Before Her Time by Bill Hewitt

HOUR AFTER HOUR THEY filed past the sturdy steel casket surrounded with thousands of
long-stemmed white roses. In life, the 23-year-old pop phenomenon known as Selena, the
reigning queen of Tex-Mex music, had enchanted fans with her danceable tunes. Now her
tragic and bizarre murder had filled them with an almost inexpressible grief. As many as
50,000 mourners, some from as far away as California, Canada and Guatemala, converged
on Bayfront Plaza Convention Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, last week to pay their final
respects. Their sense of lossand denialwas overwhelming. At one point a rumor swept
the crowd that Selena Quintanilla-Prez was still alive and that her coffin was empty. Finally,
her family ordered the coffin opened briefly to confirm the unacceptable truth. And there she
lay, her lips and long nails done in blood red, wearing a slinky purple gown.
The tragedy had begun to unfold just two days before, when, on the morning of March 31,
Selena had gone to a room in the Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi to confront the former
president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldvar, 34. Saldvar, suspected by Selena and her
family of embezzling funds, was on the verge of being fired, and she knew it. Soon after
Selena arrived, say police, Saldvar shot her once in the back with a 38-caliber revolver. The
singer staggered to the motel lobby for help before collapsing and being rushed to a
hospital. Saldvar was quickly cornered in the motel parking lot and for nearly 10 hours kept
SWAT teams at bay as she sat in a pickup truck with a gun to her head, threatening suicide.
According to Corpus Christi Assistant Police Chief Ken Bung, Saldvar was expressing
remorse all through the incident. Finally, police managed to coax her out of the truck and
put her under arrest.
For Selenas family, who knew Saldvar well, the rush of events had a surreal quality. The
ultimate sorrow a human can feel is when someone dies, her father, Abraham Quintanilla
Jr., told PEOPLE. I felt like this was all a dream.
For Latin music enthusiasts, the most apt comparison was with the death of John Lennon.
Selena was vastly talented, deeply adored. This was not some sexy babe groomed by a
record company, says author Enrique Fernandez, one of the nations most respected critics
of Latin music. Well never be sure of how far she could have gone. Though not yet widely
known outside the Hispanic community, Selena was the undisputed superstar of Tejano
music, a lively, Spanish-language blend of Tex-Mex rhythms, pop-style tunes and German
polka that is hugely popular in Mexico and the Southwest. During the past several years,
she had played live concerts to audiences of up to 80,000.

In 1994 she won a Grammy for best Mexican-American album, Selena Live. Touted by
Latino critics as the next Madonna, she seemed on the verge of crossing over into
mainstream stardom. Just this month she was scheduled to complete her debut Englishlanguage album, for which she had already recorded three songs. And she appears in the
new Johnny Depp movie Don Juan DeMarco as a mariachi singer. But what Selenas core
fans found as endearing as her talent was her utter lack of pretension. As one disc jockey
told a group of 2,000 mourners at an impromptu memorial service in Corpus Christi, She
was from the barrio. She still ate tortillas and frijoles.
In fact, her background was not quite so simple. Selena was born in Lake Jackson, Texas, a
blue-collar town outside Houston, the youngest of three children of Abraham Quintanilia Jr.,
now 55, and his wife, Marcela, 50. Quintanilla had a comfortable job as a shipping clerk at
Dow Chemical, but his real passion was music. In his youth he had been a vocalist with a
popular South Texas band called Los Dinos (slang for the Boys). When Selena first sang
at the age of 6, he immediately recognized her talent. Her timing, her pitch were perfect,
he says. I could see it from day one. She loved all music, everything from Little Anthony
and the Imperials to country and western to Michael Jackson. For the time being, though,
she confined herself to informal jam sessions with her brother Abraham III, now 31, and her
sister Suzette, 27.
Then the family had some bad luck. In 1980, Quintanilla quit his job at Dow to open his own
Tex-Mex restaurant in Lake Jackson, where his three childrenAbraham III on bass,
Suzette on drums and Selena singingoften performed. A year later the restaurant went
under, a victim of the recession caused by the Texas oil bust. Suddenly the Quintanillas had
lost their home, many of their possessions and, above all, their livelihood. Thats when we
began our musical career, recalled Selena in 1992. We had no alternative. And so the
band, known as Selena y Los Dinos, began touring all over the back country of South
Texas, playing everywhere from weddings to honky-tonks. If we got 10 people in one place,
that was great, said Selena, who was 9 when she hit the road. We ate a lot of hamburgers
and shared everything.
They traveled to gigs in the banged-up family van, with only one concession to comforta
foldout bed in the back. An excellent student, Selena stopped going to school in eighth
grade, though later she did earn a high school equivalency diploma through a
correspondence course. Looking back on those hard times, she professed not to mind. I
lost a lot of my teenage period, she admitted. But I got a lot out of it too. I was more
mature.

