By Lindsay Lowe—
Today
Almost three decades after the death of Selena Quintanilla Pérez, the woman convicted of the murder speaks out in a new documentary.
Yolanda Saldívar, 63, has been in prison since 1995 for the death of the iconic Mexican-American singer, known by her fans as the queen of Texan music.
Saldívar will be eligible for parole in 2025, but is already sharing her story in an Oxygen series titled
Selena & Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them
.
Oxygen
The three-part series will feature new interviews with Saldívar and prosecutors in the case, the hostage negotiator who spoke with her after the murder, and police detectives who responded to the crime scene, according to Oxygen.
A trailer for the series seems to suggest that, in his interviews, Saldívar will challenge the version established in his judgment about what happened.
“After so many years, I think it's time to clarify the story,” says Saldívar in the trailer for the series, which will premiere on February 17.
“I knew their secrets,” adds Saldívar, “people deserve to know the truth.”
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The upcoming documentary has been met with criticism on social media, with some fans calling the project disrespectful to Selena's memory.
“I do not support anything that has to do with Yolanda Saldívar.
I will never ever watch or support the series and I highly recommend that if you really love Selena you don't either.
“I don't care about Yolanda's life or story,” wrote one person on the social network X.
“It's vile that Oxygen is giving Yolanda Salívar a documentary when she clearly doesn't need it,” another user wrote, “releasing this documentary a month before [Selena Quintanilla's] death anniversary and doing it all is in bad taste and disrespectful.” .
Yolanda Saldívar was a registered nurse who founded and chaired Quintanilla's fan club, and later ran two of the singer's clothing boutiques.
She was fired in early 1995 after the singer's family accused her of embezzling money from Selena's fan club and businesses, according to NBC News.
Selena's widower, Chris Pérez, declared in court that they had removed Saldívar from the singer's checking accounts because "they did not trust her," according to a court document from the appeals court in Texas to which Saldívar appealed unsuccessfully. his sentencing in 1998. Pérez testified before prosecutor Carlos Valdez that “there were many things that were not justified and we could not obtain an explanation that satisfied us for some of them.”
He also testified that Saldívar was removed from the accounts about two weeks before his wife's death, according to the document.
On March 31, 1995, Saldívar shot and killed Quintanilla at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas.
The singer was 23 years old.
According to the 1998 case document, the singer “ran out of the room toward the motel lobby, screaming,” and Saldívar “followed her in armed pursuit.”
The artist collapsed in the lobby and she was able to identify Saldívar as the person she had shot before she passed out, according to the court document.
Afterwards, for more than nine hours, Saldívar sat in his truck in the motel parking lot and threatened to commit suicide, the same court document states.
After hours of conversation with a hostage negotiation team, he surrendered to police.
A jury in Houston, Texas, found Saldívar guilty of first-degree murder on October 23, 1995. Three days later
she was sentenced to life in prison
, with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Saldívar is currently incarcerated at the Patrick L. O'Daniel Unit prison in Gatesville, Texas, according to her inmate record.
He will be eligible for parole on March 30, 2025.
Saldívar has said that he did not deliberately kill the singer.
"They turned me into a monster and I just want to say that I did not kill Selena. It was an accident, and I have a clear conscience," he said in a 1995 interview with ABC News.
In the same interview, Saldívar offered his version of what happened the day Selena died.
She claimed that she and the singer were arguing at the Days Inn motel and that, in a heated moment, she [Saldívar] put a gun to her head and threatened to take her own life.
Saldívar claimed that he then waved the gun in the direction of the door and accidentally shot the artist.
The prosecutor at the singer's trial argued that the murder was not accidental, according to the 1998 court document.
In an interview with
Behind the Music
in 1998, Saldívar spoke about his relationship with the artist in the early '90s and explained why he had founded a fan club dedicated to the singer.
“During my college years, I had no social life.
I didn't have any because I was dedicated to my school and my career,” she said.
“Now was the time to have fun,” she concluded.
Selena's father, Abraham Quintanilla, also shared his first memories of Saldívar in the
Behind the Music
special .
“At one time, my whole family liked Yolanda,” he mentioned, “we invited her to eat at home.
We had a meeting and she was there.”
Saldívar stated that his connection with Selena “had gone from just being a fan-celebrity type to this type of personal relationship.”
In his 1995 interview he claimed that Selena
sometimes called her “mom.”
“She was like a teddy bear, which allowed you to love her,” said Saldívar.
“I told her I loved her like a daughter.
And she said, 'You know, I give you that right.'
She called me 'mom' on the phone.”
The singer's family has questioned it.
In the trailer for the upcoming documentary, Saldívar appears to suggest that he has previously undisclosed information to share about the circumstances of the death.
“My family gathered the evidence, they showed different versions of what was happening,” Saldívar says in the trailer.