Selena's family says decision to deny her killer parole 'reaffirms that justice continues to stand'
Saldívar, 64, is serving a life sentence for the March 31, 1995, murder that took place at a Corpus Christi hotel after the singer, whose last name was Quintanilla-Pérez, accused friend Saldívar of embezzling $30,000. The older woman had been president of the Selena fan club and manager of the singer's Selena Etc. boutiques.
Read more: In 'Selena y Los Dinos,' we see the Tejano queen through the eyes of her sister
The Quintanilla family and Chris Pérez, the guitarist who secretly married Selena in 1992, seemed pleased with the decision to deny parole, writing on social media, "Today, we are grateful." They said they were celebrating Selena's life, rather than remembering her murder.
The parole board said in documents obtained Thursday by The Times that the killing had 'elements of brutality, violence, assaultive behavior or conscious selection of victim's vulnerability indicating a conscious disregard for the lives, safety, or property of others, such that the offender poses a continuing threat to public safety."
"While nothing can bring Selena back," the family continued, "this decision reaffirms that justice continues to stand for the beautiful life that was taken from us and from millions of fans around the world far too soon."
Saldívar's case is eligible for another parole review — in Texas, a comprehensive evaluation involving interviews and behavioral reviews — in 2030.
Read more: Selena's killer is denied parole 30 years after shooting Latin superstar
"Selena's legacy is one of love, music, and inspiration. She lived with joy, gave selflessly, and continues to uplift generations with her voice and her spirit," the Quintanillas and Pérez wrote. "As her family and loved ones, we remain committed to preserving her memory and ensuring that her story is honored with the dignity and respect it deserves."
Fans' support, they said, had been a source of strength and healing over the years.
The Tejana pop superstar was about to record her first English-language crossover album when she was shot in the back by Saldívar at a Corpus Christi Days Inn. "Dreaming of You" was released posthumously in July 1995.
Jennifer Lopez starred in "Selena," the 1997 film about the singer, and in 2020, Netflix debuted "Selena: The Series," a two-season, 18-episode series looking at her rise to fame with the family band, Los Dinos, and her murder.
Read more: Johnny Canales, Tejano legend who helped launch the career of Selena Quintanilla, dies at 77
In 2024, the Oxygen network released "Selena & Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them,' a two-part documentary incorporating Saldívar's version of events. The latter was done without the family's OK.
Most recently, the documentary "Selena y Los Dinos," featuring home movies shot by older sister Suzette Quintanilla, impressed audiences at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Selena fans weren't happy about "Selena & Yolanda." 'It's very clear to me that [the filmmakers are] giving a lot of weight to Yolanda's allegations," "Anything for Selena" podcast host Maria Elena Garcia told The Times in 2024. referencing promotions for the documentary. "Empty allegations that she has been making for literally decades. To me, that's incredibly irresponsible, unethical and, frankly, just distasteful.'
Earlier this month, a Saldívar family member told the New York Post that Saldívar knows what she did was wrong but maintains that Selena came at her "really aggressively."
"She was so thrown off with how forceful Selena was being; everything happened so fast," the family member said. "If Selena had confronted her differently, this never would have happened.'
Read more: Remember This Banger: Selena's 'Dreaming of You'
Saldívar's defense team alleged at trial in October 1995 that she shot Selena by accident and that Corpus Christi police who questioned her never mentioned that claim.
During a nine-hour standoff at the hotel where Selena was shot, Saldívar told police negotiators that she told the singer she had bought a .38-caliber revolver to kill herself, the Associated Press reported in 1995.
'She told me: 'Yolanda, I don't want you to kill yourself.' She opened the door. When I told her to close it, the gun went off,' Saldívar said. The taped conversation was played at trial.
Saldívar did not testify at trial after a judge denied a request that she testify only about her interactions with police. However, several hotel employees testified that they saw a calm Saldívar with the gun pursuing a screaming, bleeding Selena, the AP said.
Times staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report.
Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Buzz Feed
an hour ago
- Buzz Feed
Orlando Bloom Reacts To Katy Perry And Justin Trudeau
Orlando Bloom reacted to a post trolling Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau amid rumors they're dating. The two made headlines last week when they were seen dining at a restaurant in Montreal, followed by Justin's appearance at the Montreal stop of Katy's Lifetimes tour. A source subsequently told People that "they are interested in each other" — however, "it will take a while to see where this goes." "She is traveling around the world, and he is figuring out his life now that he is no longer prime minister of Canada," the source said, "but there is an attraction. They have a lot in common." Among their shared interests are "music" and being "idealists" seeking to make "improvements" to the world. "[The] timing seems good for them," the source added, although they clarified "a romance is in very early stages." Well, amid the rumors, the Onion poked fun at Katy and Justin by joking that Orlando had struck up his own romance with another politician — namely, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In an Instagram post containing a digitally-made photo of Orlando and Angela seated together, the outlet wrote, "Just weeks after announcing his split from fiancée Katy Perry, English actor Orlando Bloom was photographed Friday dining with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. 'Angela kept Orlando laughing all night—he couldn't keep his eyes off her!' said an insider source who spotted the pair sipping wine, slurping oysters, and splitting a decadent piece of chocolate layer cake at a Michelin-starred restaurant." Orlando, who split from Katy in June after nine years and one child together, took to the comments to react, sharing a series of handclap emojis. It's no surprise to see Orlando joking around, as he's said to have a friendly relationship with Katy in the wake of their split. According to a source, it was especially important for them to remain cordial so they could be around their daughter, Daisy, 4, "separately or together." "Katy has every intention of maintaining a positive and respectful relationship with Orlando," one source said. "He's the father of their daughter and that will always come first for her." The source added, "They've been through a lot together and while they've decided to go their separate ways, there's still a mutual respect between them. They're still very much in touch and co-parenting Daisy together. For the sake of their daughter, they're committed to keeping things amicable." Honestly, good for them, and shout out to Orlando for being a good sport! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
USA Today
8 hours ago
- USA Today
America's fascination with the kiss cam: For better or worse, it's here to stay
'Are you not entertained?' Russell Crowe's Maximus famously bellowed to the Colosseum crowd in the 2000 film 'Gladiator.' But for decades, kiss cams have been posing a different question to U.S. sports fans and concertgoers: 'Are you not the entertainment?' Whether lighthearted distraction or comic relief, the ubiquitous arena and stadium feature is as American as apple pie — or at least as American as baking an apple pie and posting it on social media. Live competition and performance offer us communal experience on a massive scale, but they also offer a chance to make memories and — with the aid of kiss cams — to become part of the entertainment ourselves. For a few back-to-back moments, as the camera zeroes in on its various targets, fans watch with curiosity, anticipation, excitement and maybe even self-conscious dread. 'These events are epic, nostalgic, and for some even narcissistic,' said Adam Resnick, founder of 15 Seconds of Fame, a Los Angeles-based company whose app allows participating fans featured on in-venue video boards like kiss cams to download and share the footage as a digital souvenir. The origins of the kiss cam are frustratingly foggy but Resnick and others agree they burst onto sports scenes in the 1980s, in the years after sports franchises began introducing increasingly massive color video screens at ballparks and stadiums. Designed to fill breaks in the action and typically set to cheesy pop ballads, the kiss cam was a major innovation that shifted the focus from courts and fields into the stands. The feature is pretty much a slam dunk, with the camera's roving eye picking out random pairs of people in the stands who may or may not be actual couples — and therein lies part of the fun. Reactions are broadcast on the venue's giant video boards: If they kiss, the crowd cheers, while refusals draw playful jeers or laughter. "We love love," said Pepper Schwartz, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle. When couples oblige, she said, "it's a feel-good feeling that transfers from one person to another and makes us optimistic." Kiss cams are cheap entertainment designed to keep audiences engaged when they could easily check out, said Joseph Darowski, an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. 