Spain - Asunta Fong Yang, 12, Killed by Wealthy Adoptive Parents

[PastTense]

One day in late June 2001, Rosario Porto, a petite, dark-haired lawyer from Santiago de Compostela, northern Spain, sat nervously on a flight to China beside her husband Alfonso Basterra, a quiet man from the Basque country, who worked as a freelance journalist. The couple, both in their mid-30s, were on their way to adopt a baby girl. Porto swallowed two tablets of Orfidal – a common anti-anxiety medicine that she had used before then – but remained too agitated and excited to sleep....

Alfredo Balsa is well-known to police in and around Santiago de Compostela. An assiduous visitor of clubes de alterne – the legal, neon-lit bar-brothels that sit on the edges of every Spanish town – he had the habit of driving around drunk in his home parish of Teo, a sprawl of villages outside Santiago. By September 2013 he had been caught so often that his driving licence had been taken away, but the nearest club de alterne – the Satay – was only a mile away, down well-maintained dirt tracks, and the chances of being caught driving there were almost non-existent.

In the early hours of 22 September, he and a friend rolled out of a bar in the village of Feros, got into Balsa’s white Volkswagen Golf, and drove down the broad track to the back of the Satay. It was a remarkably bright night, but the oak and pine trees cast deep, black shadows, and it was among these that Balsa glimpsed something strange. It looked like a scarecrow. He stopped the car, reversed, pointed the headlights towards the spot and, sure enough, a human shape lay stretched out on a gently-sloping bank just two metres from the track. They got out of the car and stepped cautiously towards it. A girl lay on the bed of fallen pine needles, dressed in mud-stained grey sweatpants, with one arm half-inside a matching top and a white T-shirt pulled above her stomach. She was barefoot. The girl’s left arm was curled up to her shoulder, a large wet stain ran around her crotch, and there was a small amount of blood-tinged mucus under her nose. It was a shocking find, made stranger in this quiet country area because the girl was Asian. The men felt for a pulse, but there was none.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-murder-their-adopted-child-asunta-fong-yang

 

[pappa rob]

Sick people.

 

[Rayemonde]

Thanks for sharing, that was a really good article. The investigators think the mother wanted a child because it was the done thing, pushed her into being perfect and high-achieving, then just decided to get rid of her when when she didn't want her any more - by murdering her interesting that most people who knew the couple thought they were wonderful parents.

I wonder why they had been drugging her for months? Did they hope it would kill her, or was she being argumentative as pre-teens can be and they hoped it would make her more passive, quiet and sedate?

That story about Asunta waking up to find a man standing over her bed was very strange, too... Did that actually happen? It seems to, because Asunta texted her friend that someone tried to kill her that day. could it have been her father with his face covered? Or perhaps her parents just told her they found someone in her room, and she believed them.

It's frustrating when murderers don't confess - you never get the whole, true story of what happened.

Rest in Peace, Asunta Fong.Yang

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-murder-their-adopted-child-asunta-fong-yang

 

[annemc2]

I just watched a documentary on this case yesterday and it was absolutely haunting. I want to know more about Asunta and her relationships with her friends. She was high-achieving and friendly/outgoing but what was she really like? The descriptions of her seem very superficial.

The psychological profile of the mother is fascinating and the family dynamics were very interesting as well. Was Rosario's affair the tipping point? Why were they drugging Asunta with powerful sedatives? Was she exhibiting signs of normal teenage rebellion and they were trying to rein her in? Or did they just not want to deal with her and preferred her to be asleep for most of the day? Part 4 of the documentary where a mock jury of students reviewed the case was one of the most intriguing parts, with a lot of information disclosed.

The way her body was left out just makes no sense to me. She would be so easily seen where she was left, and there was a more wooded area just beyond. The ropes suggest that she had been bound? Why would you need to bind a tiny, sedated child? Why remove the ropes and leave them next to the body? I know Rosario was very petite but it seems odd that Asunta would need to be restrained. Lastly, I find it so odd that her body was not covered with a blanket or sheet, as in most filicides. Oh and what in the heck was that about the semen!?! Lab error or mistaken alibi? Bizarre.

A very confusing but fascinating case. I spend a lot of time on Websleuths and rarely am I haunted by a case like I have been with that of Asunta. I wonder if more information will ever be released.

Lo que la verdad esconde: El caso Asunta (Operacion Nenúfar) is available to view on Netflix (Spanish with subtitles)

 

[Mostkimpossible]

I remember reading about this one awhile back. It said detectives found tons of strange photos of Asunta on the fathers computer. She appears sleeping in most of the photos too. I wonder if that's why they were drugging her?

 

[annemc2]

I remember reading about this one awhile back. It said detectives found tons of strange photos of Asunta on the fathers computer. She appears sleeping in most of the photos too. I wonder if that's why they were drugging her?

