On the night of September 21, 2013, one of the darkest discoveries in the history of Spanish crimes occurred. Asunta Basterra, a 12-year-old girl of Chinese origin, was found dead in a wooded area in the town of Teo, province of A Coruña. Her adoptive parents, Rosario Porto and Alfonso Basterra, were convicted of murder, with her mother taking her own life in prison in 2020.
The premiere this Friday of The Asunta Case, the Netflix true crime series starring Cadela Peña and Tristán Ulloa, has once again revived the case in the media. Programs like TardeAR have dedicated hours of their timelines to finding new witnesses and statements with which to accompany the new audiovisual format. Ana Rosa Quintana’s program has spoken with up to three shadow prisoners during this day.
One of them has been “Laura”, who was the last person to share a cell with Rosario Porto before committing suicide. According to what she told Frank Blanco, Asunta’s adoptive mother was with her for two months, practically from the first day. The first striking detail that she highlighted was the fact that Rosario accumulated several of the pills that the prison provided her, refusing to take the established medication.
“Laura” also confirmed rumors that the accused had had several romantic relationships during her stay in prison. Specifically, she highlighted an exchange of letters with a Uruguayan prisoner with whom she fell in love, as well as a connection with a supportive woman, although her situation did not come to fruition. In her words, Rosario had “a lot of airs” and insisted on her desire to denounce the prison director and other staff.
In the words that the adoptive mother told her, her husband Alfonso Basterra was a “zero to the left”, considering her a very manipulative person, while the other prisoners considered her to have a lot of personality. This is due, in explanations from the shadow prisoner herself, that Rosario had entered a conflictive module. Her problems with hiding her medications ended up leaving her alone in her cell.
TardeAR was also able to speak with Santiago, who was in the same module and even cell as Alfonso at various stages of his sentence. As he explained to Frank Blanco, Basterra had clashes with other prisoners. He considered himself a cultured and proud man, so he did not fit with other profiles of inmates, such as those with drug addiction problems. Such were his problems that he ended up receiving a “couple of slaps” in another module, before the prison decided to pair him with Santiago to keep him under control.
