The premiere of the series The Asunta Case on Netflix has once again put the crime of Asunta Basterra Porto, the 12-year-old girl who was murdered by her own parents, Alfonso Basterra and Rosario Porto, in the Galician municipality, in the center of the media spotlight. from Teo on September 21, 2013.
Although more than ten years have passed since the crime and the little girl’s parents were sentenced to 18 years in prison, the case is still surrounded by unknowns that were never answered. Something that José Luis Gutiérrez Aranguren, who was Rosario Porto’s lawyer until the day of his death, in 2020, was talking about this Monday.
The presenter began the interview by asking the lawyer about Rosario Porto’s latest confessions. ”We all knew what ended up happening. She had had some previous suicide attempts. There were two interpretations, she wants to get attention or she wants to commit suicide. “Nobody took her seriously,” he declared.
”What we all deduced after learning of the death is that Rosario, at a horrible time in her life, was transferred to an inhospitable and distant place. She only had her psychologist, her psychiatrist and me left. Her friends stopped being friends and her family disowned her. In those circumstances and with the dramatic loss of a daughter, a person in this world has no meaning,’ she said.
Regarding who was the author of the crime of the 12-year-old girl, Rosario Porto’s lawyer assured that it was not his client. ”There is not a single piece of evidence, not a single indication that points towards her,” he stressed. ”I am aware that there is a court and a jury that condemns her, a constitutional one and Strasbourg, despite everything, I say that it was an unjust and unjustified sentence,” she asserted.
Aranguren saw many similarities with the case of Dolores Vázquez, the woman who was convicted by a popular jury for the murder of Rocío Wanninkhof in 1999. A crime that she never committed as was proven over the years. ”She was convicted in all instances and in the end a chance discovery gave the clue as to who the murderer had been,” she explained.
In this sense, the lawyer assured that everything that was speculated during the trial was “stupid.” ”For example, ”the girl was in the way because she had a lover.” She was divorced, the lover thing sounds very stale. If it had been the other way around, that terminology would not have been used. All indications were refuted and none were consolidated. It was said that the girl had been deposited at Teo’s court around 10:00 p.m. and there were two men who said the girl was not there at that time,” he said.
”In the first police report it was said that it was a full moon night with perfect visibility, but when it was learned that there had been some people walking there it was no longer a full moon, it was no longer the time at which it was said to have happened and In addition, a montage was made in which the lights on the track were turned off and only overwhelming silence could be heard. That’s when the suspicions towards her parents begin in the report because they left her there so they could find her quickly, and then that wasn’t worth it,’ she explained.
