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Ever since Marie Holmes won the Powerball in February 2015, everyone has had a lot to say about the ways in which she’s chosen to spend her money. While she’s done some good in her community, including investing almost $10 million to help repair her church and aid struggling single moms who go to it, she’s also spent a grip bailing a one Lamarr McDow out of jail. After receiving her lump sum of $88 million, Holmes paid the $3 million in bail to free the father of her youngest child (she has four altogether), who had been sitting in jail after being arrested in November 2014 on heroin trafficking charges. Since then, she’s bailed him out two more times, tried to defend her choices on social media, and received quite the side-eye from the public.
But according to McDow (the individual who deserves the sharpest of side-eyes), she’s just “standing by her man.”
In his first interview, Lamarr McDow spoke to The Daily Mail about his legal troubles, Holmes’s decision to come to his rescue at every expensive turn, and why he thinks the police are just out for him.
He’s come a long way, financially that is, since being arrested in 2014 and claiming only $120 in assets and 0 income. Since Holmes’s big win, not only has she paid for him to be free, she’s also laced him with a $15,000 diamond-encrusted Rolex watch, a gold and diamond bracelet and an attention-grabbing chain. She’s also helped him set up an auto-repair business (that has employed 11 young people McDow says he wants to keep off the streets) and a new pickup truck. Many are asking why she has done so much for someone who has provided her with such a headache.
“We are a couple, and I am the father of her youngest child,” McDow said. “This is what people do for each other. She has the money and she can do what she wants with it.”
He continued, “If I had that money then I would do the same for her. People are just jealous because of how much she won, and people want to see me locked in jail.”
He told The Daily Mail that they were together for two years before she won the lottery and that he was helping to support her and her kids way before the lotto money poured in. According to McDow, people have the wrong idea about him.
“Her youngest child is my daughter. I have known her for a long time and people round where she lived will tell you that I am a good man who has helped out others.”
A good man who isn’t the heroin-dealing troublemaker he’s been painted out to be.
“I’m on these charges because of the color of my skin. This is a very dangerous place for a black man,” McDow said about North Carolina. While he had no response for why he was arrested with weed and a gun in his home back in July 2015, or why he was caught up in heroin trafficking, which he was originally arrested for in 2014, he says his most recent arrest, for allegedly being involved in an illegal drag race, is all a misunderstanding. Despite leaving the house before his curfew time (7 a.m. – 7:30 p.m., set up as part of his pre-trial program), McDow said he was called to help someone out as part of his auto repair business, and when he was found in the area, he was arrested and assumed to be part of a group of people organizing the drag race. The bond was $12 million.
“There is no one else who has had their bail set so high. It is not right,” McDow said. “They have only out that on [sic] because they know my girlfriend has the money. They did not want to let me out of jail but when she won the lottery they had to and they didn’t like that.”
Whatever the stories and excuses, many are wondering if McDow will ever get it together so that he can stop wasting Holmes’s time and money.
“People do make mistakes, but she should be allowed to do what she wants,” McDow said. “People can say what they like and it don’t hurt us. She is standing by her man.”
