William "Bill" Lamar was born on January 15, 1996, in Oxford, Mississippi, to Quentin and Allie Lamar.

The son of an influential Oxford family, Quentin built a successful legal practice. When he tired of the law, he and his wife founded Lamar Cosmetics, which flourished and began refilling the depleted family coffers.

However, their growing wealth could not soothe Quentin's numerous psychological afflictions that made him prone to drinking and bouts of paranoia. Oxford residents chalked it up as yet another idiosyncrasy of the town's old families, and Allie fought with all her being to keep Quentin's difficulties from hurting the burgeoning business.

When Bill was born, many hoped he would be a settling influence on Quentin. Instead, the baby's crying seemed to torture him, and he started locking himself in the attic and wearing earplugs. He told people Bill was an emissary of the devil, while they sadly shook their heads and clucked in pity.

Although a tragedy, no one around town was surprised when Quentin took his life with a twelve-gauge shotgun at the family deer camp.

Bill was left with no memories of his tormented father, and Allie was determined that he not be exposed to that difficult side of the family history.

Far from the devil's spawn Quentin claimed, Bill was actually a good-natured, intelligent young boy. He was well-liked in school, and while not quite a straight-A student, he was still near the top of his class.

As he progressed through school, his love of foreign cultures turned into a great aptitude for linguistics. He took both French and Spanish in high school and was a National Merit Scholar in both disciplines.

Instead of participating in any extracurricular activities in high school, Bill went to work at Lamar Cosmetics after school. He showed a tremendous innate ability for business, and everyone said he was a natural to take over the family company.

His main distraction from languages and Lamar Cosmetics was a beautiful young woman named Barbara Dubois, who he met through the company's pageant sponsorships.

Bill and Barbara immediately had an intense attraction and found they shared an intense dislike of the pageant and cosmetics scene. Soon they were spending all their time together.

Even though Bill loved Oxford and was proud of his family's cosmetics company, he felt drawn to Europe and its castles, poems, vineyards, and moors. Bill and Barbara often talked of running off to Paris or London and just disappearing.

However, in 2013, the young couple separated. Barbara moved to Atlanta, and shortly thereafter, Bill joined a program where he could finish his schooling while traveling around Europe.

After Barbara's departure and before Bill left for Europe, his friends said he became moody and brooding. They thought he was just trying to recreate himself as an existentialist artist for his trip to Europe and predicted he would be wearing a black turtleneck and smoking clove cigarettes at a café overlooking the Champs Elysées before the year was out.

Some, though, weren't convinced that Bill's darkness was a young man's phase. They saw the typically laid-back young man become secretive and quick to anger. These concerned friends hoped Europe would be a welcome relief for Bill, and it seemed to be just the type of respite he needed.

Bill stayed in Europe and traveled throughout the continent, living primarily in Paris, London, or Frankfurt for a few months at a time. He finished college in Europe, eventually obtaining an MBA from the prestigious CMSD in Valais, Switzerland.

After receiving his MBA, he took over the failing, Paris-based Perfume and Fragrances division of Lamar Cosmetics. Within a year, he turned the division from corporate deadwood to highly profitable.

Business associates characterized Bill as a straight-shooter with sad eyes. They said his leadership seemed to spring naturally from his good nature and his willingness to take risks and go against corporate directives when it made sense.

His French colleagues said, as far as they knew, he had no close friends and had only a few superficial relationships with women.