'The energy of the live crowd is incredibly important, and the kiss cam helps to prevent it from dying down,' said Darowski, co-author of 'Survivor: A Cultural History,' a book that in part explores the rise of reality TV. 'Sporting events are not just about the game being played. It's the entire entertainment experience.' Any additional theatrics are generally a bonus — at least for the audience. But as illustrated by the now infamous July 16 incident at a Coldplay concert in Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, that's not always the case for the featured individuals. When reactions tell the story It was the shot broadcast around the world – the TikTok'd footage of a couple at a Coldplay concert caught mid-cuddle. 'Either they're having an affair, or they're just very shy,' Coldplay singer Chris Martin quipped after seeing the video from the stage. The video of the July 16 incident at Gillette Stadium has received more than 129 million views on TikTok alone. The viral moment and its professional and personal fallout, Schwartz said, prompted reactions ranging from amusement and fascination to, for those who've been involved in similar circumstances, schadenfreude and relief. But it wouldn't have unfolded the way it did without the kiss cam. The couple seen on the screen "could have saved themselves from worldwide derision had they waved and looked like, 'This is no big deal,'" Schwartz said. "But they took the second instinct, which was to flee. And that was the funny one." 'It could have been a vanilla, fleeting moment,' Resnick agreed. 'However, their reaction told a story." The episode illustrated how kiss cams have provoked occasional embarrassment and controversy since their debut. In addition to outing potential infidelities, their use in the past has been accused of pressuring unwilling participants to take part and shamed for promoting homophobia by showing same-sex couples for laughs. It also showed the hazards of baring private matters in public in the age of kiss cams, smartphones and social media. 'The expectation of privacy at a public event has never existed, and today, with camera ubiquity, it's preposterous for anyone to take that position,' Resnick said. More often, though, kiss cams offer those attending live events the chance to score a cameo in their own experience, claiming part or even all of those 15 seconds of fame once foretold for all of us. The power of those moments, Resnick said, lies in their organic nature. 'Authenticity can't be staged in real time,' he said. 'It resonates in the social zeitgeist.' Kiss cams 'an important metric' of acceptance The kiss cam's evolution hasn't been without its stumbles. In 2015, Syracuse University discontinued its kiss cam feature after a letter to the local newspaper cited a pair of troubling instances at the football team's game against Wake Forest. Steve Port of Manlius, N.Y., wrote that the kiss cam segment had twice featured young women who expressed unwillingness to participate but were forced to anyway, either by their male counterpart or by surrounding students. Meanwhile, a dozen or so years have passed since some major league sports franchises were accused of promoting homophobia by using kiss cams to poke fun at other teams. In those cases, after featuring a series of smooching male-female couples, the kiss cam segments ended by focusing on two of the home team's rival players, or even fans – suggesting they might kiss, and that doing so would be comedic. As a fan of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars complained after such a segment in a 2013 letter to team owner Shahid Khan, initially reported by Outsports: 'Hilarious, right? No, and the message is clear. Jaguars are heterosexual and approved. The opponent is 'gay,' disapproved and the butt of a crude joke.' A year earlier, pitcher Brandon McCarthy of Major League Baseball's Oakland A's had similarly condemned the practice after a game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. 'They put two guys on the 'Kiss Cam' tonight,' McCarthy posted on the social platform now known as X. 'What hilarity!! (by hilarity I mean offensive homophobia). Enough with this stupid trend.' Later, McCarthy — now sporting director for the USL Championship's Phoenix Rising FC — told the San Francisco Chronicle: "If there are gay people who are coming to a game and seeing something like that, you can't assume they're comfortable with it. If you're even making a small group of people ... feel like outcasts, then you're going against what makes your model successful." Before long, franchises were striving to be more inclusive, and in 2015, MLB's New York Mets told the Huffington Post they would no longer feature opposing players in their kiss cam segments; that same year, the Dodgers included a gay couple in its kiss cam. 