Eight months after his mother was shot to death, Qaw’mane Wilson rolled up to a Chase bank in Chicago in his Ford Mustang.
Wearing a leopard-print jacket, the aspiring rapper known as “Young QC” sauntered out of the car, customized with gull-wing doors, and explained to the video camera that he was about to withdraw thousands of dollars from his bank account. It was “for the fans,” he said. And soon, in the video, he was throwing wads of cash into the air, to dozens of screaming people.
“[I don’t know] who he is, but he walked us around the mall and gave us money,” one alleged fan wrote on Twitter in 2013, in a post archived by DNAinfo Chicago.
That was just one of the many ways Wilson spent the $90,000 he inherited from his mother after her murder, according to Cook County prosecutors. He photographed himself with stacks of bills at a Burberry store, at a massage parlor, at home on the carpet, seeming to revel in his newfound wealth.
Advertisem*nt
And he was all too eager to spend the money, prosecutors say, because killing his mom was all his idea.
On Friday, the 30-year-old was sentenced to 99 years in prison after authorities uncovered his plot to hire a hit man to murder his mom, Yolanda Holmes, in 2012 so he could inherit her wealth — all of which was carried out, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The hit man, Eugene Spencer, was sentenced to 100 years. Both he and Wilson were convicted of first-degree murder last March. A getaway driver, Loriana Johnson, was previously sentenced to 14 years for her role, prison records show.
“The word is ‘matricide,’ meaning murder of one’s own mother,” Cook County Judge Stanley Sacks said from the bench on Friday, the Sun-Times reported. “Whatever he wanted, his mother gave to him. A car. A job. One could say he was spoiled. She gave Qaw’mane life, and it was his choice to take it way from her.”
Advertisem*nt
Asked whether he had anything to say for himself, Wilson said, “I just want to say, nobody loved my mother more than me,” he said, according to the Sun-Times. “She was all I had. That’s it.”
In a statement to The Washington Post on Monday, Wilson’s defense attorney, Stephen L. Richards, said Wilson is planning to appeal. He argues that Sacks, “as an unelected associate judge,” should have recused himself from the case, among other things.
“We also believe that the interrogation of Mr. Wilson was coercive and illegal,” Richards said.
Wilson’s arrest in 2013 in his own mother’s killing astounded those close to her. Holmes, 45, was a beloved local beauty shop owner on the North Side of Chicago. Wilson, her only child, had her name tattooed on his shoulder. She doted on him, buying him a Camaro and designer clothes, DNAinfo Chicago reported, and did whatever she could to keep him away from gangs so he wouldn’t follow in his father’s footsteps. Wilson’s father, Jeffrey Todd Wilson, was a West Side gang leader convicted of murder in 1993, for which he is serving a life sentence, DNAinfo reported.
Advertisem*nt
“I’m floored because, out of everyone, I thought he is the last one who would do it to his own mother,” Ayonna Anderson, Holmes’s close friend who worked at her salon, told the Chicago Tribune in 2013. “I don’t know if it got to the point he loved money more than his mother.”
At the time of his arrest, authorities said Wilson admitted to police that he plotted against his mom for “financial gain,” but claimed he never intended for her to die. “It was supposed to be a robbery,” he told detectives, the Sun-Times reported.
But the hit man, Spencer, told investigators that Wilson ordered him to kill her and offered $3,500 for the job. In the early morning hours of Sept. 2, 2012, Spencer broke into Holmes’s apartment on the North Side — only to find her sleeping alongside her boyfriend, Curtis Wyatt. Spencer fatally shot and stabbed Holmes, before Wyatt fought him out of the apartment, the Sun-Times reported. Wyatt later identified Spencer as the gunman.
Advertisem*nt
Spencer said Wilson ultimately paid him $70.
Wilson, the sole beneficiary of Holmes’s life insurance policies, inherited more than $90,000 in savings and the life insurance, police said.
He started spending it quickly.
He showed off puppies he purchased for $1,500, a new collection of Air Jordans, as well as guns, marijuana and gold chains, DNAinfo Chicago reported. He filmed a music video for a rap song, which he uploaded to his 108,000 YouTube subscribers. He started a new YouTube show called “The Nick Story,” described as a “family drama.” And in videos and selfies, he flaunted the new Mustang and flashy watches. He withdrew nearly $70,000 from his mother’s accounts in the months after her death, the Sun-Times reported.
“He gained access to her wealth and whatever she had,” Tia Bouvi’a, who also worked with Holmes at the salon, told DNAinfo. “You just don’t start to splurge immediately after your mother was murdered.”
Advertisem*nt
Publicly, Young QC spoke at least once about his mother’s death before his arrest. He showed up at a funeral for a teenager who was shot to death in 2013.
“My mother, she was a neighborhood woman,” he told WGN. “A guy entered our home and murdered her, just to steal.”
During his trial in 2019, prosecutors played the video of Wilson literally throwing away his mother’s money after he made the withdrawal from the bank, and another video of him flexing in a mirror wearing a gold chain and fanning $100 bills, the Sun-Times reported.
“I don’t play no games, man. I do this for real. I don’t got no problem with giving back,” he said just before throwing his mom’s money to strangers.
Wilson’s defense attorney had argued the videos were unfair, proving nothing about his motive while simply showing “that he’s a bad person.” He did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Sunday.
The jury deliberated for just two hours before convicting him, the Sun-Times reported.
Leaving the courtroom after his conviction, Holmes’s aunt, Sondra Jackson, told the newspaper, “After all this, we still don’t understand why he did it."
