Aspiring rapper gets 99 years in prison for paying friend to kill mother; gunman gets 100

Qaw’mane Wilson plotted to have his mother killed and ended up spending his inheritance on cars and trying to set up a music career.

SHARE Aspiring rapper gets 99 years in prison for paying friend to kill mother; gunman gets 100
Qaw’mane Wilson, 30, was sentenced Friday to 100 years in prison for hiring a friend to kill his mother, successful Uptown salon owner Yolanda Holmes.

Qaw’mane Wilson, 30, was sentenced Friday to 99 years in prison for hiring a friend to kill his mother, successful Uptown salon owner Yolanda Holmes.

Sun-Times Media

Yolanda Holmes doted on her son, Qaw’mane Wilson, an only child she lavished with fancy clothes, jewelry and a Mustang.

At 23, the aspiring rapper who called himself “Young QC” wanted more, and hired a hitman to kill his mother, Cook County Judge Stanley Sacks said Friday, as he sentenced Wilson to 99 years in prison.

The gunman, Eugene Spencer, was sentenced to 100 years.

“The word is ‘matricide,’ meaning murder of one’s own mother,” Sacks said as he stared down from the bench at Wilson and Spencer.

“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.”

Spencer rode with Wilson’s girlfriend to Holmes’ apartment in Uptown in 2012, and shot Holmes as she slept in her bed, then struggled with Holmes boyfriend, knocking him unconscious, then returning to stab Holmes after a phone conversation with Wilson, who told him to “make sure the bitch is dead.”

Wilson later collected the money in his mother’s bank accounts, and in the months after her death used the cash to customize the Mustang she had given him with gull-wing doors.

On one occasion, he withdrew thousands of dollars from a bank and tossed wads of cash to a crowd of people he said were fans of his rap music — capturing the moments in a YouTube video that was played for the jury.

His long dreadlocks pulled back into a topknot Friday, Wilson, now 30, slouched in his chair and merely nodded when Sacks announced the sentence. When asked if he had anything to say before Sacks made his ruling, Wilson was brief.

“I just want to say, nobody loved my mother more than me,” he said. “She was all I had. That’s it.”

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