In The Asunta Case, the court finds Rosario and Alfonso guilty of murdering their daughter based on the evidence presented against them.
On September 21, 2013, Rosario and Alfonso report their daughter, Asunta, a 12-year-old girl, missing. Not long after, the police find her body.
The police soon suspect Rosario and Alfonso, as it becomes evident that Rosario has not been honest with them.
The evidence recovered by the police, along with eyewitness testimonies, enabled them to prove that Rosario and Alfonso were the ones behind Asunta’s murder.
The arguments presented
The day Asunta was murdered, Rosario had gone to her country house. She told the police that Asunta chose to stay home and was nowhere to be found when Rosario returned.
However, the police later come across CCTV footage from a gas station’s camera that proves that Asunta was in the car with Rosario and not at home.
Rosario then claims that she forgot to tell the police that Asunta had accompanied her for an errand, after which Rosario dropped her near their house.
While there is no evidence to confirm Rosario’s story after the police confronted her with the footage, the footage itself serves as evidence that Asunta was last seen alive in Rosario’s car.
When a police officer accompanied Rosario to the country house on the night of Asunta’s death, Rosario excused herself to use the bathroom.
The officer followed her and found her standing near a wastebasket containing an orange twine resembling the one used to tie Asunta’s limbs, which was left at the crime scene.
The twines were of the same type, but due to the material’s composition, it cannot be proven whether they were cut from the same piece.
Asunta’s teacher also informed the police that Asunta could barely stand one day and told her teacher that her parents gave her a white powder for her allergies.
However, Asunta’s pediatrician denied having prescribed any powder that would make her dizzy; she had been given this powder for months.
While no traces of the allergy pills were found in her toxicology report, traces of Lorazepam, a pill that Alfonso buys for Rosario, were detected.
A number of photos found on Asunta’s phone, which originally belonged to Rosario, are used as evidence to suggest that Asunta was subjected to inappropriate behavior by her parents.
The prosecution also argues that Alfonso kept his phone off that day because he planned to kill Asunta, but Alfonso and Rosario’s lawyers disproved this claim.
Alfonso’s phone was not switched off; he received a call from Rosario, and his lawyer suspects that he is not disclosing the true nature of their conversation.
Additionally, a classmate of Asunta, Laura, claims to have seen Asunta walking with Alfonso that day, which contradicted Alfonso and Rosario’s statements.
Alfonso’s lawyer was able to prove that the time Laura saw Alfonso and Asunta conflicted with the time Asunta was in the car with her mother, as captured by CCTV footage.
Asunta’s body was discovered on the side of a road. The defense bring in a man who walked on that road the same night. He claims that he did not see the body when he passed by.
This raised the question of whether the body was left there while Asunta’s parents were at the police station filing a missing person report. However, the man’s testimony does not help much.
The visibility was low that night, and when the police made the man take a visibility test the next day, he missed a T-shirt left by them in the same location where the body was found.
Once all these pieces of evidence were presented in court, it becomes apparent even to Alfonso and Rosario’s lawyers that they were hiding something.
However, they remain tight-lipped about their secrets. As a result, the jury finds them guilty of murdering their own daughter.
The higher courts also ratify their sentences, considering all proven facts except for the claim that Alfonso was in the country house with Rosario and Asunta on the night of the murder.
Also Read: The Asunta Case summary and ending explained