“I’m floored because, out of everyone, I thought he is the last one who would do it to his own mother,” said Ayonna Anderson, who worked as a stylist at Holmes’ salon and considered Holmes her best friend. “I don’t know if it got to the point he loved money more than his mother.”

Prosecutors said Wilson wanted Holmes, 45, dead so he could access the untapped cash in her bank accounts and two life insurance policies. She was found murdered, shot once in the right temple and stabbed repeatedly, in her Uptown apartment in the 1000 block of West Montrose Avenue last year.

Wilson was ordered held without bail Tuesday along with Eugene Spencer, 22, who allegedly killed Holmes, and Loriana Johnson, 23, the alleged driver, by Cook County Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr., who called the slaying a “heinous act.”

Holmes, who owned Knappy Headz beauty salon at 4141 N. Broadway, was asleep with her boyfriend Sept. 2, 2012, when her son called about 4:46 a.m. to say he was headed over, Assistant State’s Attorney Maura White said.

The boyfriend was awakened by a gunshot and got into a fight with Spencer, who allegedly pistol-whipped him with a Colt revolver, according to White and court records. The struggle spilled into a hallway, and the attacker escaped.

Within a week of his mother’s death, Wilson had liquidated his mother’s bank accounts, which held more than $90,000, White said.

Cellphone records revealed that Wilson called Spencer and Johnson “before, during and after the murder,” White said.

Wilson was arrested during a traffic stop Sunday, said White, who added that the suspect admitted to detectives that he had set up the robbery of his mother “for financial gain.”

Police arrested Spencer and Johnson, who works at a Markham beauty supply store, within hours of each other Monday. Spencer told police that Wilson hired him to kill Holmes and admitted to shooting and stabbing her as well as fighting with her boyfriend, White said.

The boyfriend also picked Spencer out of a lineup, she said.

Johnson, who has a 4-year-old daughter, told police she drove Spencer to the North Side so he could rob someone, White said.

On Tuesday, Anderson said she was struggling to come to grips with the allegation that the “shop baby” she’d watched grow up in the salon arranged to have his mother brutally murdered and then sat through her funeral.

“Her son she took care of … he could’ve gotten anything from her,” she said. “It’s so heartbreaking.

“She was trying to build a future for her son to have. But I guess money is the root of all evil.”