
Will Selena Quintanilla's killer be released? Yolanda Saldívar up for parole this week
Will Selena Quintanilla's killer be released? Yolanda Saldívar up for parole this week
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Selena fans continue to celebrate her life through art
Fans of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez express their love for the late singer through art and creating handmade clothes for a vintage Selena doll.
Robert Hanashiro and Sandy Hooper, USA TODAY
Thirty years after pop singer and Tejano legend Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was murdered, her killer is under review for parole.
Yolanda Saldívar, 64, is currently serving a life sentence for her murder. The crossover star died nearly 30 years ago to the day, March 31, 1995, at 23 years old in Corpus Christi, Texas.
According to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records, Saldívar will be eligible for parole on March 30, and she is currently in the parole review process.
Here's what to know about Selena's death and Saldívar's parole bid.
Who was Selena Quintanilla-Pérez?
Known by fans simply as Selena, Quintanilla-Pérez was a beloved Tejano musician turned crossover superstar. In 1986, she was named female vocalist of the year at the Tejano Music Awards − a title she'd go on to earn 10 more times. She won the Grammy for the best Mexican American album in 1994. Selena's tracks like "Como La Flor" (1992) and "I Could Fall In Love," released posthumously in 1995, endeared her music to Spanish and English-speaking audiences alike.
Who killed Selena? What happened between Selena and Yolanda Saldívar?
Saldívar was the former president of the Selena fan club and a manager of Selena's clothing boutiques.
On March 31, 1995, Saldívar, then 34, fatally shot Selena at a Days Inn Hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas, after the singer learned that Saldívar had been embezzling money. The singer was pronounced dead just two weeks before she would have turned 24.
Selena Quintanilla's widower reflects on singer's murder 26 years later: 'It was traumatic'
Selena movie with Jennifer Lopez released 2 years after death
In 1997, Warner Bros. released the film "Selena" on the life, career and death of the pop star, starring Jennifer Lopez in what would be her breakout performance. The film helped launch Lopez into stardom, after her TV debut as a Fly Girl dancer in the Wayans family sketch comedy "In Living Color" and going on to star in a handful of smaller films, including "My Family" and "Money Train."
Will Selena's killer Yolanda Saldívar get parole?
Saldívar is now eligible for parole for the first time. If granted, she would be released to serve the remainder of her sentence in the community under supervision.
If she is denied parole, her next review date will be set for one to five years from the decision date, a spokesperson for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles told the Times-Caller, part of the USA TODAY Network, earlier this year in an unsigned email. The parole panel would determine the specific number of years.
Selena Quintanilla's killer Yolanda Saldívar speaks out from prison in upcoming Oxygen docuseries
During the parole decision process, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice parole officer interviews the offender to prepare a case summary for the board. A panel of three members, who also have the discretion to interview the offender and individuals who support or protest their release, is then responsible for the final vote. Victims' family members are notified in advance of an offender's parole eligibility.
The parole panel considers the seriousness of the offense, letters of support or protest, the length of the sentence and the amount of time served, as well as criminal history, institutional adjustment and the offender's age.
Parole can be denied for several reasons, including if past behavior indicates a predisposition to commit criminal acts, if the offender poses a continuing threat to public safety or indicates a conscious disregard for the lives and safety of others, or if they've refused to participate in or failed to complete programs in prison.
The board traditionally votes on a case just before the parole eligibility date – in this case, March 30.
In 2019, Saldívar filed an appeal challenging her conviction and sentence, according to federal court records. According to documents from the denied appeal, a pair of tennis shoes worn by the victim at the time of the murder were not admitted into evidence during Saldívar's trial. Saldívar asserted that if the prosecution had admitted these shoes as evidence, the defense could have potentially discredited the argument that Saldívar shot Quintanilla-Pérez intentionally.
Saldívar's appeals have not been successful.
Selena Quintanilla songs
Some of Selena's biggest records include "Como La Flor," "I Could Fall In Love" and "Dreaming of You." Selena and her family, who performed as Selena y Los Dinos before she went solo, released a dozen albums, 24 singles and seven promotional singles.
