SELENA'S KILLER SPEAKS FROM PRISON IN NEW DOCUSERIES

PEOPLE

 

Selena's Killer, Up for Parole in 2025 After Tejano Star's 1995 Killing, Speaks from Prison in New Docuseries

By Christine Pelisek  Published on February 3, 2024 10:00AM EST

 

A new docuseries on Oxygen True Crime explores the complex relationship between Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla and her killer Yolanda Saldivar, who'd been the president of the singer's fan club.

 

The three-part docuseries, Selena & Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them, which premieres on Oxygen with back-to-back episodes Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. ET/PT and concludes Feb. 18 at 7 p.m., will feature prison interviews with Saldivar, who is eligible for parole on March 30, 2025 — almost 30 years after the Grammy winner’s slaying. (An exclusive trailer is shown below.)

 

Selena, 23, was fatally shot by Saldivar, who was also her close friend and business associate, in 1995, just two weeks ahead of what would have been her 24th birthday.

 

Saldivar allegedly killed Selena after the singer learned Saldivar had been embezzling money from her clothing boutiques. Two days after Selena confronted her, Saldivar applied for a permit to purchase a gun from a gun store in San Antonio, witnesses testified during her trial, per the Associated Press.

 

At the time, Saldivar told gun store employees that family members of mentally ill people for whom she worked had made threats against her, according to the AP.

 

She bought the gun that killed the singer on March 26, five days before the murder, per the AP.

 

She shot Selena at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas, on March 31 after she alleged she had been raped the night before, per USA Today. 

 

After the murder, Saldivar held police at bay while she sat in her pickup in the motel’s parking lot threatening to kill herself, per The New York Times. 

 

She later surrendered and was arrested and later charged with first-degree murder.

 

During her trial, prosecutors described the slaying of the icon as a “senseless and cowardly act of violence,” AP reported. 

 

However, Saldivar’s defense attorneys argued that the fatal shooting was a tragic accident, and that Saldivar was trying to kill herself not Selena, per CNN.

 

"While Selena was a victim of a tragic circumstance, she was not a victim of murder," defense attorney Fred Hagans told the jury.

 

In October 1995, Saldívar was sentenced to life in prison.

 

Selena was killed before the completion of her highly anticipated English album Dreaming of You. The album posthumously debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart on Aug. 4, 1995 and remained on the list for 49 weeks. Her song "Dreaming of You" peaked at No. 22 on the Hot 100 on Nov. 24, 1995 and charted for 20 weeks.

 

Jennifer Lopez later starred in a movie about the music star in 1997, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination.

 

Oxygen's new docuseries “examines Saldivar’s interpretation of events that ended in Selena’s death and her claims that everything wasn’t as it seemed.”

 

Saldivar, 63, was interviewed four times for the docuseries at Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas.

 

It also includes interviews with Saldivar’s family, the hostage negotiator who responded to the crime scene, Corpus Christi Police Department detectives and prosecutors.

 

The Oxygen True Crime docuseries Selena & Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them premieres with back-to-back episodes Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. ET/PT and concludes Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Episodes will be available to stream on Peacock the day after they air.