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 The Selena Trial The Houston Chronicles Files Home Selena Trial HCI’s Transcripts Selena Archive Links In life, she was the queen of Tejano music. In death, the 23-year-old singer is becoming a legend By RICK MITCHELL Copyright 1995 Houston Chronicle Abraham Quintanilla tried to remember his daughter as she’d looked the last time he saw her, just the day before. Selena Quintanilla-Perez was a full-grown woman of 23, a budding superstar who dreamed of raising a big family with her guitarist/husband once her music career settled down. She had a smile that could torch up the night, and a figure that turned heads wherever she went. But the only image that would come into focus in Abraham’s mind was that of an 8-year-old girl, standing nervously behind the microphone at the family restaurant in Lake Jackson. Even back then, Abraham had been convinced that Selena was destined to become a star. A former musician himself, he recognized the rare power and precise pitch in her voice. He had staked everything on her talent. From the band’s early years travelling the South Texas back roads in an old, beat-up van with a foldout bed in the back, to playing for 60,000 rodeo fans in the Astrodome, Selena had become the biggest star in Tejano music. She was a household name in Mexico and much of Latin America and was on the verge of an unprecedented breakthrough to the English-speaking pop audience. Now, through a tragic turn of events, the dream Abraham had shared with his wife, Marcela, and their three children had been shattered. That morning, Selena had failed to show up at Q Productions studio. It wasn’t unusual for her to be late. Perpetual tardiness was part of her charm. But on this particular Friday morning, it was surprising that Selena hadn’t at least called. She had a 10 a.m. appointment with her older brother, A.B., and sister, Suzette, to cut the vocal tracks for a demo tape of a new song A.B. had written. Selena also was midway through the recording of her first crossover album, with lyrics in English. The album was coming together slowly because of her hectic schedule. Eleven a.m. came and went, but there was still no word from Selena. A.B. phoned Christopher Perez, her husband, who said she’d left the house that morning at 9, while he was still in bed. Chris didn’t know where she’d gone, but he guessed that it had something to do with Yolanda Saldivar, the former president of Selena’s fan club. Abraham and A.B. went to lunch. They returned to the office just as the phone rang. Abraham’s sister-in-law screamed that Selena had been in an accident. Her father raced to the hospital emergency room at Memorial Medical Center. At the hospital, Abraham learned there had been no accident. Selena had been shot in the back and was listed as dead on arrival, a doctor said, but they’d managed to get her heart started again briefly and had given her a blood transfusion. Abraham, who’d followed his father into the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith some years earlier, immediately reacted to the transfusion. "No! She doesn’t want that," he yelled. Only then did the horrible finality of the doctor’s words begin to sink in. Selena was dead. To children growing up in barrios such as La Molina, the working-class Corpus Christi neighborhood where the Quintanillas lived, Selena was la reina del pueblo, a successful entertainer who’d never lost touch with her roots. But to Abraham, she was still his little girl. The one who had bounced up and down on his bed where he lay playing his old guitar and singing the Mexican standards and pop songs he loved. The beautiful little girl was gone. The Quintanilla family was not alone in its grief. As word of Selena’s violent death on March 31 spread north and south out of Corpus Christi, fans reacted first with disbelief, then with a massive, public display of adoration. Signs appeared in cars declaring "We love you, Selena!" or "Con tanto amor!" Churches hastily organized prayer vigils. Tejano radio stations played Selena’s music around the clock. Record stores sold out of her albums. On the weekend following her death, thousands of mourners from Texas, Mexico and points farther made the pilgrimage to Corpus Christi to pay their last respects. That Sunday, they filed into the Corpus Christi Convention Center, where Selena’s body lay in a black coffin surrounded by white roses. After a rumor circulated that the casket was empty, the family agreed to open it to confirm that the horrible news was true. The Days Inn motel where Selena was shot became a shrine to her memory, with messages from fans scrawled on the walls of the room where the singer had met with her accused killer, Saldivar, just before her death. Saldivar was suspected of embezzling money from Selena’s fan club. Selena had gone to the hotel alone, at Saldivar’s request, hoping to obtain documentation that the accusations were untrue. Flowers and cards covered the fence surrounding the house where Selena and Chris lived. Votive candles lined the driveway. Outside the clothing boutiques Selena operated in Corpus and San Antonio, hawkers sold souvenir T-shirts and ball caps bearing her image. Following Selena’s burial in a private ceremony on April 3, her Seaside Memorial Park gravesite also became a shrine. Every evening, the cemetery had to cart away truckloads of cards and flowers. Abraham expressed surprise and gratitude at the outpouring that followed his daughter’s death. He speculated that Selena’s appeal went deeper than the music. "I knew that a lot of people cared for Selena," he said. "I could see it in their faces everywhere we played. But I’m really surprised by the magnitude of this thing. I think people are tired of the wickedness of this system. She was a good person, a clean person with morals. They could see that. And there’s not too much of that left in this world." The week after Selena was killed, People magazine put her on the cover in Texas and other Southwestern states. When the issue instantly sold out at newsstands, the magazine decided to do a commemorative issue in Selena’s honoronly the third such tribute in the publication’s history. Yet, even as Selena’s Spanish albums topped the Latin charts and entered the mainstream pop charts in the weeks after her death, many were still wondering how the Texas singer could have gained such a large and devoted following. While shock jock Howard Stern joked about the tragedy, others simply asked, "Who’s Selena?" Selena was Tejano music’s brightest hope for the future. Had she lived, she might well have been the first international superstar to come out of the Tejano market. A vivacious entertainer who could sing any style of music, her potential was unlimited. Even after her death, Selena could become the first Tejano artist to break through to the mainstream pop market. In July, EMI Records will release an album including five English tracks, plus remixed and re-recorded versions of her biggest Spanish hits. "We’re going to do our best to give her that English hit she wanted so badly," says EMI vice president Nancy Brennan. The third child of Abraham and Marcela Quintanilla, Selena was born on April 16, 1971, at the Community Hospital of Brazosport. The family lived in nearby Lake Jackson, where Abraham was employed by Dow Chemical Co. as a shipping clerk. To Abraham, it seemed as if Selena was born happy. "She was just full of life," he says. "She was always joking and clowning around." To their neighbors in Lake Jackson, 55 miles south of Houston, the Quintanillas looked like a loving, patriarchal family. "They were a very close-knit family," says Carmen Read, who lived with her husband, Ed, and their two sons around the corner from the Quintanillas’ house on Caladium Street. "I probably fussed at every other kid in the neighborhood, but I don’t think I ever fussed at those kids. They were so well-behaved." A.B. (short for Abraham Quintanilla III) was eight years older than Selena; Suzette was four...