She Was Killed by the Same Man Who Murdered Her Mother 23 Years Earlier

On March 25, 2020, deputies responded to an alarm at the Snowden House, a historic lakeside home operating as a bed and breakfast in Hughes, Ark. When they arrived, they found the property’s 63-year-old owner Martha McKay dead at the top of the stairs—and saw a man jumping out of an upstairs window.

The man ran to a vehicle and drove it across the yard, but it quickly became stuck. He then abandoned the vehicle and jumped into nearby Horseshoe Lake. Once he went under the water, deputies said, he didn’t come back up.

When authorities pulled the man’s body from the lake and realized who he was, they were shocked. It was 39-year-old Travis Lewis, the same man who had been convicted of killing Martha’s mother, Sally Snowden McKay, and cousin, Joseph “Lee” Baker, two decades earlier.

“It’s such a tragedy, and, well, mind-boggling that [he] would commit these murders and then you know, allegedly come back and do something so horrible again,” Mike Allen, Crittenden County sheriff, told Dateline.

Martha’s death in 2020 echoed a family tragedy that had unfolded 23 years earlier. 

On September 10, 1996, Sally’s red Toyota Camry was found on its side but still running roughly a mile from her home on Horseshoe Lake, located about 35 miles south of Memphis. When rescuers arrived at her house, they discovered the burned bodies of Sally, 75, and Baker, 52, inside.

Both had been shot before the living room and kitchen were set ablaze. Police suspected the culprit had been in the process of burglarizing the home when Sally and Baker arrived unexpectedly, taking the intruder by surprise.

The killings rocked the small, tight-knit community, where Sally and Baker were well known. Sally was an accountant and part-time antiques dealer who managed her family’s lakeside properties, including 800 acres of leased farmland and the Snowden House bed and breakfast. Baker, her nephew, was a respected blues guitarist who played in Memphis clubs.

Two months later, police arrested 16-year-old Travis Lewis in connection with the crime. Although Lewis had been 15 at the time of the killings, prosecutors charged him as an adult.

Lewis had a juvenile record, including criminal mischief, littering and aggravated assault, but community members struggled to believe he’d been responsible for the slayings.

“This boy is real polite,” Beth Baldwin, owner of the Horseshoe Grocery & Cafe, told the Commercial Appeal in November 1996. “Everything is ‘yes ma’am,’ ‘no ma’am.’ Plus, he’s smart. He’s above average in school. He’s so soft spoken you have to listen to him real close or you couldn’t hear him.” 

The case was scheduled to go to trial in April 1998. But Lewis took a last-minute plea bargain, ultimately pleading guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, burglary and theft. A judge sentenced him to 28.5 years for the murders, plus five years for the burglary and theft charges, with the sentences to run concurrently. He would become eligible for parole after serving roughly 20 years.

Martha was devastated by the loss of her mother and cousin, but she tried to move on with her life. In 2004, after living in the western United States for several years, she decided to return to her family’s historic estate in Arkansas and channel her energy into restoring the Snowden House.

“By that time, the house was pretty run-down,” Martha told Memphis Magazine in 2012, “But over my adult life, I discovered historic preservation is something I like to do. I had renovated a beautiful home in Virginia City, Nevada, and two or three houses in Seattle. So I sold the house in Virginia City and bought the Snowden House. It was the only way that I could see doing the kind of work that I wanted to do.”

Martha also befriended Lewis while he was in prison, going so far as to support his early release. After he was paroled in 2018, she hired him to work at Snowden House, alongside his mother, Gladys, who’d been a longtime housekeeper there. 

“I think it was [Martha’s] mission to find out what happened to her mother, and to find out if someone else was involved,” Allen, the Crittenden County sheriff, told Dateline.

But the arrangement eventually unraveled. At one point, Gladys told Martha to stay away from Travis because he was “going back to his old ways,” Katie Hutton, Martha’s sister, told People.

Martha ultimately fired Lewis after $10,000 in cash went missing from the Snowden House. 

Because Lewis died after jumping into Horseshoe Lake, the events leading up to Martha's death—and what prompted Lewis to kill her—remain a mystery. However, an autopsy later revealed he had cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in his system. Deputies also found a bag of valuables near Martha’s body, which had been stabbed, bludgeoned and wrapped in blankets.

“It was determined that he intended to steal these items,” Todd Grooms, chief investigator for Crittenden County, said in a statement shared with People. “However, it was not determined whether his intentions were to burglarize [Martha’s] home and she was killed in the process or if his intention was to murder [Martha] then opted to steal the items.”

Lewis’ motives may never be fully understood. But for Martha's family, no explanation could ever justify what happened to her.

“Martha didn’t deserve to be killed,” Hutton told People. “She didn't deserve anything that happened to her.”

Many people released from prison are arrested again, a phenomenon known as recidivism. Some 62% of state prisoners released in 2012 were arrested again within three years, and 7% were arrested within five years, according to statistics from 34 states compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Justice Department.

However, the likelihood of reoffending varies widely depending on the original offense. Among state prisoners released after serving time for homicide, roughly 41% were arrested for any offense within five years of their release, but only 2% were arrested for another homicide.

“In terms of raw probability, this doesn’t happen often,” Patricia S. Dixon, a licensed clinical psychologist in Tampa Bay, Fla., tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “This isn’t the headline we should read every time someone comes home [from prison]. But I can’t say I’m shocked when it does happen.”

In Lewis’ case specifically, Dixon says the fact that he entered prison during adolescence might have been a factor.

“Spending time in prison doesn’t require a teenager to learn how to do the things that make adults functional: learning how to make decisions, how to live with consequences, how to deal with other people, how to build a moral framework,” she says. “Someone can age 23 years in prison without ever having grown up.”

Ryan Sullivan, a former prosecutor who now works as a criminal defense attorney and partner at Erkan & Sullivan, PC, agrees, adding that, although Lewis’ behavior is inexcusable, it cannot be separated from his circumstances.

“Science tells us that his brain was undeveloped [at the time of the original killings],” Sullivan tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “He was then put behind bars for over two decades and, it is clear from his actions, not given the tools to succeed... [Lewis] is a person who is maladjusted to society because, at his early developmental stages, he was put in a place that even the most competent person would struggle to succeed after leaving.”