Memo Record Shop owner Guillermo Villarreal met Selena several times and still mourns her death: “She was beautiful. She was very nice.”
HOUSTON — Houston residents and business owners who are fans of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez’s music said they were thrilled that the singer’s murderer will remain behind bars.
There is no shortage of Selena’s music inside Memo Record Shop in Houston’s East End.
Records and CDs from the “Queen of Tejano Music” lines the shelves. And according to owner Guillermo Villarreal, they are still flying off the shelves – nearly 30 years after Selena’s death.
“Every day, we sell records of Selena,” Villarreal said.
Villarreal said he had the opportunity to meet Selena several times. Photos of some of their encounters hang on the walls inside his record shop. Villarreal described Selena as humble and grounded, someone who never let the fame get to her.
“She was beautiful. She was very nice,” Villarreal said.
On Thursday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles announced that Selena’s killer, Yolanda Saldívar, was denied parole. She is currently serving a life sentence at a prison in Gatesville, Texas after shooting Selena in the back at the Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi on March 31, 1995. A three-person panel made the decision due to the nature of Saldívar’s crime.
According to the parole decision posted on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website, “the instant offense has 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.”
Villarreal said he is happy to hear Saldívar was not granted parole and will stay in prison.
“I prefer her to stay in there,” Villarreal said. “I don’t think the lady is ever going to be out. Once, because the way they killed Selena. The second one, the people outside. If she comes out, I don’t know what’s going to happen to her.”
Houston Historical Tours owner Keith Rosen, who offers three Selena-related tours, agreed that Saldívar’s release would create a huge public outcry.
“From the comments I’ve heard from people on tours, and in areas I have visited associated with Selena, she’s probably safer and has a longer life expectancy if she stays in prison. There’s such hatred for her that I don’t know how long she’ll live once, if and when she is set free,” Rosen said.
Rosen’s tours relating to Selena include a tour of significant places in Selena’s early life around the Lake Jackson area, a day tour of San Antonio, as well as an overnight trip to Corpus Christi. He added that the tours are so popular, even three decades after Selena’s death, that some stops have been added in recent years.
“What was supposed to be about a 12-hour tour ended up being about a 16-hour tour,” Rosen said. “She would have been a bigger superstar than she is or is remembered as, if she had had the time to expand her repertoire of songs.”
Saldívar’s next parole review date will be in March of 2030.