If I recall correctly, there were photos (similar if not the same) on the phones of Asunta and both of her parents. The most shady thing is that Dad's computer was not found during the extremely thorough initial searches of his flat but suddenly appeared a few weeks later. And he has no clue how they "missed" it. Who knows what was on it. Apparently he had an interest in *advertiser censored* featuring Asian women but this does not infer nor prove that he had a sexual interest in his daughter.

I never heard what the computer forensics found. I know it's almost impossible to completely and permanently delete everything so I wonder what was ultimately discovered.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

*I just finished watching this series. Absolutely fascinating.

In The Asunta Case, a wealthy couple from Santiago de Compostela, Spain, Rosario Porto and Alfonso Basterra, adopted a baby girl named Asunta Fong Yang from China in 2001. Twelve years later, when they report her missing, the authorities initially suspect a kidnapping. As the investigation unfolds, the couple is arrested for her murder, causing shockwaves throughout the country. Candela Peña and Tristán Ulloa star in the gripping drama that’s quickly risen to the No. 2 spot in the U.S. on Netflix.

In June 2001, Rosario Porto, a lawyer from northern Spain, and her husband Alfonso Basterra, a freelance journalist from Basque country, went to China to adopt a baby, Asunta Fong Yang. The adoption didn’t raise any red flags, as the couple came from an upper-middle-class background. Porto’s father served as honorary consul for France, and her mother was an art historian at the University of Santiago, according to The Guardian.

Two weeks later, they brought their baby girl home to Santiago. As she grew older, it became apparent that Asunta was intellectually gifted. She skipped an academic year by the time she was in secondary school. “Well-handled, they are a good thing,” Porto told friends after reading up on gifted children, the site reported. “But they can be a problem.”

The Shocking True Story Behind Netflix’s ‘The Asunta Case’

Netflix's new thriller, "The Asunta Case," tells the chilling true crime story that stunned an entire nation. Here's what happened to Asunta and her parents.

www.forbes.com

 

[bettyboop]

I just finished reading the article in the Guardian and agree with the other posters that it is a fascinating read, and I highly recommend checking it out. I never heard of this case before today, and thank you @PastTense for starting the thread. I had stopped my subscription to Netflix to save money, but it looks like I will be subscribing again to watch the show based on this case. RIP Asunta

 

[claudicici]

I also find the similarities to the Ramsey case fascinating.

 

[Kittybunny]

Hi everyone, I was really hoping to find a thread on this case here and you did not disappoint. I devoured this in one fell swoop yesterday and I'm left with so many questions. The Netflix documentary was so incredibly well done, it really was very detailed and riveting.

There is so much to unpack. The evidence against the mother seems fairly compelling, and the Lorazepam purchases by the father could have been him trying to keep up with her growing need for anti-anxiety meds. Addiction to benzos is a real thing. However, there is clear evidence that the daughter had those meds in her system for a long time, was the mother giving it to her to try to calm her? It does seem strange that they would do it before school, seems really risky.

There was a moment when I thought they were going to go down the path of saying that Asunta herself had been taking the meds because of her anxiety in over achieving, But later, it seemed clear that she said that her mother was the one giving her white powder. But then didn't they say it was on the nights that she had spent the night at her father's house?

Has anyone found a good website that has more of a fact-based approach that has a lot of the evidence, timelines, etc.? Spanish is my second language so maybe I will go searching for one, assuming that they're probably going to be in Spanish.

Would love to hear other thoughts, and if anyone thinks they are innocent? I thought that actress who played the mother did an amazing job at showing she was spacey, tortured. However, I get the sense from the news articles that she was not really like that, and she did have that lover.

And the T-shirt! What was up with that?

Ack! I'm all over the place, just don't really even know where to start.

 

[claudicici]

There is a documentary in Spanish I'm watching it on YouTube "la Caso asunta Operacion Nenufar" unfortunately I don't know Spanish and there are no English subtitles

 

[claudicici]

I also don't know what to think, this is such a strange case,there really isn't much evidence against the father and no motive...and what about the creepy pictures they took of her,some asleep swaddled like an infant and the sexualized ballet pictures ...what was really going on in that household?

 

[Lamima]

Were they religious. I watched the netflix and looked on the net at info and had this feeling they were trying to perform some exorcism or swaddle to quash some behavior. Like those cases where parents and other adults hold down a kid they deem a behavior problem and they kill them accidentally. Wonder if that happened at the country home. I think the drugging, too, was to calm some behavior.

The dynamic between the parents was odd too. Seemed uber focused on each other in some way beyond normal sick way. Where is the dad now, he got a short-ish sentence so is he out?

 

[claudicici]

He's still in prison. He got a 18 year sentence

 

[claudicici]

Someone on reddit suggested they may have used rebirth therapy on her