The woman convicted of killing Tejano music legend Selena Quintanilla-Perez has been denied parole after spending decades behind bars for fatally shooting the young singer at a Texas motel in 1995, the state’s parole board announced Thursday.

Yolanda Saldívar will continue serving a life sentence at a prison in Gatesville, Texas, after a three-member panel of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to not release her. In a statement explaining the denial, the board said the panel found that Saldívar continues to pose a threat to public safety and that the nature of the crime indicated “a conscious disregard for the lives, safety or property of others.”

Her case will be eligible to be reviewed again for parole in 2030.

The singer known to her fans as simply Selena was one of the first Mexican Americans to make it into the mainstream music scene and was on the verge of crossing over into the English-language pop market when she was killed.

The murder

Saldívar founded Selena’s fan club and had been the manager of the singer’s clothing boutiques, Selena Etc., until she was fired in early March 1995 after money was discovered missing.

Selena, a Corpus Christi native, was 23 years old when she was shot in the back with a .38-caliber revolver at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi on March 31, 1995. She was able to run to the motel lobby, where she collapsed, and she was pronounced dead at a hospital an hour later.

Motel employees testified that Selena named “Yolanda” in “Room 158” as her attacker.

“I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to kill anybody,” a sobbing Saldívar said during a nine-hour standoff with police. She told police she had bought the .38-caliber revolver to kill herself.

More than 50,000 people lined up to view Selena’s body the day before she was laid to rest in Seaside Memorial Park on April 3, 1995, just 13 days before her 24th birthday.

Saldívar’s trial was moved to Houston because of the publicity surrounding the case. Saldívar testified that she had intended to kill herself during the confrontation with Selena but that the gun misfired.

On Oct. 23, 1995, a jury in Houston convicted Saldívar of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.

While in prison, Saldívar — a former nurse — obtained her paralegal and associate degree in criminal justice and has filed several civil rights complaints alleging mistreatment by the state’s prison system, according to court records. She also helped other inmates to file petitions.

In 1999, the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin turned down Saldívar’s first plea for a new trial. In 2000, her lawyer Bill Berchelmann asked the state to revisit the trial.

He argued that prosecutors wrongly dismissed potential jurors because of race, did not disclose the criminal record of a witness and made improper comments in court. He said police also violated Saldívar’s rights by interrogating her after she asked for an attorney.

In 2009, Saldívar lost an appeal because it was filed in Nueces County, where Quintanilla-Pérez died, not Harris County, where she was tried and convicted.

In court documents filed in 2016, Saldívar said she was being held in protective custody — meaning she was segregated from other inmates — because prison officials were concerned for her safety because of the “high profile” nature of her case.

Who was Selena Quintanilla-Pérez?

Born in 1971, Quintanilla-Pérez demonstrated an incredible vocal gift in childhood, fronting Selena y Los Dinos with her siblings A.B. and Suzette Quintanilla.

Her superstardom arrived in the early 1990s, with her unique blend of Tejano, pop, cumbia and other musical styles manifesting in huge hits like “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” “Como la Flor” and “Amor Prohibido.”

Known the world over as The Queen of Tejano, or Selena, she broke barriers for women in Latin music. She opened the floodgates for a generation of contemporary artists of Latin descent who would go on to enjoy huge popularity with mainstream American audiences.

She won her first Grammy in 1994 for best Mexican/Mexican-American album for “Live,” becoming the first female Tejano artist to win the category. She was just 23 when she was killed, but her legacy endures.

Her posthumous English-language crossover album released a few months after her death, “Dreaming of You,” topped the Billboard 200, featuring hits including “I Could Fall in Love” and “Dreaming of You.”

In 1997, a biographical film about her life, “Selena,” would become a classic, further launching the career of lead Jennifer Lopez.

In 2017, she received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

At the time, according to a Hollywood Chamber of Commerce spokesperson, the crowd was the largest-ever for a Walk of Fame ceremony, breaking a 1998 record set by onlookers at the unveiling of the star for Mexican singer Vicente Fernández

In 2021, she received a posthumous lifetime achievement award from the Grammys.