Thirty years ago, music legend Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was killed by her fan club’s president, Yolanda Saldívar. For the last three decades, Saldívar has served her life sentence in Texas.
Now 64, Saldívar has a petition for parole under review, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice online records. On Sunday, she is up for parole for the very first time.
According to a spokeswoman for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, her case will be voted on or around then, but there’s no exact date for the decision to be released.
Here’s everything you need to know about Selena, Saldívar and the parole process in Texas:
Who is Yolanda Saldívar?
Yolanda Saldívar, a former nurse, was the founder and president of Selena’s fan club. She was also a manager of Selena’s clothing boutiques, Selena Etc., but was fired in early 1995 after money was discovered missing.
How did Selena die?
On March 31, 1995, Selena went to Saldívar’s room at the Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas, to pick up business records she needed for a tax filing, according to court testimony. A confrontation followed.
Selena was shot in the back with a .38-caliber revolver in the motel room, ran outside and collapsed in the lobby. She was rushed to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead about an hour later.
Motel employees testified Selena named “Yolanda” in “room 158” as her attacker.
What happened at Yolanda Saldívar’s trial?
The trial was moved to Houston because of heavy publicity.
Prosecutors contended that Saldívar shot the 23-year-old after the singer’s family suspected her of embezzling $30,000. The defense argued the gun went off accidentally.
On October 23, 1995, the jury convicted Saldívar of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 30 years — beginning in 2025.
Saldívar did not face the death penalty because the crime contained none of the aggravating circumstances required under Texas law, such as a multiple murder or a murder committed during a robbery.
In 1999, the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin turned down Saldívar’s first plea for a new trial. In 2000, her lawyer Bill Berchelmann asked the state to revisit the trial. He argued that prosecutors wrongly dismissed potential jurors because of race, did not disclose the criminal record of a witness and made improper comments in court. He said police also violated Saldívar’s rights by interrogating her after she asked for an attorney.
In 2009, Saldívar lost an appeal because it was filed in the wrong county. She had asked the court to order an appeal filed nine years earlier in Nueces County to move forward, but the state’s highest criminal appeals court said it should have been filed in Harris County, where she was tried and convicted.
She’s incarcerated at the Patrick L. O’Daniel prison unit in Gatesville, Texas, about 90 minutes north of Austin.
“I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to kill anybody,” a sobbing Saldívar said during a 9-hour standoff with police, during which she held a gun to her head. She told police she had bought the .38-caliber revolver to kill herself.
