Netflix’s The Asunta Case had a pretty convoluted timeline because of the nature of the real-life crime it is based upon. At the center of the conflict, we have two parents accused of murdering their adopted daughter, Asunta Basterra (originally named Fong Yang). Everything seemed perfect between the two until, at the beginning of 2013, the father, Alfonso Basterra, found some unsettling emails on his wife’s laptop that ruined their relationship and also played an important role in their daughter’s murder. So, without further ado, let’s list down all the important events in Asunta Basterra’s murder case so that you can understand the chronology better.
Disclaimer: The timeline is strictly based on the events shown in Netflix’s The Asunta Case and has no connection to real-life events. In the series, each episode covers a day or two after Asunta’s murder, as the events gradually unfold. However, in real life, the pre-trial investigation lasted for almost a year before Judge Luis Malvar finally initiated the process for an open trial.
2001
- The Spanish couple, Alfonso and his wife, Rosario, flew to China to adopt a nine-month-old girl named Fang Yong from the Xunta Services. Conveniently, they named their daughter after the non-profit organization from which they adopted her. They brought her to their family flat in Doutor Teixeiro, Galicia, where Rosario’s family had spent most of their lives.
2009
- Rosario, suffering from anxiety and mental instability, tried to commit suicide for the second time.
2012
- Rosario met her lover, Vicente Dozon, and started an extramarital affair with him somewhere around the beginning of the year. Their relationship lasted for one and a half years until Asunta’s death.
2013
- On January 6, Alfonso found emails on Rosario’s laptop sent by her lover, Vicente Dozon, therefore convincing him that his wife had been cheating on him for some time.
- On January 8, Alfonso finally gathered enough courage to confront his wife about her affair with Vicente. It soon turned into a heated argument, and Alfonso left the house.
- On January 9th, Alfonso borrowed some money and rented a flat near Rosario’s house. As soon as he moved into his house, he received a divorce settlement request from Rosario’s lawyer, Rodrigo Serrano.
- On February 14, their divorce was approved by the court of law, and Alfonso and Rosario got officially separated.
- In June, Rosario’s lover made it clear that he had no intentions of marrying Rosario, which broke her heart and took a toll on her mental health. On June 26, she was admitted to a mental health facility once again.
- On July 1, Rosario was released from the hospital, and she came back home.
- On July 4, a mysterious break-in took place in Rosario’s house, where a huge masked man tried to suffocate her daughter to death. Rosario never reported the incident to the police.
- On July 9th, Asunta’s violin teacher found her groggy in the class. According to the girl, her parents had given her a white powder for her allergies.
- On July 23, Asunta’s teacher reported the same incident, as she found her student extremely dizzy and acting like a zombie because of the medication her parents were giving her.
- From July 30th to August 28th, Asunta stayed away from her parents house after Rosario’s mental condition worsened for reasons unknown to us.
- On September 18, Asunta felt dizzy once again and missed her class.
- On September 20, Rosario made a sudden plan and left for Vigo, leaving her daughter behind with Alfonso. She spent the entire day on Vicente’s boat and returned home the next day.
- On September 21, Rosario returned home and had lunch with Alfonso and Asunta at Alfonso’s house. She returned to her flat with her daughter soon after. In the evening, Rosario left her flat with (or without) Asunta and traveled to her farmhouse outside the city in Teo. At around 10 p.m., Rosario and Alfonso reported that their daughter was missing.
- On September 22, around 1:30 a.m., two drunk men spotted Asunta’s body on a country road to Teo and quickly reported it to the police.
- On September 24, the parents got Asunta’s body back from police custody and held a funeral for her daughter. In the meantime, the police found CCTV footage of Asunta sitting in Rosario’s car on the day of her murder. The footage contradicted Rosario’s statement to the police, giving them enough grounds to take the woman into custody.
- On September 25, the police brought Rosario and Alfonso to their farmhouse to conduct a thorough search of the property. In the meantime, Judge Luis Malvar confirmed that each day before the girl was found groggy, it was Alfonso who purchased lorazepam from the pharmacy. The husband was arrested on the same day and put in a nearby cell so that the police could record their conversation.
- On September 26, the police took the suspects to their respective flats to find more evidence to build the case. Unfortunately, the police didn’t find any incriminating evidence from there. On the same day, the investigation judge, Malvar, examined the alleged murders separately. The judge later ordered pretrial detention for the couple and transferred them to Teixeiro.
- On September 27, Rosario’s lawyer, Rodrigo Serrano, left the case, and her father’s old friend, Juan Jose Dominguez, or Juanjo, took over her case.
- On September 28, Juanjo convinced his lawyer friend Elena Garrido to take on Alfonso’s defense. In the meantime, the police investigated a suspected sexual offender, Carlos Muriolla, whose DNA was found on Asunta’s t-shirt. In the end, it turned out that the forensic team messed up the entire thing, and Muriolla had nothing to do with the case. But the media had its share of fun with it.
- On September 30, Malvar re-questioned Rosario and Alfonso separately. Malvar asked Rosario about the mysterious break-in, and as for Alfonso, he was questioned about the explicit materials found on his laptop.
- Somewhere in November, two months after Asunta’s murder, her classmate Laura Prieto, from the French Class, came to the station and informed the police that she had seen Asunta with her father on September 21st while she was out with her boyfriend to buy sports sneakers from a store on General Pardinas Street.
2014
- In July, almost a year after the murder, Malvar ended the pre-trial investigation and decided to lay out the murder case before a popular jury. Before the Provincial Court’s trial, Malvar sent the images on Rosario’s old phone and Alfonso’s browser history to an old friend working in digital media. Believing Malvar’s words, she obliterated the parents on television by displaying both pictures together, therefore creating a narrative in people’s minds before the case even went to trial. Due to the biased media trial, the entire country had already formed an opinion against the parents. There was no escape from here.
2015
- In May, almost two years after Asunta’s murder, the court started the procedure for the selection of the jury. The trial started soon after the jury was selected.
- In early October, the court officially began the trial for Asunta’s murder case. The trial was scheduled for 24 days.
- Somewhere in October, Malvar lost his father, who had been suffering from dementia for a long time.
- On October 30, the jury found both the defendants, Rosario and Alfonso, guilty of the charges against them. They were sentenced to 18 years in prison.
- Soon after the trial, Rosario requested Juanjo place an obituary in Asunta’s memory every year on September 22. She placed an obituary in the newspaper every year until her death in 2020.
2016
- In May, both the High Court of Glacia and the Supreme Court accepted the Provincial Court’s judgment. They considered all the evidence to be correct, except for Alfonso’s location. It wasn’t proven that he went to the farmhouse in Montouto on the day of the murder.
2020
- On November 18, after several failed attempts, Rosario finally died by suicide in the prison of Brieva, Avila.
2024
- As of today, Alfonso remains in prison and will be released in 2031.
The timeline presented in The Asunta Case series differs to some extent in comparison to the events that took place in real life. The creators of Netflix’s drama most likely took some creative liberties so that they could avoid the aging of all the characters presented in the series. Additionally, too many dates and figures might have been confusing for a regular audience, which might be one of the reasons why they presented the investigation in a short time frame. As per my research, most of the evidence obtained by the police was true, and Netflix’s series has tried to present most of it, except for the ruckus created by the Spanish media, who is to blame for an unfair trial in the case. Additionally, Judge Luis Malvar didn’t have any personal vendetta against the parents, yet the series portrays him in a bad light for reasons unknown to us.