"Dreaming of You," her fifth and final solo album released four months after her death, peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart and became the first predominately Spanish album to top the Billboard 200 chart.
Contributing: Taijuan Moorman, USA TODAY; John Oliva, Corpus Christi Caller Times
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


USA Today
29 minutes ago
- USA Today
It's a toxic lesbian vampire summer: ‘Bury Our Bones' is V.E. Schwab at her realest
It's a toxic lesbian vampire summer: 'Bury Our Bones' is V.E. Schwab at her realest V.E. Schwab is hungry. The bestselling author of 2020 breakout 'The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue' has spent most of her career assimilating, presenting herself as less feminine and less queer. She used a pseudonym for her first name, Victoria, in part as a gender-neutral appeal to fantasy readers, a historically male-dominated genre. She was told to temper her ambition. She was told to want less. Over a dozen novels later, Schwab says she's done filtering herself. She's starving to be her most creatively uninhibited self and 'Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil' (out now from Macmillan) is her meal ticket there. 'The thing you realize when you spend so many years just trying to be what everybody else wants and trying not to rock the boat is that you're the only one that drowns,' Schwab tells USA TODAY. 'Bones' lets messy LGBTQ+ villains bite "Bones," which Schwab calls 'three novellas in a trench coat,' follows three vampires – one in 16th-century Spain, one in London in the 1800s and another in Boston, circa 2019. It's a toxic love triangle, a cautionary tale of vengeful exes and a thrilling, genre-defying ode to queer want. It's her most explicitly queer novel yet. After she saw how LGBTQ+ characters in spy thriller series 'Killing Eve' and AMC's remake of 'Interview with the Vampire' were embraced, Schwab was inspired to write a story centering messy, queer villains. Historically, LGBTQ+ characters are typically killed off (see the 'bury your gays' phenomenon) or sanitized. But as queer representation increases in media, audiences crave different, more complex stories. 'I just desperately wanted to write messy people, because when we insist that queer characters be perfect citizens, we say that their queer analogs in reality also can't make mistakes,' Schwab says. 'It's so reductive, it doesn't allow for complexity, it doesn't allow for nuance. It doesn't allow us to take up the same amount of space in the world as our straight counterparts.' Vampires on page and onscreen have long had queer undertones, especially with social outcast, androgyny, seduction and desire not embraced by larger society. Schwab calls 'the turn' from human to vampire the perfect metaphor for queer awakening. She's not the only one ready for more frank representation. AMC's 2022 remake of 'Interview with the Vampire' focused explicitly on queerness, where the original novel and 1994 movie left it up to fans to decode. 'Bones' takes that a step further by centering on female vampires. 'I felt like (vampire stories) often centered men, or if there were female vampires, they kind of were just objects of sexual desire on the periphery,' Schwab says. 'There is an inherent violence to moving through the world in a feminine body. You invite violence by simply existing, you are marked prey by the world. And I thought about the ultimate liberation of moving from prey to predator.' Schwab's characters are liberated – after they turn, they can live authentically. They also all deal with their vampirism differently, an apt metaphor for how coming out can affect people differently. All three characters share a common desire for more than their old life could offer. 'When I say that this is a book about hunger, I mean everything – it's the hunger to be loved, it's the hunger to be seen, it's the hunger to be understood, it's the hunger to take up space in the world, it's the hunger to take what you want as well as what you need. And hunger in the wrong hands is violence. Hunger in the right hands is romance,' Schwab says. 'Hunger, to me, is one of the most universal sensations. … it could be a meal or a life.' New book isn't 'Addie LaRue' – and Schwab is OK with that Still, the leadup to 'Bones' hasn't always felt so joyous. Every time Schwab teases information about the book, people ask her to write a sequel to 'Addie LaRue' instead. She's seen some readers declare 'Bones' an automatic skip because it has lesbian characters. She isn't letting it deter her. 'If I couldn't translate the success of Addie LaRue into sheer unapologetic storytelling, then it was a disservice to that book,' Schwab says. 'There is an inclination when you have such a large success to conform to it.' Instead, she says she wrote 'Bones' for her and hopes readers find her where she is. Early rave reviews confirm her hopes. 