Thirty years after Selena Quintanilla’s death, a recently released autopsy report revealed new details about her murder.
In March 1995, the 23-year-old Tejano singer was gunned down inside a motel room in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldívar, who had been accused of embezzling money from Quintanilla.
The autopsy report, obtained by Us Weekly, was carried out three hours after Quintanilla’s death. Her death, which had been ruled a homicide by the coroner’s report, was caused by a bullet wound that had entered through her shoulder.
The bullet’s path continued through her ribs until it eventually punctured her chest and exited her body from her upper chest. The autopsy report shows that the gunshot wound hit the subclavian artery — a major blood vessel that brings blood to the arms, neck and head.
Coroner Lloyd White wrote in the report that her death was “a result of an exsanguinating internal and external hemorrhage, in other words massive bleeding, due to a perforating gunshot wound of the [chest].” It also noted that her clothing was covered in blood.
After Saldívar shot Quintanilla, she engaged in a 10-hour standoff with law enforcement, sitting in her vehicle in the motel’s parking lot and threatening to take her own life. She was later charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty. During the trial, Saldívar claimed that the shooting was accidental, but she was eventually found guilty in October 1995.
Saldívar was sentenced to life in prison, with the potential of parole. The 65-year-old applied for parole last December and was denied in March. Her case will be eligible for review again in 2030.
In the 30 years since Quintanilla’s death, she’s become a mainstay in pop culture. From the posthumous success of “Dreaming of You,” her first album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, to being played on-screen by Jennifer Lopez in the 1997 biopic “Selena,” the singer, dubbed the Queen of Tejano music, continues to leave her mark on the rising generation of Latino artists.
Recently, “Selena Y Los Dinos” a new documentary, was released on Netflix. It features never-before-seen footage filmed by her sister Suzette Quintanilla and closely documents her rise to fame.
“I want to leave a nugget of love for the future generation coming up, that’s embracing Selena and our music,” said Suzette Quintanilla, earlier this year at the documentary’s Sundance premiere. “We are 30 years without Selena, but her legacy is stronger than ever.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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