Selena was a superstar adored by millions… then murdered in cold blood. Now her grieving husband has issued a stark warning

She started out as an obsessed fan of one of the most popular musicians in history.

Then she became a trusted employee and friend.

But most people will forever remember her as the cold-blooded killer responsible for a crime that shattered the hearts of millions.

Now, 30 years after gunning down the adored singer ‘Queen of Tejano’ Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, Yolanda Saldívar could soon become a free woman.

Selena was just 23 and already a star when Saldívar shot her in the back at a motel in Corpus Christi, Texas, on March 31, 1995.

The Latin singer ran towards the lobby screaming and clutching her chest. Saldívar chased after her, calmly still pointing the gun.

Before she lost consciousness, the Mexican-American icon managed to name Saldívar as her killer. 

But the bleeding was too severe, and she was pronounced dead around an hour later. 

Saldívar, the registered nurse who became president of Selena’s fan club and manager of two of her clothing boutiques, will be eligible for parole on March 30, 2025.

It is her third bid for freedom, and will come exactly one day before the 30th anniversary of her callous crime that made headlines around the globe.

In a petition for her release, the now 63-year-old claimed she has a ‘bounty’ on her head among inmates who want revenge for the Latina star’s murder.

However, Selena’s widower Chris Pérez has warned that Saldívar should never be allowed to walk free and issued a plea to the parole board to deny her request.

‘I don’t want that [her release] to happen, because of what she has done and how many people she’s hurt,’ he told the Daily Mail.

‘Selena is no longer here with us. But I’ve also gotten to see the pain that it’s caused her family and to, of course, myself.

‘Just seeing the hurt and the ups and downs we have to still go through. It’s something that to this day really upsets me – and that’s understating it. I don’t think I’ll ever not feel this way.’

Pérez said he and Selena’s sister Suzette have discussed the possibility of her killer being released and the family is very much in agreement that this must not happen.

‘I live with [knowing] all the things that me and Selena could have done together and that she could have done as an artist, as a businesswoman and as a woman coming into her power – what she could have become,’ said Pérez.

‘I mean, it’s just all those things combined. That’s why I don’t feel like it should ever happen.’

Selena’s career was reaching new heights when she was killed.

Her start in music came when she was a child. Her father created the Tejano family band Selena y Los Dinos and they performed at local events in Texas.

Selena quickly became a star and, at just 15, she won Female Entertainer of the year at the Tejano Music Awards.

She signed a solo record deal with EMI Latin and went on to become the first female Tejano singer to win a Grammy Award for best Mexican-American album.

She and Pérez, Selena y Los Dinos’s guitarist, fell in love and married in 1992.

By the mid-90s, Selena had also branched out into other business ventures, drawn in a record-breaking crowd to see her perform at the Houston Rodeo and was on the cusp of taking her music to the masses with her first English language album.

That all changed on March 31, 1995.  

Selena had gone alone to meet Saldívar at the Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi.

As the star walked toward the door to leave Saldívar’s room, her longtime employee shot her in the back.

Following the shooting, Saldívar led police on a more than nine-hour-long standoff. She threatened suicide and held a gun to her head inside a truck in the motel parking lot.

She eventually surrendered after a special crisis negotiation team spent hours talking her down on the phone.

As she was taken into custody, news of Selena’s death was already reverberating around the world.

Hundreds of the star’s fans and members of the media descended on the scene to pay their respects and radio stations nationwide played Selena’s music on repeat.

At her trial, Pérez, Suzette and Selena’s father Abraham Quintanilla Jr testified they had recently learned that Saldívar had embezzled around $30,000 from the Selena fan club and stores.

The family members had confronted Saldívar about the missing money around two weeks before Selena’s murder and found she couldn’t account for the discrepancies.

Perez told the court he and Selena ‘didn’t trust’ Saldívar and they had already removed her from being able to access the company’s checking accounts.

On the day of her murder, it is believed that Selena was planning to fire her fan club president.

Saldívar, meanwhile, claimed Selena’s death was an accident.

