Asunta's mother and killer found unconscious in her cell after overdose

Ex-solicitor Rosario Porto who, along with her ex-husband and Asunta's father Alfonso Basterra, are serving a 20-year sentence for having drugged and strangled their adopted daughter in Santiago de Compostela, has been admitted to a hospital in the city of A Coruña, near her home city.

Prison sources say this is 'not the first time' she has overdosed and they believe each incident has been 'attention-seeking' or 'a cry for help' rather than a real attempt at suicide.

Rosario was due to move from Teixeiro prison to the one in A Lama in the neighbouring province of Pontevedra this weekend, but was found passed out in her cell just before the transfer.

Staff at the prison authority say Porto 'acts in a similar way whenever she hears news she does not like', although initially she had not reacted 'in any abnormal way' when she was first told about the transfer, so the guards did not put a 'supervisor' cell-mate in with her to prevent any attempted suicide.

She is currently in intensive care at A Coruña University Hospital Complex (CHUAC) under round-the-clock police escort.

She and Alfonso, a former reporter and radio DJ originally from the Basque Country, were arrested the morning after Asunta's body was found in a woods in the hamlet of Teo, near the country mansion Rosario had inherited from her parents who had died seven months apart from 'natural causes' – both of whom were cremated without a post-mortem – giving the 12-year-old's parents no chance to run away together, as they are believed to have planned to do.

They had given their adopted daughter a dose of the strong tranquilliser Lorazepam nearly enough to kill her, and sufficient to leave her deeply unconscious for at least a day.

She was suffocated at the Teo house, her hands and feet tied with orange rope, and dumped in the woods.

DNA evidence, the divorced couple's suspicious behaviour and traces of orange rope and crushed Lorazepam, together with the absence of any other suspects, were enough to convict them.

Rosario had suffered serious mental health problems in the past and she was believed to have been very much under Alfonso's control during their on-off marriage.

They lived next door to each other in Santiago.

Asunta had launched numerous cries for help, telling teachers, friends and friends' parents that she had been 'given white powder' which left her knocked out for days, claiming her parents were 'trying to kill her' and that the hayfever they claimed the drugs were for did not exist – but nobody followed up her appeals and social services never investigated her parents 'because they were a good family', upper-middle class and with comfortable economic means.

The couple had adopted Asunta from her native China when she was less than a year old, and she was said to be highly-gifted, artistic and multi-lingual.