Selena Quintanilla: A Murder Case At The Hands Of Her Biggest Fan On The Cusp Of A Successful Career
At 23, the brilliant and talented Selena Quintanilla lost her life in the prime of her career. The story goes back to a fanaticism and friendship that was forged in the midst of her artistic display accompanied by Yolanda Saldívar, who shot her with a revolver. A fact that ended the light of ‘Reina del tex-mex’.
Quintanilla started in music from a very young age, specifically when he was 10 years old. As the years went by, the artist stood out for the mixture of Mexican rhythms and her native Texas, United States. In life, she worked on five albums, which sold millions of copies, but never managed to release the sixth.
In an unexpected event for her fans, Selena Quintanilla was killed by her own assistant and commercial manager Yolanda Saldívar, who was originally the founder and president of the singer’s fan club. In the mid-nineties, the interpreter of “Como la flor” lived at the peak of her musical journey, but their relationship had deteriorated.
How Did Selena And Yolanda Meet?
In 1991, the then 31-year-old woman spoke with Abraham Quintanilla Jr., Selena’s father, to make a proposal that would not fall badly for her daughter’s image: the creation of a fan club in which she would name herself president. In that year, the rapprochement with the Latin music star began in Mexico and the United States.
With a hard work to attract followers, Saldívar positioned himself as one of the trusted people of the successful artist. Selena Quintanilla herself considered her as a personal assistant and then entrusted her with the task of being in charge of her businesses and her fashion brand Selena Etc.
Killing At The Hands Of His Greatest Fan
However, in 1995, tensions with Yolanda Saldívar arose. First, she was removed from the presidency of the fan club, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the fact that she was removed from the management of the businesses that were growing more and more. According to the defendant, the singer herself asked that she be set aside, but not because of a break in her friendship.
In that year, Selena Quintanilla produced the sixth album in the city of Corpus Christi, in Texas, the same place her ex-assistant arrived after traveling to Monterrey, Mexico. This is how she stayed at the Days Inn hotel, in room 158, located on the ground floor of the place, near the pool and almost 100 meters from the main lobby.
According to the investigations, the night before her murder, the 23-year-old Latin diva and her husband Chris Pérez went to see Saldívar for him to deliver some business documents, which should no longer be in their possession because they had been removed from office. However, Selena realized that the documentation was not complete, so she called her to meet first thing the next day.
It should be noted that, in that conversation, the former president of the fan club claimed to have been sexually assaulted on her trip to Monterrey, so the singer had agreed to take her to a hospital when they met. At 9 a.m. on March 31, 1995, both went to the Corpus Christi hospital, where a doctor denied finding signs of sexual violence.
With a clear annoyance at the possible lie that her friend had told her, Selena Quintanilla and Yolanda Saldívar returned to the Days Inn hotel so that she could deliver the rest of the documents that she had requested from the beginning. What follows after that ends with the well-known tragedy that shook the world of music in Spanish and English.
In the middle of an argument at 11 in the morning, Yolanda shot Selena with a .38mm caliber revolver, as determined at trial. Her death was registered at 1:05 p.m. on March 31, 1995, the news shocked Latinos living in the United States and the rest of the world who had fallen in love with her unique voice.
According to Yolanda Saldívar herself, the author of the crime, she did shoot her friend, but argues that it was an accident. To date, the motivations for carrying a weapon and using it against whom she called “daughter” are not known, due to the closeness that the two had for several years.
This is how Selena Quintanilla’s number one fan was found guilty of the murder of the ‘Queen of tex-mex’ and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 2025.
This Friday, December 4, Netflix premieres “Selena, la serie”, a production based on the life of the young artist who reviews her beginnings up to the peak she reached with her great talent for tex-mex, ranchera, ballad, pop music Latino and Mexican cumbia.