'Kiss cams are an important metric in measuring how acceptable certain people are in a given community,' said Stephanie Bonvissuto, an adjunct assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Hunter College and Brooklyn College, both part of the City University of New York system. In early 2017, the Ad Council's 'Love Has No Labels' campaign produced a commercial featuring kiss cam footage from that year's NFL Pro Bowl in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people had been killed seven months earlier in a mass shooting at gay nightclub Pulse. 'Kiss Cams have been a part of sports culture for years,' the opening text read, but at that game, it continued, they 'became part of something bigger.' The images showed pairs of individuals, outlined by a heart, broadcast on Camping World Stadium's giant screens. Friends were featured. So, too, were same-sex and interracial couples. Then the camera zoomed in on two women in the stands, one of them wearing a shirt reading 'Orlando survivor.' The two turned and kissed, to the crowd's delight. Still, Bonvissuto said it's still rare to see LGBTQ couples featured on kiss cams beyond Pride Night events. While cautioning that she hasn't seen any statistics on such representation, she said the footage she's viewed largely features white, able-bodied and seemingly cisgender individuals. 'Kiss cams act as a means to exclude certain people,' she said. 'They're incredibly important in thinking about representation — who we're seeing and not seeing.' 'Socially acceptable' voyeurism But for the most part, kiss cams have offered streams of harmless fun, fodder for highlight and blooper reels and glimpses into the relationships of everyone from fellow citizens to celebrities and sitting and former U.S. presidents. Kiss cams, said BYU's Darowski, offer audiences the constant thrill of knowing they could be onscreen combined with 'a socially acceptable, safe form of voyeurism that is traditionally taboo.' The presumed authenticity of couples' raw, unrehearsed reactions is key, too, he said. 'So much of our entertainment is highly mediated, edited and packaged for our consumption,' he said. It doesn't always play out as planned – and not all of it is necessarily genuine, thanks to some sports teams' creative minds. Many couples share crowd-pleasing kisses. Others, not so much. Some, snubbed by their companions, stomp off in a huff or peck adjacent fans instead, while youthful pairs looking to lock lips are thwarted by chaperoning adults. Whether any of it is staged doesn't matter much. Fans and audiences alike have enjoyed their moment in the limelight. Resnick, of 15 Seconds of Fame, recalled a moment in June 2024 after a Dallas Mavericks loss in game five of the NBA Finals. The arena cameras zeroed on a fan tearful over the outcome. While it wasn't part of the kiss cam feature, 'the minute he saw himself on the Jumbotron, he smiled and kissed the girl (who was) with him,' Resnick said. 'That's all you need to know about what those 15 seconds mean to fans.'
Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
A Compton family endured two killings in just eight months. Why justice is so elusive
Jessica Carter is tired of being resilient. After her brother, Richard Ware, 48, was stabbed to death outside a Los Feliz homeless shelter last month, it fell to her to hold their extended family together. Just eight months prior, another relative — her 36-year-old nephew, Jesse Darjean — was gunned down around the block from his childhood home in Compton. His slaying remains unsolved. Across L.A. County and around the country, murder rates are falling to lows not seen since the late 1960s. Yet clearance rates — a measure of how often police solve cases — have remained relatively steady. In other words: Even with fewer homicides to investigate, authorities have been unable to bring more murderers to justice. Police data show killings of Black and Latino people are still less likely to be solved than those of white or Asian victims. Carter's hometown of Compton is still crawling out from under its reputation as a national epicenter for gang violence. But for all of its continued struggles, violent crime — especially killings — has plummeted. When the gang wars peaked in 1991, there were 87 homicides. Last year, there were 18, including Darjean's fatal shooting on Oct. 24. The way Carter sees it, the killers who took her brother and nephew are both getting away with it — but for different reasons. In Darjean's shooting, there are no known suspects, witnesses or motive. But the man who stabbed Ware is known to authorities. The L.A. County district attorney's office declined to file charges against him, finding evidence of self-defense, according to a memo released to The Times. Ware's sister and other relatives dispute the D.A.'s decision, claiming authorities have failed to fully investigate. 