It has been 26 years since Selena Quintanilla was killed, but to her widower, Chris Pérez, it feels like yesterday. Now he is revisiting the trauma in the E! Entertainment docuseries "True Hollywood Story," which aired Monday.
"It was traumatic," Pérez said of Quintanilla's murder. The "Queen of Tejano music" died in March 1995, at just 23, after being shot by the founder of her fan club, Yolanda Saldívar, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Quintanilla reportedly had confronted her about embezzling money from the fan club.
"It was the hardest thing up until that point that I had ever had to go through. I miss her face, her laughter. She was just an amazing soul, an amazing spirit," Pérez continued, according to USA Today.
Many fans have held Quintanilla's family partly responsible for her death, but Pérez dismissed their accusations.
"I heard fans that are like, 'How could we let that happen?' Come on now. You think that I would let anything happen to her? Seriously? None of us thought that that was even a possibility," he said. "On the road, we had security so I never really feared for her safety, especially the way it happened to her. The fact that one of her friends did that, it's just unbelievable."
After her death, several albums of material were released and they all shot to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart. Among them was "Dreaming of You," which was still being recorded when Quintanilla died. Pérez was forced to finish the album without his wife and the process was extremely painful for him.
"Them pushing play for me to record the guitar tracks and to hear her voice coming out of the speakers in the studio, it was just painful to go in and have to create parts and make them sound a certain way, when really inside you're just dying," he said.
Looking back, Pérez added that Quintanilla taught him a lot during their time together.
"Just simple things," he explained. "I used to never tell people I love them or I miss them or just give them gifts just because. I learned those things and many, many other things from her."
On Wednesday, Quintanilla's family paid homage to the singer on social media. They shared a video of a glowing purple rose, which was her favorite flower, that fades to white on Instagram.
"Remembering Selena's life and legacy," the caption read.
Quintanilla's sister Suzette Arriaga also shared a photo of a rose on Instagram.
"Te amo y Te extrano ..." which means, "I love and miss you," she wrote in remembrance of the songstress.
Selena's brother, A.B. Quintanilla, posted a painting of the Grammy Award winner on Instagram.
"Miss ya Sister..." he wrote in the caption.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.