'Addie LaRue' taught her to abandon perfectionism and instead focus on purpose. Schwab wants to see both publishing and readers make room for other queer writers, who she says are 'always told to hunger for less or just settle.' In a landscape of exceptionalism where few marginalized writers break through to mainstream success, Schwab's rallying cry is 'more.' 'I'm hungry for stories, I'm hungry for art, I'm hungry for music that makes me want to make (art), I'm hungry for books. I have a voracious appetite for anything artistic,' Schwab says. 'Men are told to hunger, women are told to feed. And I think it's totally OK to hunger.' Biggest books of the summer: Taylor Jenkins Reid surprised herself with 'Atmosphere' Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@


Buzz Feed
37 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
Taylor Swift Gets Restraining Order For Alleged Stalker
Hot Topic 🔥 Full coverage and conversation on Taylor Swift Taylor Swift was granted a temporary restraining order Monday against Brian Jason Wagner, a 45-year-old Colorado man who has allegedly visited her home several times and claimed she is the mother of his child, per court documents reviewed by Billboard. The order was signed by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Debra R. Archuleta and reportedly requires Wagner to stay at least 100 yards away from Swift and her home. It is set to expire with a June 30 hearing about a potentially more permanent restraining order. Swift wrote in her petition Friday that Wagner first visited her Los Angeles residence on July 9, 2024, and returned at least twice that month. The Grammy winner further noted that she doesn't publicly share her address and never gave it to Wagner. 'Therefore, the fact that Mr. Wagner has determined where I reside and visited the property several times, refusing to leave and claiming to need access, makes me fear for my safety and the safety of my family,' she wrote in the petition reviewed by Billboard. Swift said he once arrived 'carrying a glass bottle that could have been used as a weapon.' 'During each of these visits, I am informed that Mr. Wagner made various statements about living at my property (not true), being in a relationship with me (not true), believing I am the mother of his son (not true), and needing to see me in person,' she added in her filing. Swift's legal proceedings were only launched after two more visits from Wagner last month, however, when her staff ran a background check and learned he had a criminal record and had claimed in 'lengthy communications' from jail that he was in a relationship with Swift. Wagner allegedly even illegally obtained a California driver's license listing Swift's address as his own. The singer, who unfortunately has a lot of experience with stalkers, described his claims as 'disconnected from reality' in her filing. In 2017, 29-year-old Mohammed Jaffar entered Swift's apartment building in New York City after harassing her management company, fawning over Swift on social media and describing her security guard as a 'gatekeeper,' The Guardian reported at the time. In 2018, 22-year-old Roger Alvarado broke in and used her shower before taking a nap in Swift's bed. Later that year, another man reportedly traveled more than 1,000 miles to her Los Angeles home with ammunition, a knife, rope and gloves in his car. Swift has used facial-recognition technology to identify potential stalkers at her concerts. The singer, who recently triumphed in a yearslong fight to reclaim the rights to her first six albums, wrapped her Eras Tour in December. The effort became the highest-grossing tour of all time, and the first to earn more than $1 billion — and $2 billion — in revenue.


The Hill
43 minutes ago
- The Hill
‘Star Trek's' George Takei: Trump is the ‘biggest Klingon around'
George Takei is targeting President Trump with the ultimate Trekkie insult, calling the commander in chief the 'biggest Klingon around.' 'Change is constant and change will come,' Takei, a frequent critic of Trump and the Republican Party, said in an interview with USA Today published Tuesday. 'I'm working to make sure that we participate in making it a better, more responsible democracy,' said the 88-year-old 'Star Trek' actor while promoting his new graphic novel 'It Rhymes with Takei.' 'No more Klingons,' the LGBTQ activist said, referring to the science fiction series' villainous humanoids. Takei, who said in 2019 that the U.S. had hit a 'new low' during Trump's first term in office, expressed some optimism about the future. 'The Republicans are starting to fight amongst themselves,' he told the paper. His project with Steven Scott and Justin Eisinger and illustrated by Harmony Becker, details the story of Takei's 'life in the closet, his decision to come out as gay at the age of 68, and the way that moment transformed everything,' according to publisher Penguin Random House.