'The system failed him,' Carter said. In the absence of arrests and charges, Carter and her family have simmered with rage, grief and frustration. With digital footprints, DNA testing and more resources than ever available to police, how is it that the people who took their loved ones are still walking free? In Darjean's case, the investigation is led by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which has patrolled Compton since 2000, when the city disbanded its own Police Department. Leads appear to be scarce. His body was found in the back seat of his car, which had been riddled with bullets. A father of three, he had just gotten home late at night from one of his jobs as a security guard. To Sherrina Lewis, his mother, it seemed the world was quick to forget and move on. News outlets largely ignored the shooting. Social media sensationalized it. She couldn't resist reading some of the comments online, speculating about whether her son was killed by someone he knew or because of his race or a gang affiliation. But, Darjean was no gangster, she says. True, there had been rumors around the neighborhood about escalating conflict between the Cedar Block Pirus, a Black gang, and their Latino rivals. But if anything, Lewis said, her son was targeted in a classic case of wrong place, wrong time. When homicide detectives began knocking on doors for answers, her former neighbors claimed not to have seen anything. For Lewis, it felt like betrayal — many of those neighbors had watched Darjean grow up with their kids. 'Each and every day I have to ask God to lift the hardness in my heart, because I'm angry,' Lewis said. 'They're not gonna make my son no cold case, I promise you that.' Lewis nearly lost Darjean once before, at the moment of his birth. He and his twin brother were born three months early, and doctors warned that Darjean was the less likely of the two to survive. He suffered from respiratory problems, which left him dependent on a breathing machine. The prognosis was bleak. Doctors asked her for 'a name for his death certificate' in case he died en route to a hospital in Long Beach. Picking 'Jesse' on the spot was agony, she said. In the end, Darjean was the twin who survived. Shy as a child, he had grown up to be outgoing and witty, a person who loved to cook soul food and make dance videos with his sister and post them on Instagram. While his siblings all moved away as they got older, Darjean insisted on staying put. Compton was home, through and through, he used to tell his mother. He wasn't blind to the gang violence, but he came to know a different side of the city, one that represented Black joy and resilience — a side he saw captured in Kendrick Lamar's music video for the Grammy-winning 'Not Like Us.' When his niece ran for Miss Teen Compton, Darjean advocated on her behalf by taking out a full-page ad in the local newspaper that proclaimed: 'Compton is the best city on Earth.' But Darjean knew the pain of losing loved ones. His friend Montae Talbert was killed late one night in 2011 in a drive-by shooting outside an Inglewood liquor store. Talbert, known as M-Bone, was a member of the rap group Cali Swag District, the group behind the viral rap dance the 'Dougie.' Around the same time, the mother of Darjean's oldest daughter was gunned down in Compton. A few years later, another uncle, Terry Carter, a businessman who built classic lowrider cars and started a record label with Ice Cube, was struck and killed by a vehicle driven by rap impresario Marion 'Suge' Knight. After Darjean's funeral, which Lewis said drew more than 1,000 people, she returned to the scene of the shooting: Brazil Street, right off Wilmington Avenue, on a modest block of stucco and wood-frame homes. With the bravado of an angry, grieving mother, she began going door-to-door in her old neighborhood, seeking answers. She wanted to show anyone who was watching that she wouldn't be intimidated into silence. When she confronted one of Darjean's close childhood friends about what happened, he swore he didn't know anything. She didn't believe him. 'He just broke down crying. I can tell it was eating him up,' Lewis said. The L.A. County Sheriff's Department did not respond to multiple inquires about Darjean's case. On some level, Lewis understands the hesitancy. Fear of gang retaliation and distrust of law enforcement still hangs over the west Compton neighborhood. After raising her six children there, in 2006 she sold their family home of 50 years and moved to Palmdale because she didn't want her 'kids to become accustomed to death.' For her, she said, the final straw was the discovery of a body 'propped up' on her neighbor's fence. Like generations of Black women before her, Lewis is faced with enormous pressure to carry their family's burden. Possessing a superhuman-like will to overcome adversity is celebrated by society with terms such as 'Black Girl Magic' and 'Strong Black Woman,' said Keisha Bentley-Edwards, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University. But such unrealistic expectations not only strip Black women of their innocence from an early age, but also contribute to higher pregnancy-related death rates and other bad health outcomes, she said. 