Why Selena Quintanilla’s Killer Yolanda Saldivar Blames Her Dad as the Real Person Behind Her Death: ‘He Started Getting Angry’
30 years after her death, Selena still remains the most popular Tejano artist of all time. But what happened to her killer Yolanda Saldivar?
New unreleased footage of Selena debuted in the new Netflix documentary Selena y Los Dinos after the wildly successful 1997 biopic and 2020 Netflix series. “The goal from the beginning was to hear from Selena herself,” director Isabel Castro told Rolling Stone. “I think from watching the raw footage of her, you really get a sense of what she was feeling and what she was experiencing as this unbelievable professional trajectory was playing out, and as her star was growing and growing.”
Related: Here’s What Selena’s Husband Chris Pérez Is Up to Now
Selena was tragically killed at the Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi on March 31, 1995, by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her fan club and the manager of her boutique, Selena Etc.
On October 24, 1995, a jury in Houston convicted Saldivar of first-degree murder for Selena’s death and was sentenced to life in prison. Under Texas’s death penalty statute, the death penalty was not an option for the jury. On November 22, 1995, Saldivar entered her sentence at Gatesville, a women’s prison 110 miles southwest of Dallas and 250 miles north of Corpus Christi, on November 22, 1995.
When Is Yolanda Saldivar’s Release Date?
The next time Yolanda Saldivar will be eligible for parole is in 2030. She will be 70 years old if she’s still alive. In March 2025, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied parole for the convicted killer. “After a thorough consideration of all available information, which included any confidential interviews conducted, it was the parole panel’s determination to deny parole to Yolanda Saldivar and set her next parole review for March 2030,” the Board of Pardons and Paroles said in a statement.
The statement continued, “The reason provided by the panel for denial was the Nature of the Offense: The record indicates that the instant offense has elements of brutality, violence, assaultive behavior or conscious selection of victim’s vulnerability indicating a conscious disregard for the lives, safety, or property of others, such that the offender poses a continuing threat to public safety,
Selena’s family applauded the decision. “While nothing can bring Selena back, this decision reaffirms that justice continues to stand for the beautiful life that was taken from us and from millions of fans around the world far too soon,” the family statement said on Instagram. “Selena’s legacy is one of love, music, and inspiration. She lived with joy, gave selflessly, and continues to uplift generations with her voice and her spirit.”
Carlos Valdez, the former Nueces County District Attorney who prosecuted Saldivar in the 90s, reacted to the decision as well. “In this case, if you look at everything she has said for the last 30 years, you’ll understand you still have to protect the public. You still have to protect the victims. You have to make sure there is some rehabilitation. If you talk to her today, if I had talked to her today, she has not changed at all in 30 years. Not at all. She’s still saying the same thing,” said Valdez.
In an Oxygen documentary aired before the decision, Yolanda Saldivar insisted on her innocence during the crime and blamed it all on her father, Abraham Quintanilla. “Abraham started noticing that she was taking a lot of her time to her business. He started getting angry about her for that. He wanted to control her time and whereabouts. He kept on asking where she was, and I couldn’t because I was more loyal to her than him.”
However, Abraham denied all allegations from Yolanda. “No one’s gonna believe what she has to say anyway,” he told TMZ. “Everyone knows there’s zero truth to anything that comes out of her mouth.”
