Asunta Yong Fang Basterra Porto (born Yong Fang; 30 September 2000 – 21 September 2013) was a Chinese-born Spanish girl whose body was found in Teo, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain, on 22 September 2013, shortly before her thirteenth birthday. The coroner determined that she had died by asphyxiation and had been given at least twenty-seven lorazepam pills on the day of her death, more than nine times a high dosage amount for an adult. The investigation into the death became known as the Asunta Basterra case (Spanish: Caso Asunta Basterra).
Asunta's adoptive parents, Rosario Porto and Alfonso Basterra, were found guilty of her murder on 30 October 2015. According to court documents, the couple had periodically drugged their daughter with lorazepam for three months and finally asphyxiated her before disposing of her body. The parents, who maintained their innocence, were sentenced to eighteen years in prison. Porto died by suicide in prison in November 2020.
The case attracted widespread media interest in Spain and around the world, as well as a "statement of concern" from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The death of Asunta Basterra inspired numerous documentaries and a drama series, The Asunta Case, which premiered on Netflix in April 2024.
Background
Asunta Basterra was born Yong Fang in 2000 in Yongzhou, Hunan, China. At nine months old she was adopted by Alfonso Basterra Camporro (born 1964) and María del Rosario Porto Ortega (1969–2020), an affluent Spanish couple from Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. Asunta was the first Chinese child to be adopted in the city of Santiago and one of the first in all of Galicia. Asunta was said to have been a gifted child, being a talented ballet dancer, violinist, and piano player who skipped a year in school. She was also very close to her maternal grandparents, who died the year before her death.
Asunta's adoptive mother, Rosario Porto, came from a prominent Galician family. Her mother, María del Socorro Ortega Romero (1933 – 12 December 2011), was a highly regarded university lecturer of art history. Her father, lawyer Francisco Porto Mella (18 December 1925 – 26 July 2012), was an honorary consul of France. They died seven months apart, both suddenly at home, in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
Porto studied law at the University of Santiago de Compostela and practiced at her father's firm after graduation. She also claimed to have attended the London High School of Law in England, which The Guardian confirmed does not exist. In 1997 she was appointed consul of France, inheriting the role from her father.
Porto met journalist Alfonso Basterra, a native of Bilbao, in 1990. The two married in 1996 and lived in a large flat that had been given to Porto by her parents. Rosario suffered from flare-ups of Lupus erythematosus, which led doctors to advise against pregnancy, so the couple decided to start an adoption process in China. In 2001, they travelled to China and adopted 9-month-old Asunta from the Guiyang Welfare Institute.
On 5 January 2013, Alfonso discovered his wife's infidelity when he checked her emails. On the 8th they argued and separated. At first there were unpleasant scenes; for instance, Rosario felt harassed because Alfonso sent her constant messages with reproaches and accusations. They were divorced by mutual consent effective 14 February. Alfonso Basterra went to see a psychologist and with time, the couple reached an equilibrium. He took care of the girl and, in exchange, received some financial assistance from Rosario, who continued to suffer from her lupus illness as well as depressive episodes. They lived in close quarters and he could be with the daughter whenever he wanted. Asunta split her time between the two homes, walking the short distance between them.
On 26 June, Rosario was admitted to the Neurology Department of the Hospital Clínico de Santiago due to a worsening of her illness, with dizziness, instability when walking and drooping of an eyelid, remaining in the hospital until 1 July. Her ex-husband reached a pact with her: he would take care of her and their daughter on the condition that she cut off her relationship with her lover, which she accepted.
On the night of the 4th to the 5th of July, an unexplained incident was said to have occurred between the early hours of 2:30 am and 4:30 am. An unknown assailant allegedly tried to strangle Asunta in her room. Rosario claims that the keys were carelessly left in the door. Awakened by noises, she got up and went to her daughter's room, where a man of strong build and short stature wearing latex gloves had his hands around her daughter's neck. This man would subsequently be described in the press as "the man in black". According to Rosario's account, she grabbed the man but he forcefully pushed her and ran away. Surprisingly, Rosario did not call anyone for help.
There are different interpretations of this incident. Some believe that it was purely an invention of the mother, others that it was a first attempt at murder carried out by the mother or the parents, or an excuse to give her lorazepam. At the trial, Rosario's neighbour was certain no one entered the house that night because her dogs did not bark.
Rosario still did not proceed to file a complaint. Asunta told her best friend by WhatsApp that someone had tried to kill her that night, but then did not speak to her about it again. On an outing with another friend, Asunta told the story with signs of distress and the mother of the friend contacted Rosario, urging her to report it. Rosario went to the police station in Santiago, ultimately deciding not to file a report, although she told the friend's mother that she had done so.
On 9 July, Basterra brought Asunta to her music class despite her showing signs of drowsiness and dizziness. He claimed that Asunta was having allergies and that an antihistamine had caused this reaction. Later, on 22 July, a similar incident occurred with the headmistress noting Asunta was unable to play well, half asleep, and struggling to walk. When questioned, Asunta stated that her mother had given her a foul-tasting white powder that left her asleep for hours.
In August, Rosario suffered from a bout of depression and anxiety, and Alfonso took care of her. Asunta spent the month away from her parents, first with her godmother, from 30 July to 22 August, in Vilanova; and to the countryside on 28 August with her caregiver, a woman who helped Rosario with the housework. During this period of absence, her parents called her every day, but did not visit her. Asunta seemed cheerful, happy, and carefree.
