Yolanda Saldivar

✔

**Yolanda Saldívar** (born September 19, 1960) is an Mexican American former nurse who murdered the American singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez at the Days Inn hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas on March 31, 1995. She currently serves out her life sentence in Gatesville, Texas. She will become eligible for parole on March 30, 2025.

## Biography

Yolanda Saldivar was born on September 19, 1960 to Frank and Juanita Saldívar. She was the youngest of the eight children. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She faced bullying many times at school as a child because she was overweight. Saldivar rarely made friends and isolated himself from social events.

She attended three different high schools in the Edgewood School district. She first attended Kennedy High School, then transferred to Jay High School, and graduated from McCollum High School in 1979. While at McCollum, Saldívar became a member of the junior division of ROTC. Saldívar was accepted to the University of Texas in 1985, then transferred to Palo Alto College. She graduated from Texas A&M International University with a degree in nursing in 1990. Around this time, she had a problem with losing weight. She also began working as a graduate nurse at Medical Center Hospital. She received a license as a registered nurse from the Texas Board of Nurse Examiners in March 1990 and earned $60,000 in one year. Saldívar worked part-time after adopting three children, one of whom was her nephew.

Saldívar's employer, dermatologist Dr. Faustino Gomez sued her for $9,200, saying she had been robbing him since 1983. The case was eventually settled out of court. Two months later Saldívar was in court again; The Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Agency issued a court order in Travis County in Austin against Saldívar after she failed to repay a student's loan of $7,363. Meanwhile she began to working at St. Luke's Lutheran Hospital.

After attending to one of Selena's gave a concert she called Selena's father, Abraham Quintanilla, 15 times and said that she wanted to start a fan club for Selena, and she opened the club in 1991. She started working for Selena by running her fan club and managing her clothing boutiques after resigning from her job as a nurse. But later it was revealed that Yolanda had embezzled more than $30,000 from fans and boutiques and Abraham fired her.

In mid-1995, for her insistence, she go to talk to Selena, and during the conversation, Selena says that she can forgive her and put her in charge of one of her boutiques, but Yolanda pulls out the gun she had and Selena tells Yolanda to return the gun, which Yolanda does. But on March 27, she buys the same gun again from the same gun shop. Selena calls her to the hotel, asking her to give all the documents related to the boutique, but Yolanda only gives some of them and says she will give the rest later.

## Murder of Selena

At the morning of March 31, Yolanda tells Selena that she cannot give the remaining documents because she was beaten with sticks and raped, so they go to the hospital together, but there was no result and Selena decides to end her friendship with Yolanda, who delays the documents with various excuses. When returned to the motel, Selena once more demanded the records anr when she dumped out Yolanda's purse a gun fell out and Yolanda grabbed it and Selena tried to run away, but Yolanda shot het once in the lower right shoulder, severing her artery. Yolanda chased after her and called her a "bitch" before she returned to her room. Selena made it to the lobby and collapsed from blood loss, telling the workers who had shot her, and she died on her arrival to the hospital at 1:05 pm.