A woman serving a life sentence for the 1995 murder of Tejano icon Selena has filed paperwork to be released next year, inmates told the Post. “There is a bounty on her head,'' he said.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials say 64-year-old killer Yolanda Saldívar has a clean record and will prevent the parole board from holding a hearing in March to decide whether to release her. He said there was nothing.
On March 31, 1995, Saldívar shot and killed 23-year-old superstar “Queen of Tejano” Selena Quintanilla Perez during a confrontation in a hotel room in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Selena believed Saldívar, the founder of her fan club, had embezzled more than $60,000 and that he intended to fire her.
TDCJ said Selena's family will likely receive formal notification of Saldívar's parole hearing in January.
The convict, who is incarcerated in the Patrick L. O'Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas, which also houses the state's death row inmates, has long maintained that he did not intend to kill Selena and that her death was accidental. Ta.
“I was convicted by public opinion before the trial even started,” Saldívar said in a prison interview for the Peacock documentary “Selena and Yolanda: Their Secret,” released last year.
She claimed at the time that she intended to commit suicide, not Selena.
But the jury did not believe her and convicted her, sentencing her to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Saldívar's relatives recently told the newspaper that the attacker feels like a “political prisoner” in prison and believes he has fulfilled his debt to society.
“Keeping her in jail doesn't help,” the cousin said. “It's time for her to leave.”
Inmates at the prison where Saldívar is being held told the Post that she is constantly targeted and forced into protective custody.
Marisol López, who worked with Yolanda Saldívar from 2017 to 2022, said, “Everyone knows Yolanda Saldívar. There's a piece of her neck that makes everyone want a piece of her. There's a bounty on the line. She's so hated that the guards keep her away from the others. If she's out. [in general population]someone will try to take her down. ”
Yesenia Dominguez, another former inmate, said Saldívar was a common topic of conversation in the prison yard.
“People were always like, 'Give me five minutes to talk about that,'” Dominguez said. “Everyone wanted justice for Selena. She has a target on her back.”
In 2018, Selena's father, Abraham Quintanilla, told Univision's Primer Impact that other inmates were threatening Saldívar's life.
“I still receive letters from women in the same prison saying they are waiting for her,” he said at the time. “They say they're going to kill her. Some women are bad. Women who have murdered others in the past. That's why they're there. They have nothing to lose.”
Saldivar insists he will live with relatives and find a job if he is released.
