Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Yolanda Saldivar gets close to latin pop star Selena Quintanilla, and she eventually murders her.

So this woman is about to assassinate a famous pop star. So let's call her Yo. And Yo's around 30 years old. She's living in Texas. And one night in the early 90s, she's at a concert. And there's this local act on stage. And Yo is blown away by the singer. She's like, this woman is amazing.

I love her. I am such a huge fan. Not only that, Yo goes home and she starts thinking about her all the time. Like she wants to be best friends with this singer and be close to her. So she decides to start a fan club, like an official fan club. And she contacts the singer's manager, who's also the singer's dad. So we'll just call him dad. So Yo reaches out to Dad and she's like, do you mind if I start a fan club?

Dad's like, eh, I don't know. We don't really have the time or the budget to run a fan club. And Yo's like, no, no, I'll do it all for free. You don't have to pay me. And Dad is still like, nah. But Yo isn't going to give up. She keeps calling Dad over and over again. She really wants to be close to the singer.

And so finally, after about 15 phone calls, Dad finally agrees to let her start an official fan club. So Yo starts working on this out of her home, and she's running this fan club, and she's going to concerts, and she's signing people up, and the fans pay a membership fee, and Yo will then send them posters and t-shirts and stuff like that, and she legitimately does a good job running this club. In fact, she does such a good job that management eventually lets her meet this singer herself in person. And that singer's name is Selena. And so over time, as the years pass, Yo starts to get in good with Selena.

She's helping her out with things and she's starting to get close to her. And later, they even make her an employee of the business and they start paying her. And pretty soon she's scheduling appointments for Selena and basically running her life. While Selena, her star is rising fast, and she's getting more and more famous. And as a side hustle, she opens two clothing boutiques. And Yo is doing such a good job assisting Selena. They promote her and they have her start managing these boutiques. And so here she is running all this stuff for Selena, and she's around her all the time,

and Yo knows soon enough she'll finally be her close friend. Until. At some point, Yo, screws everything up. She starts skimming money from the business. I mean, she's managing the finances for the clothing boutiques, and she's still managing the finances for the fan club, and she starts writing checks to herself and making up fake invoices. So over time, the clothing boutiques start losing money. Plus, while she's scamming all this money, she's still hyper-focused on trying to get Selena to be close to her. Like one time she collects $3,000 from employees,

of the company to buy Selena a gift, like a gift from all the employees. And they collectively decide to buy Selena a ring with diamonds. And the diamonds are in like an egg shaped. Looks like this. Because Selena is a big fan of Fabrizegé eggs. And so Yo takes this $3,000 from the employees and she pockets it. And then she goes out and buys the ring with Selena's company credit card. Not only that, she then gives the ring to Selena and pretends it's not a gift

from all the employees, but that it's a gift only from her. And of course, Selena loves the ring, and she's so grateful for it. Here's a photo of her actually wearing it, and you can see it on her hand here. And she totally thinks, yo, got it for her alone, and she's like, yo, we're going to be best friends for life. And so, yo, finally has what she wants. This woman, she's been obsessing over for years, is now her close friend. Meanwhile, dad, who's still managing Selena and the whole business,

he notices that there's all this money missing from the boutiques and from the fan club. And he starts looking at the books, and he's like, hey, these numbers aren't adding up. And so he investigates, and he discovers all those checks Yo was writing to herself and a bunch of other evidence, and he's like, this asshole is stealing from us. And so, bam, he relieves her of her duties with the company. And this is where everything's so. starts to go wrong. Because this is when Yo goes out and buys a pew-poo. A few months later, tax season rolls around. And Yo, who was Selena's assistant and managed to finances for two of

her business entities for her, has some financial documents that Selena needs to get from her. And Yo keeps saying that she'll hand over these documents, but she doesn't. She's always making up excuses as to why she can't. Then, right before taxes are due, Selena finally gets her on the phone, And she's like, give me my tax documents. And Yo is like, okay, fine, I'm over at this motel. You can come here and pick them up. And so Selena goes to this motel and she goes up to the room and Yo gives her a stack of documents. The next morning, Selena is looking through all that paperwork.

And she realizes that the specific tax papers she needs still aren't in this stack. Yo never actually gave them to her. So she gets on the phone with her again. And instead of talking about tax papers, Yo starts making more excuses, talking about how she had been essayed recently on a trip to Mexico, and that she can't give her the tax documents because she really needs to go to the hospital and get herself checked out because she's bleeding from all the essay. And so Selena, being the nice person that she is, she wants to help,

and she drives over to the motel to pick her up and take her to the hospital. And there, at the hospital, a doctor examines Yo and finds no indication that she was ever essayed. suggesting that she made it all up and that it's just another elaborate excuse to not hand over those tax documents. And Selena learns about this and she is not happy. So she drives yo back to the motel and she goes inside the room with her and she's like, I need those financial papers now. Stop bullshitting. And yo, it's just not going to hand them over.

And so they start arguing and Selena gets really mad, like really mad and she's had enough. And so she takes off that, egg-shaped ring that Yo had given her, the ring that symbolized them being friends for life. And this absolutely destroys Yo. I mean, how could she do this to her? This friendship was everything she had worked for. And so she pulls out that pew-poo that she had bought before, and she points it right at Selena. And Selena's like, oh shit, and she tries to run away, and then blam, Yo shoots her right in the back shoulder. But Selena just keeps running. out of the motel room and outside, while Yo continues chasing her, screaming, bitch,

like she's gonna shoot her again. And so Selena runs into the lobby of the motel, and she tells him, I've been shot, and she falls to the floor. Minutes later, she's in an ambulance on her way to the hospital. Meanwhile, police, they show up to the motel, and they're now looking for Yo. So they search around and they eventually find her in the parking lot sitting in her red pickup truck. And police are like, come out with your hands up, or whatever, And yo, it's like, nah, I'm just going to unalive myself. And so this turns into a whole standoff. And then the SWAT team shows up and they're all trying to negotiate with her,

trying to get her to not unalive herself. And as all this is going on, Selena, who's at the hospital in critical condition, she unfortunately passes away. She was only 23 years old. Thank you, Ben. That's right. We are standing by live in Corpus Christi right across the street from the days in where this shooting did occur earlier today.

And nine hours go by. And it's nighttime now. And Yo is still in her truck in the motel parking lot in a standoff surrounded by police. Because she still got that pu-poo and she's still threatening to unalive herself. Now eventually she does give up

and police swoop in and bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And she ends up going to trial and she's found guilty and she gets sentenced to life in prison. It's a sad one.