She insisted she was actually trying to kill herself, and the gun accidentally went off when she raised it and pointed at a door.

However, the jury did not buy her version of events. Saldívar was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.

Those 30 years are now up, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has scheduled Saldívar’s parole review date for exactly one day before the anniversary of Selena’s murder.

While being held behind bars at the Patrick O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas, Saldívar has continued to claim that Selena’s death was an accident and appealed the verdict twice, without success.

Last year, she then made explosive claims in the highly controversial Oxygen docuseries ‘Selena & Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them’ that Selena had been having an extramarital affair with a plastic surgeon in Mexico.

She claimed she had been helping Selena keep the fling secret by making purchases on her behalf, such as for plane tickets, and then paying herself back. She provided no evidence to back up her claims.

‘I was convicted by public opinion even before my trial started,’ Saldívar said.

The docuseries sparked outrage among Selena fans as well as the Quintanilla family, with Selena’s father slamming the show at the time as ‘nothing but lies’.

Pérez told the Daily Mail that he ‘doesn’t trust anything that comes out of [Saldívar’s] mouth’ and was furious the show had given his wife’s killer a platform for her claims.

‘I mean it’s simple: I don’t think it should be happening. I don’t even know why they would do it, having seen what we’ve seen of her and me knowing her from the past and her lies and things like that,’ he said.

‘To me, it’s obvious why I wouldn’t want to interview her. I wouldn’t believe anything that came out of her mouth.

He added: ‘I don’t even know why anybody watches that. There’s nothing but lies that come out.’

To Pérez, Saldívar’s media appearances and continued ‘lies’ about Selena’s death are just further proof she has no remorse for what she has done and should not walk free from prison.

‘She has not shown any remorse in my eyes,’ he said.

As far as he is aware, his wife’s killer has also never tried to reach out to him or the Quintanilla family to apologize for the pain she has caused.

In fact, the last time he saw her was in the Houston courtroom at her trial.

‘That’s a memory I don’t want to remember, but unfortunately, you can’t just kind of wipe certain things from your brain,’ he says. ‘That’d be awesome, but you can’t do that.’

For Pérez, the 30 years since Selena’s murder have been impossibly hard.

‘I wasn’t always doing the best things for myself back in the day,’ he said.

‘I was trying to self-medicate and just to do things to try to not feel some of the things I was feeling. But luckily I was able to find my way out of all that stuff and get back to what it is that I know how to do, which is play guitar and write music and to just try to pick up the pieces and continue on.’

To help with their grief, the family have worked hard to ensure Selena’s memory lives on through her work and ever-growing fan base.

To this day, the Quintanilla family runs The Selena Museum in Corpus Christi as well as an online merchandise store. They have also worked on many movies and TV shows about Selena’s life including the 1997 movie ‘Selena,’ starring Jennifer Lopez.

Just this January, a new documentary titled ‘Selena y Los Dinos’ featured at the Sundance Film Festival, showcasing never-before-seen family archive footage of the star.

Selena’s dad Abraham Quintanilla Jr and sister Suzette Quintanilla worked as executive producers on the show and the family, including Pérez, attended the premiere.

‘It’s an ever-changing thing for the better. It used to be, and at some point still is today, difficult working on a project like that, because of the memories and the feelings and all that stuff. But it’s gotten a lot better,’ he said.

‘There was a point in time when everything had just happened and for some years after where I just couldn’t be around any of it. 

‘So to be in a better place now and be able to look back on all that stuff and see the joy and and feel the joy myself. You know, that’s been a big change in my life and I’m doing everything I can to enjoy it.’

Pérez, who has since also won a Grammy Award as part of the Chris Pérez Band, wants Selena to be remembered for ‘the inspiration she has become to others’.

‘People keep passing down her music to the next generation and the next generation. It’s been trickling down over the last 30 years and it’s all because of her,’ he said.

‘It was happening before when she was alive. But the more time passes, the fan base just seems to keep growing.

‘What she represents, and not just in Latin culture but also worldwide, it’s an amazing thing. I think she’d be really proud and happy.’