Death and investigation
Asunta was first reported missing by her parents at 10:17 pm on Saturday, 21 September 2013. They had eaten lunch together at her father's home that afternoon. Asunta was seen on a bank's security camera at 2 pm walking to her father's house, and appeared on that same security camera at 5:21 pm returning home to her mother's flat. Porto was seen on the same security camera walking home at 5:28 pm.
Porto initially told investigators that she had left home at around 7 pm, leaving Asunta at home doing homework. She said that she had driven alone to the family's country house in Teo, located about twenty minutes outside Santiago, and that when she returned to her apartment at 9:30 pm, Asunta was missing. Porto said that she called Asunta's father and many of her friends, none of whom had seen her.
Investigators later recovered CCTV video footage of Porto and Asunta at a gas station on the route toward Teo at 6:20 pm, contradicting Porto's timeline and story that she had left Asunta home that afternoon. After being made aware of the video, Porto changed her story, this time saying that Asunta had briefly gone with her to the country house, but that she quickly took her back to Santiago because the child had wanted to do homework. Porto claimed that after dropping Asunta off at home, she went to a sporting goods store to buy an item for Asunta's ballet class, but did not go in after realizing that she had left her purse in Teo. Porto claimed she then returned to the country house in Teo to retrieve her purse, then went to a gas station but did not fill her tank because she realized she did not have her discount card.
Police examined the video footage from thirty-three security cameras around Santiago and found no video of Porto's car on any of the roads she claimed to have driven on that afternoon. Investigators came to believe that Porto and Asunta arrived at their house in Teo just after 6 pm, and that Porto left the house around 9 pm.
Asunta's body was discovered in the early morning hours of 22 September 2013, at around 1 am, on the side of a small mountain road in the parish of San Simón de Ons of Cacheiras, in the municipality of Teo (just 5 km from Rosario Porto's country house in Montouto, also in Teo), by two young people who alerted the emergency services, who identified the body of the missing girl. Not long after, Porto and investigators went together to the country house, where Porto was told not to touch anything since the house could be a crime scene. Porto told police that she needed to use the bathroom; an officer followed her upstairs, and found her attempting to retrieve the contents of a wastepaper bin in the bedroom. The bin contained a piece of the same type of orange twine that Asunta's limbs had been tied with when her body was found. Forensic scientists were ultimately unable to determine whether or not the discarded piece had come from the same roll used in the murder.
On 24 September, Rosario Porto was arrested and investigated for an alleged crime of homicide. A day later, Asunta’s father, Alfonso Basterra, was also arrested and investigated.
In June 2014, Examining Judge Vázquez Taín concluded the pre-trial investigation, giving way to the process of opening trial. In October, the Sixth Section based in Santiago completed the final judicial procedures. The selection of the popular jury began in May 2015, with the trial scheduled to begin between 23 June and 17 July of the same year, but there were some delays and it was finally in early October 2015 when the trial began in the Provincial Court of A Coruña, with 84 witnesses and 60 expert witnesses.
On 30 October 2015, the jury appointed by the Court of Santiago de Compostela unanimously found both Alfonso Basterra and Rosario Porto guilty of the murder of Asunta Basterra. In May 2016, the High Court of Justice of Galicia in A Coruña corrected the verdict, finding that it was not proven that Alfonso Basterra got into the car and accompanied the mother. Therefore, the high court found that it was the mother who caused the asphyxiation. Even so, the high court upheld Alfonso Basterra's sentence for planning and collaborating in the murder. In October of the same year, the second chamber of the Supreme Court upheld the sentence of the High Court of Justice of Galicia.
The investigation into Asunta's death was named Operación Nenúfar ("Operation Water Lily") by detectives, who noted that in the moonlight, the girl's body in her white shirt appeared to be floating above the ground like a flower.
Reconstruction
The parents' activities could be reconstructed in the hours leading up to their daughter's disappearance and death, thanks to testimonies, surveillance cameras, and records from phones and digital devices:
During the examination of the body, the forensic experts did not take a rectal temperature for fear of destroying or contaminating evidence, as sexual assault was suspected. Nor did they take a temperature in any other way, for example in the ear or nasal cavity, nor did they take the ambient temperature, so that the time of death could not be established. The body was lying on the slope for almost four hours, and twelve hours in a cold room, before vitreous humour was removed from the eye, another procedure for estimating the time of death, which prevented an accurate calculation. The two professors of forensic medicine called by Rosario Porto's defence stated that "the interval established in the autopsy report is not clearly substantiated".
Research
In a first version of the events, Rosario Porto had declared that she left Asunta at around 7:00 pm at her home in Santiago de Compostela, and that when she returned a couple of hours later, the girl was no longer there. The security cameras show that Rosario had gone to the garage much earlier than she stated, an error she attributed to nervousness. The manner and location in which the body was abandoned led investigators to suspect the victim's family.
At the start of the investigation, when the agents tried to reconstruct her route, Rosario commented that, before heading to Teo to pick up some swimsuits, she had stopped in a double row in front of her apartment door to pick up a bag.
Upon finding the image from the gas station camera and discovering that in the mother's car, at 6:21:24 pm, in the passenger seat there was a short person wearing white clothes, undoubtedly Asunta, the police deduced that Rosario had lied.
On Tuesday, 24 September, after the cremation of her daughter's body, Rosario was arrested and charged due to the inconsistencies and contradictions in her statements.