Slowly, steadily, she and the band were also becoming more successful, graduating to
ballrooms and cutting nearly a dozen albums for a small regional label. Their break came in
1987 when 15-year-old Selena won the Tejano Music Awards for female vocalist and
performer of the year. There followed six increasingly successful albums, topped by Amor
Prohibido (Forbidden Love) in 1994, which had been nominated for a Grammy and sold
more than 500,000 copies.
The acclaim was not without its ironies. The first was the fact that Selena, the new princess
of Latin pop, could barely speak Spanish. For each of her songs, most written by brother
Abraham III, she learned the lyrics phonetically. It wasnt until the early 1990s that she even
started taking Spanish lessons, which her father believed were necessary to help her
promote her albums on Spanish-language radio and in interviews. Even after several years
of practice, though, she still had trouble trilling her rs and spoke English with a classic
Texas twang.
Her father, who was her manager, had encouraged Selena to learn Spanish. But he didnt
care for Selenas evolving stage presence, which relied more and more on sexuality.
Abraham Jr., a Jehovahs Witness, didnt like seeing his daughter dancing onstage in heavy
makeup and bare-midriff costumes, but Selena overruled his objections. I love shiny things
and I love clothing, she said.
Unknown to her fans, she also loved Chris Prez, now 25, the bands guitar player, whom
she married in 1992. Quintanilla wanted to hush up the wedding, fearful that it might
undermine her youthful image. Instead, her popularity only grew, fueled not only by her
talent but also by her rapport with ordinary people. Though she and her family came to be
worth an estimated $5 million, all but Suzette continued to live in three adjoining houses in
the same lower-middle-class neighborhood of Corpus Christi to which they had moved in
1981. One of the few signs of affluence that Selena allowed herself was the red Porsche
Carerra she kept parked in the driveway.
The person responsible for helping to nurture that image was Yolanda Saldvar. In 1991,
Saldvar had approached Quintanilla about forming a fan club for Selena. In the past the
family had resisted similar overtures from others if only because they wanted to keep a tight
rein on such things. In some respects the short, heavy-set Saldvar seemed an unlikely
candidate to take on the task. Born to a large family, Saldvar was a loner who lived in a
modest house near San Antonio, where she worked as a registered nurse at two nearby
hospitals.
Never married, she had no children of her own but took custody of three of her brothers
children after he abandoned them. She never talked about having any boyfriends, says

Esmeralda Garza, the former secretary of the Selena Fan Club. She never had time. Other
than the fact that she was the aunt of a childhood friend of Selenas, no one in the singers
family knew much about her. Yet her enthusiasm won over the Quintanillas, and in 1991 she
was given the unpaid job of founding the fan club.
In an interview shortly after Saldvar was hired, Selena raved about her. Shes doing
exceptionally well, she said. Fan clubs can ruin you if people get upset and turned off by
them. But shes doing really good. Selena showed her gratitude by showering Saldvar with
gifts. Yolanda was crazy about spotted cows, says Garza. So Selena bought an $800 rug
with a cow on it. She bought her a cow phone in Los Angeles. They really splurged on her.
For her part, Saldvar seemed utterly devoted to Selena, almost to a fault. According to one
acquaintance, she turned her home into a virtual shrine that included, among other things, a
life-size cardboard Selena cutout over which Saldvar draped backstage passes from her
concerts.
The two soon became close friends. Then eight months ago, Selena promoted Saldvar to a
paid position, putting her in charge of the singers new business venture, Selena Etc. Inc.
The company had opened one shop in Corpus Christi last year and another in San Antonio
earlier this year. In addition to selling Selenas signature line of fashions and jewelry, the
shops feature salons for hairstyling and manicures. Selena Etc. was also involved in
merchandising its products to other stores. Saldvar worked hard, but it wasnt long before
she began to have problems with other employees. Designer Martin Gomez had been
brought in to help produce the fashion lines. But, says Gomez, 30, from the beginning there
was such tension between Yolanda and myself. She was mean, she was manipulative.
Finally last January, Gomez quit in exasperation. I told Selena I was scared of Yolanda, he
says. She wouldnt let me talk to Selena anymore. She was very possessive.
Evidently out of loyalty, Selena did nothing. Then two months ago, her father began
receiving calls from some of Selenas fans. They complained that they had sent in their $22
membership fee to the fan club of some 2,000 members but hadnt received any of the
promised premiums, such as T-shirts and cassettes. Quintanilla confronted Saldvar about
the matter, but she insisted nothing was wrong. She was just as cool as a cucumber, he
says.
Then about three weeks ago, Selena was told by several employees of her San Antonio
salon that Saldvar appeared to be taking money from the business. The two had a heated
confrontation during which Saldvar denied any wrongdoing. She claimed she had
documents that would prove her innocence, but she stalled when she was asked to produce
them. Finally, at the end of March, she called Selena to say she had the papers. On Thurs.,

March 30, Saldvar phoned Selena to tell her she was staying in a Days Inn. She wanted the
singer to come to the motelaloneto discuss the matter. Instead, Selena went with her
husband, Chris; they returned home several hours later, apparently after Saldvar claimed
she didnt have the needed documents after all.
What happened the next day is unclear. Selena left home at 9 a.m. that Fri., March 31, and
at some point dropped by the Days Inn again. At 11:50 police received a 911 call reporting a
shooting at the motel. Selena was rushed to the hospital, which alerted her father. Doctors
reportedly gave her five pints of blood over the objections of Quintanilla who insisted that
such procedures violated the principles of his daughters religion. Selena died an hour later.
Quintanilla is convinced that Saldvar deliberately plotted to kill Selena. According to the
Bexar County sheriffs office, Saldvar, who is being held on $100,000 bond, bought the
murder weapon in San Antonio on March 13, just as the Quintanillas were raising questions
about her activities. I know Selena was set up. This was premeditated, says Selenas
father, Abraham Jr. Saldvar got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
But others arent so sure that Saldvar was worried about losing her job or her income.
Esmeralda Garza and her husband, Ernest, are convinced that Saldvars motive was less
obviousand perhaps more pathetic. Saldvar could have been fired by Selena and gone
and gotten her old job back. She was doing well as a nurse, says Esmeralda. She
probably couldnt accept the fact that she wasnt going to be around Selena anymore.