'A lot of times people expect Black women to take care of it,' Bentley-Edwards said in an interview. Instead of romanticizing the struggle, she said, there should be 'tangible support like housing or employment' and other resources. But experts say safety nets are at risk, particularly after the Trump administration in April terminated roughly $811 million in public safety grants for L.A. and other major cities. As a result, federal funds for victim services programs, which offer counseling and other resources, have been slashed. Lewis never thought she'd be in a position to need such help. 'The funny thing is, we're from Compton born and raised, but we were not a statistic until my son was murdered,' she said. 'My kids had a two-parent household. We both had jobs. We weren't doing welfare: I worked every day.' Months of waiting on an arrest in Darjean's death led Carter, his aunt, into a 'dark place.' She ended up taking a spiritual retreat into the mountains of Nigeria. She was still working through the feelings of anger and guilt when she learned her brother, Ware, had been fatally stabbed on July 5. She described the days and weeks that followed as a teary blur. Coming from a family of nurses taught her how to push aside her own grief and forge on, but she was left wondering how much more she could endure. Ware, who went by Duke, was his family's unofficial historian, setting out to map out their sprawling Portuguese and Creole roots and scouring the internet for long-lost relatives. He used to brag all the time about his daughter, who had graduated from nursing school and moved back to the L.A. area to work at a pediatric intensive care unit on the Westside. He used to joke that for all of his shortcomings as a father, he had at least gotten one thing right. In recent months, though, Ware's life had started to spiral. His diabetes had gotten worse, and a back injury left him unable to continue in his job as a long-haul truck driver. Relatives worried he was hiding a drug addiction from them. He had adopted a bull mastiff puppy named Nala. She used to follow him everywhere, usually trotting a few steps behind without a leash. Even when he was having trouble making ends meet, he always 'spoiled her,' his family said. For a few months, he lived out of a van one of his sisters bought for him. He then landed at a shelter, a hangar-style structure on the edge of Griffith Park. He and Nala were kicked out after a short time, but he still frequented the area, and it's where L.A. County authorities said the fight that ended in his killing began. Prosecutors said in a memo that surveillance video showed Ware and his dog chasing another man into a parking lot across the street from the shelter. The two men, the D.A.'s memo said, had been involved in an ongoing dispute, possibly over a woman. According to the memo, the man said he'd been carrying a knife because of a previous altercation in which Ware ordered his dog to attack. On the day of the stabbing, the man said, Ware had shown up with Nala at the shelter, looking for a confrontation. After the fight, responding officers found Ware suffering from a deep wound to his chest, Nala with several lacerations and the suspect hiding in a nearby porta-potty. His clothes had been torn off, and he was bleeding profusely from several severe dog bites, the memo said. Prosecutors said witnesses corroborated the man's story that Ware had been the aggressor, in addition to the video footage. Ware's family says that account contradicts what they heard from other residents, who claimed Ware was the one defending himself after the other man attacked him with a vodka bottle. In the meantime, they are working to secure Nala's release from the pound, where she has been nursing her injuries. On July 8, Carter organized a candlelight vigil for her brother outside the shelter where the killing happened. That morning, she said, she cried in the shower before steeling herself so she could run out to a Dollar Tree store to pick up some balloons. When she got to the vigil, Lewis made her way around, greeting the swarm of relatives holding homemade signs and chanting Ware's name. After a final prayer, the group released balloons, most of which floated upward with the evening's lazy breeze. Some, though, got caught in the branches of a large tree nearby. A smile finally crossed Carter's face as she pointed up to them. She took it as a sign from Ware, as though he was saying a last goodbye before he departed to heaven. 'He's trying to hang on,' she said.
