blocks away.
Rosario hence contacted every single one of Asunta’s close friends to see if she’d maybe gone to visit them for some reason, but none of them had apparently seen her since Friday, the day prior. That’s when the officials on call filed a formal report before beginning their investigations, only for her cold body to be discovered in the early morning hours of September 22, 2013, at nearly 1 am. The tween had been disposed of on the side of a small mountain road in San Simón de Ons of Cacheiras — just 5 kilometers away from the country home — with her limbs tied with orange twine.
Asunta’s ensuing autopsy report actually determined her cause of death to be homicidal asphyxiation within 24 hours, yet there were no prominent indications of struggle anywhere on her body. Further tests were thus done in the hopes of figuring out why she didn’t fight back against her perpetrators, only for it to come to light she had 27 Lorazepam (sedative) pills in her system. Per records, she’d ingested them hours before her demise, which is significant since 27 is more than nine times a high dosage amount for an adult — in other words, her murder seemed pre-meditated.
Asunta Basterra Was Killed By Her Parents
It was on September 24, 2013, when Rosario Porto was arrested on suspicion of her daughter Asunta’s homicide, and a day later, Alfonso Basterra was apprehended on the same charge. That’s because, with the help of surveillance footage, investigators were able to ascertain the former had lied to them – the nearly 13-year-old had actually gone to the family’s country house with her. They were also able to establish she’d left her home for Teo shortly after 6 pm and returned at 9, unlike the 7 to 9:30 timeline she’d given to the on-call detectives on the fateful night.
Then there’s even the fact the master bedroom’s bin of the country house contained a piece of the same kind of orange twine that Asunta’s limbs had been tied with when her body was found. As for Alfonso, the inconsistencies in his statements, along with his unwavering defense of Rosario and the fact he was the one who managed her intake of prescribed Lorazepam for her mental health, resulted in his capture. It was only after this that witnesses came forward to give their statements against this couple, including a few shocking ones no one could’ve expected.
While Assunta’s music teacher revealed the girl appeared groggy and almost zombie-like in some of her classes in the past few months, Rosario’s friend stated there had been an attack on the girl’s life before too. Focusing on the former, the 12-year-old had told her teacher she was feeling dizzy, but her parents didn’t take her seriously; instead, they were the ones who had been giving her some sort of white powder for her allergies. This was strange since she had no allergies, and there’s also the fact that each time this happened – on July 9 and July 22 – she stayed the night at her father’s apartment.
Coming to the previous attack on Asunta, in the early hours of July 5, between 2:30 and 4:30 am, a man had tried to strangle her in her bedroom, just for Rosario to save her upon hearing the screams. Nevertheless, the latter never reported the incident to the police on the basis she didn’t want her daughter to endure the trauma again and asserted it was probably a robbery gone wrong. She tried to explain the same by claiming she’d mistakenly left the keys in the front door and there was a safe in her daughter’s room, but alas, nothing ever became of it in any way, shape, or form.
However, as for the white powder, further tests on Asunta’s hair samples revealed she’d been getting drugged with Lorazepam for at least three months so her “allergy medication” was just that. The motive behind this has never been directly stated, yet it has been implied that Alfonso had a dark attraction towards his tween Asian daughter. This was even backed by the many photos of her in different, strange positions he had on his phone as well as the history of viewed pornography involving petite Asians on his laptop. But he has always vehemently denied these claims and all others.
In the end, despite the motive behind Asunta’s murder being unclear – it could be a result of Alfonso’s supposed attraction and his subsequent actions with her, a possible mental breakdown of Rosario since she did struggle with depression and anxiety, or an effort by the former to win back his ex-wife – they were both convicted. On October 30, 2015, a jury ruled that both Alfonso and Rosario were guilty of the murder of Asunta Basterra in one way or another, meaning they’d collaborated on it to a significant degree. They were thus both sentenced to 18 years behind bars, with their subsequent appeals only changing that there was no evidence Alfonso had gone to the country house with the mother-daughter duo.
Read More: Alfonso Basterra: Where is Asunta Porto’s Dad Today?
