Docuseries Goes Inside Hostage Negotiation After Selena's 1995 Murder, as Killer Speaks from Prison
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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
Yolanda Saldívar, the woman convicted of killing Selena Quintanilla Perez, is speaking out in a series of jailhouse interviews almost 30 years after the Tejano superstar’s slaying.
The docuseries, Selena & Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them, which premieres on Oxygen with back-to-back episodes on Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. ET/PT and concludes Feb. 18 at 7 p.m., chronicles the complicated and ultimately tragic relationship between Selena and the former president of her fan club. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
The docuseries, which “examines Saldívar's interpretation of events that ended in Selena’s death and her claims that everything wasn’t as it seemed,” includes interviews with Saldívar's family as well as detectives and prosecutors in Corpus Christi, Texas, who handled the case.
Selena, 23, was fatally shot by Saldívar in 1995, just two weeks ahead of what would have been her 24th birthday.
Saldívar allegedly killed the Grammy winner when Selena learned that she had been embezzling money from her clothing boutiques.
courtesy of oxygen
Yolanda SaldivarIn the docuseries, Saldívar, who has long maintained that the shooting was a tragic accident and that she was trying to kill herself and not Selena, claimed that Selena’s father, Abraham Quintanilla, was unhappy with his daughter's plans to expand her fashion business — and that he took out his anger on Saldívar.
“He started noticing that Selena was occupying a lot of her time to her businesses,” Saldívar said in one of her jailhouse interviews. “He started getting angry about that because it was conflicting with her recording, her career as a singer. That was his baby. He wanted to control her time, wanted to control her whereabouts and she was not going to have none of that.”
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“So, he kept asking me, ‘What is she doing? Where is she at?’ I couldn't tell him because I was more loyal to her than to him,” Saldívar added. “When I would not, anger started coming my way.”
After the murder, Saldívar, who held police at bay while she sat in her pickup in the motel’s parking lot threatening to kill herself, told a hostage negotiator that Abraham had slashed her tires and fired two bullets into her car.
Related: Selena Quintanilla's Family: All About the Late Singer's Parents and Siblings
“What this man has done to me is incredible, Larry,” she says in the audio exchange with the hostage negotiator.
“Uh, huh, it is,” the negotiator responded.
“He slashed the tires in my car,” she claimed. “He put two bullets in my car.”
“Who was? he asked.
“My friend’s father,” she answered.
Prosecutors didn't buy any of her claims, and neither did a jury: Saldívar was found guilty of murdering Selena. In October 1995, she was sentenced to life in prison.
She is eligible for parole in March 2025.
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.
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.
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