Arkansas Woman Befriended Mom’s Killer Out of ‘Spiritual Obligation’ and then He Murdered Her

63-year-old Martha McKay was kind to Travis Lewis, who was convicted and released after killing her mother and cousin in 1996.

On March 25, 2020, McKay was found stabbed and bludgeoned to death at the top of the stairs, near a bag filled with her belongings, along with a utility knife.

Authorities were shocked when they pulled the body of her killer out of the lake and realized it was Travis Lewis. He had jumped in and drowned during a police chase.

Lewis was convicted at 17 for the gruesome 1996 murders of her mother, Sally Snowden McKay, 75, and her cousin, Joseph “Lee” Baker, 52, a prominent Memphis blues guitarist.

McKay’s family and friends were more than devastated when she was killed on March 25, 2020, at Snowden House, the historic antebellum-style home on Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas. She bought the house from her family in 2004, restored, and reopened it as a luxury bed-and-breakfast.

 

 

Lewis pleaded guilty to the murders but never confessed, maintaining that another man killed the two, say police.