The case of Asunta Basterra, the girl who was murdered by her adoptive parents eleven years ago in Galicia, is once again popular after the adaptation that Netflix premieres this Friday referring to a crime to which, today, no one makes sense.
Alfonso Basterra and Rosario Porto, Asunta’s adoptive parents, were sentenced to 18 years in prison for having drugged and asphyxiated their daughter on September 22, 2013.
The judge ruled that the murder of the minor responded to “a premeditated plan, executed gradually,” and that it was “impossible without the participation, or at least the consent of both defendants.” Despite the conviction supported by multiple investigations that pointed to the accused, a series of questions still loom over the case, among them, the main one of all: why?
Asunta was found dead at the age of twelve by two local residents in the early hours of September 21 on a forest trail near her parents’ second residence, a chalet located in Montouto (Teo), near Santiago de Compostela. .
The minor was on the side of the road, tied by her hands and feet, in a fetal position and with no signs of physical or sexual assault, a fact that would later be confirmed by the autopsy. The cause of her death was asphyxiation.
The forensic report also revealed a high intake of lorazepam hours before death (about 27 Orfidal pills, a medication Rosario had been taking for years to fight his depression). It was not the first time of this narcotization. Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry tests revealed significant amounts of said substance in her hair that was more than three months old. The little girl had already been drugged on two more occasions.
After the case became public, the forensic results could be corroborated with the testimonies of two of her ballet and piano teachers who assured that the girl, a gifted student, had appeared in class two months before and on two occasions, practically unable to stay upright in your chair.
Faced with these strange incidents, the teachers alerted her parents, but they downplayed it, claiming that Asunta’s deep drowsiness was the effect of the medications she was taking against an alleged allergy that she never suffered from. The cameras will demonstrate in the course of the investigation that Rosario did not buy Orfidal, but that Alfonso did so days before his daughter’s drugging episodes.
Another key piece of evidence in the case was the discovery in Montouto’s house of a coil of orange rope identical to the one found in the hands and feet of the minor’s body. The agents also discovered a vomit stain on Rosario Porto’s Mercedes. The images obtained later through the cameras of the different businesses in Santiago will show how mother and daughter were traveling hours before the death of the minor in the same car heading to Montouto.
The vehicle’s rear mats never appeared. Neither did the clothes his father was wearing on the day he reported his disappearance, nor his personal computer after his arrest (later it suddenly appeared at his home but without any trace and with more than 60,000 deleted images). The same fate befell one of the pillows in Montouto’s house. The property had been up for sale for some time and investigators were able to compare, using the photos in the advertisement, the absence of the most likely murder weapon with which Asunta was asphyxiated.
Another key to the accusation will be based on the event that occurred one morning, two months prior to the crime, when the girl called her mother in terror alerting her that someone had tried to drown her while she was sleeping.
Rosario went to the police explaining what happened, but would never formalize the complaint. Her excuse was to have previously intended to go to the hospital to request an injury report for her daughter, but this never occurred.
In October 2013, a month after Asunta’s death, the DNA laboratory of the Criminalistics Department of the Civil Guard determined the presence of traces of semen on the shirt with which the minor was found dead. Investigators ruled out DNA matches with the victim’s environment.
However, the sample returned a match with a profile previously registered in the police database. It corresponded to Ramiro Cerón Jaramillo, a Colombian resident in Madrid who at that time was awaiting trial for sexual assault.
The new defendant would provide several pieces of evidence that would irrefutably place him in Madrid on the day of the crime, so the sentence will determine that the DNA match was the product of contamination of Cerón’s samples and Asunta’s shirt, which arrived only two weeks apart to the facilities. Despite the judicial ruling, this fateful contamination was never accepted by the Civil Guard.
Understanding the reason for the perpetration of this murder became the greatest of unknowns from its origin. Among the theories put forward is a possible economic motive for the inheritance that Asunta received or there was even speculation about the sudden death (only seven months apart and also while they were sleeping) of Rosario Porto’s parents, the sole heir of the family assets.
Could someone capable of killing her daughter have also done so with her parents and could Asunta be an accidental privy to this fact? Or looking only at emotional reasons, did Asunta become a hindrance to parents whose relationship was based on an excessive toxic dependency? In any of the options, human logic is conspicuous by its absence.
Alfonso Basterra has been serving a prison sentence in Teixeiro prison since 2013. He will leave in 2031. Last January Basterra requested a third degree permit, but was denied after he did not show any sign of repentance. Rosario Porto died in 2020 in Brieva prison after completing her third suicide attempt. During her seven years in the penitentiary center, every September 22, she paid for an obituary in several newspapers that read: “Asunta young Fang in memoriam, I will always love you, mom.”
