In September 2013, Alfonso Basterra and Rosario Porto were arrested for murdering their adopted child, and a new Netflix drama has viewers wondering where the criminal couple is today.
Netflix Housing case is a new investigative thriller based on a true story documenting the real-life killing of Asunta Basterra.
The true story of the Asunta case explained
Spanish lawyer Rosario Porto and her journalist husband Alfonso Basterra adopted baby Asunta Fong Yang from China in June 2001. The couple came from an upper-middle-class background, and the adoption raised no red flags.
The apartment, which the couple raised in Santiago, Chile, proved to be intellectually gifted over the years, skipping grades in school and taking several extra language courses in English, French, Chinese, German and more.
Asunta’s adoptive mother, Rosario Porto, began suffering from severe mental health problems in 2009 with suicidal thoughts, which led to her spending two nights in a psychiatric hospital before being discharged two days later.
Basterra and Porto later divorced in early 2013, as the latter was struggling with the death of both her parents and had just been in a relationship with businessman Manuel García, causing the marriage to break down.
This would precipitate another mental breakdown for Porto in June 2013, prompting Basterra to help him return home. The couple started eating meals with each other again, which led them to consider moving back in together.
On the night of September 21, 2013, just after 10 p.m., Asunta was reported missing by her parents after she had been spotted on security cameras walking between her mother and father’s home earlier that day at around 5 p.m.
Porto told the police that he left Asunta to do his homework at home while he was at the family’s farmhouse in Teo that day. He returned home in the evening with no sign of Asunta, who had never been the type to run away.
Asunta’s body was found the next day on the side of the road on September 22 and was quickly identified due to missing reports.
After CCTV images did not match what happened in Porto, he was arrested for murdering his daughter at a funeral on September 24, and Basterra received the same treatment a day later.
A coroner investigating Asunta’s birthday found she died of asphyxiation after consuming at least 27 Lorazepam pills that day, the same drug Porto had taken and more than nine times the “large dose” for an adult.
Where is Alfonso Baterra today?
When the trial of Rosario Porto and Alfonso Basterra finally took place in October 2015, a jury found both guilty. Both were sentenced to 18 years in prison for aggravated murder, aggravated by kinship circumstances and abuse of power.
Galicia’s Supreme Court overturned the verdict in May 2016 after ruling that it could not be proven that Basterra was in the car that took Asunta to the countryside where she was killed. However, it was agreed that he had planned and cooperated in the murder, and the 18-year sentence was upheld.
Basterra remains incarcerated in Teixeiro Prison in A Coruña, Spain, where he is serving his 18-year sentence, which expires in 2033.
In the 2017 documentary What the truth hides: The Asunta caseBasterra wrote letters to the producers (via the Radio Times) sharing his own “strong intention to disappear” Thu “to unite with (his) girl:”
– When I get my freedom back, I have the firm intention of disappearing, no one will hear from me again, not even Rosario Porto. I have only one reason to stay alive, none other than to be a free man again and to be reunited with my girl, never before. In fact, I’ve already thought about how and where, I just need when, but everything will come.”
Porto was incarcerated in Brieva prison in Ávila and made several suicide attempts over the years. He was finally found dead and hanged in prison on November 18, 2020 at the age of 50.
Housing case now streaming on Netflix.
