From Second Chances to a Second Murder in the Historic Snowden House | Travis Lewis

The historic Snowden House in Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas, had seen its share of tragedy from the first murders in the town - by 16 year old Travis Lewis. But in March 2020, another emergency call brought deputies racing to the mansion. Inside, they found its owner, Martha McKay, dead—and the scene told a story that was as disturbing as it was unclear.

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Past cases mentioned in this episode:

Man Murders His Entire Family TWICE | The Unbelievable Case of Gregory Green
https://murderandlove.com/man-murders-his-entire-family-twice-the-unbelievable-case-of-gregory-green/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now part of the dark Cast Network. Welcome to indie
podcasts with a dark side. In today's episode, I'm bringing
you a case of murder, forgiveness, and murder again. It's
the story of a woman who believed in second chances,
even for the man who killed her own mother. A

(00:20):
story of trust rey built only to be shattered in
the most horrible way. Let's head to the quiet lakeside
town of Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas and the historic Snowden House
where this case of love and murder starts. Welcome Lambs,

(00:43):
Welcome to love and murder, heartbreak to homicide. Before I
get into it, I just want to address the elephant
in the room, which is that background noise that you
can hear. I didn't want to get too far into
the episode without addressing it. That is my AC. That
is how loud my AC is. I normally turn it
off when I'm recording. However, this morning I woke up

(01:04):
and my cat was like, really just bull She wouldn't
even eat. And this is a chunky, wid o monkey,
so she loves food, so for her not to eat
is something. But I brought her up into the rooms
which are cooler, and she suddenly like she perked up
after a couple of minutes, so it just turned out
she was hot. So I am not turning off to

(01:25):
AC because I'm not trying to kill my cats. So
I apologize for the background noise. I'm going to try
and take it out and post as much as possible.
Please be patient with me and thank you. So let's
get back to what I was saying. This is your
weekly true crime podcast telling you cases of relationships that
turn to heartbreak and doing it while thinking about the victims.

(01:45):
So you're probably gonna hear some Ranton and Ravens throughout
the episode. Don't be surprised. As usual, I invite you
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(02:05):
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Ford slash a love and Murder. Now, without further ado,

(02:29):
let's go ahead, grab your butts, grab your delicious glass
of apple juice, and let's get into this case of
forgiveness and heartbreak. On the morning of Wednesday, March twenty fifth,
twenty twenty, deputies from the Crittenden County Sheriff's Office responded
to an alarm at the historic Snowden House. The Snowden
House was in the tranquil community of Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas,

(02:51):
which is a small town about thirty five miles southwest
of Memphis, Tennessee. This town has been associated with the
influential and wealth Snowden family. Have y'all heard of the
Stoneon family, because I haven't. Their historic Snowden House, a
grand six thousand square foot mansion built in nineteen ninety

(03:12):
and later renovated, stood as a symbol of their generations
of privilege and civic benevolence. This estate was even once
featured in the nineteen ninety four movie The Client which
also I don't think I've seen. The Snowden family's roots
ran deep in the Horseshoe Lake area, their wealth and
influenced dating back generations. After the Civil War, the family

(03:35):
played a major role in developing both Horseshoe Lake and Memphis.
Names like Brinkley, Snowden, and McKay carried weight in the region.
Robert Bogardis Snowden, that's the name known as the Colonel,
was a well known figure in the real estate and
banking industry. His legacy still leaves its mark on Memphis

(03:57):
with landmarks like Snowden Avenue and Snowden School. His son R.
Brinkley Snowden built the famous Ashlar Hall Mansion. The central
person in this case Martha McKay. Her grandparents, Bob and
Gray Snowden, built the original farmhouse that would one day
become the Snowden House, later transforming into what it is now.

(04:18):
But this isn't just a history lesson. I'm going somewhere
with this. On September tenth, nineteen ninety six, seventy five
year old Sally Snowden mackay, Martha's mother, and her fifty
two year old nephew Joseph Lee Baker were murdered at
Sally's house on the Snowden property. Lee was a well
known Memphis blues and rock guitarist. It all started when

(04:40):
a local residence, Levi Glasper, spotted Sally's red Toyota camry
wrecked about a mile from her home, still running but
heavily damaged. Levi went to Sally's house to check on her,
but found Lee's truck backed up to the back door.
That's when he realized the house was on fire. Firefighters responded.

(05:01):
They put out the fire, and then inside the charred
remains of the house, they found the partially burned bodies
of Sally and Lee. Autopsies confirmed that they had been
shot before the fire was set. Investigators believed robbery was
the motive. Valuable guitars, memorabilia, and other items were missing

(05:23):
from Lee's house, and Sally's car had been stolen. This
actually marked the first homicides ever recorded in Horseshoe Lake.
At the scene, police barely found any usable evidence. There
was no murder weapon, there were no spent shell cases.
They only found a few partial fingerprints and even no DNA.

(05:46):
The break came when here fingerprints and a palm print
were discovered inside Sally's crash Toyota camry. One of Lee's
sons pointed investigators towards a possible suspect, sixteen year old
Travis Lewis sixteen. Now, Travis wasn't just some random name
to this family. He lived with his mother, Gladys, in

(06:08):
a house rented from Sally, right there on the Snowden property.
Gladys had worked for years as a housekeeper at the
Snowden House. Travis even knew both victims personally. He'd been
a student in Lee Baker's English class, but his record
wasn't clean, as he had prior run ins with the
law for aggravated assault, curfew violations, criminal mischief, and littering

(06:33):
I mean littering. When police questioned him, Travis denied having
anything to do with the murders, and his mother gave
him an alibi. He was given multiple polygraph tests, reportedly
passing three before failing the fourth, and that's when his
story changed. Travis now claimed that on the day of

(06:53):
the murders, he had skipped school with a friend named
Andre to burglarize Lee's house. He said Andre had a
twenty five caliber semi automatic pistol, and that they decided
to split up. Travis target in Lee's house and Andre
head into Sally's. According to Travis, moments later, Andre pulled
up in Sally's Camra, telling him he had just killed

(07:16):
two people and needed help. Travis claimed they tried to
move the bodies, but they couldn't, so they set the
house on fire to destroy all of the evidence. They
then crashed Sally's car and ran off. Now that's a
likely story, but the problem with that was Andre had
an airtight alibi from his girlfriend. He denied everything, and

(07:40):
his fingerprints and DNA didn't match anything found at the scene.
Travis's prints, on the other hand, were a match. Police
decided he probably acted alone and the charges were upgraded
to capital murder, burglary, and arson. Given the capital murder charges,
he faced the death PA. Even though Travis did have

(08:02):
a bunch of little run ins with the law, I
mean they were little run ins, I mean littering, curfew violations,
aggravated assault could have just been like he was fighting
with somebody, maybe one of his friends or something. In
criminal mischief, I mean, I don't know what that is,
but it doesn't say it sounds like a misdemeanor. So
even though he did have those under his belt, everybody

(08:25):
in the community was still shocked that he could have
gone so far as murder, you know, arson murder, burglary
and stuff like that. They did describe him as polite,
smart and soft spoken, so this still went against what
everybody knew about him, or thought they knew about him.
Even some family members didn't believe that he could have

(08:46):
committed the murders on his own. At his probable cause hearing,
the prosecutor said they had three informants placed in Travis
at the scene end quote evidence tying him to the crime.
They also claimed he'd admitted to break in in. Still,
the prosecutor acknowledged that they hadn't yet seen a full
statement or direct confession to the murder. Despite defense arguments

(09:09):
of insufficient evidence, the judge still ordered Travis to be
held without bond. Police came up with a theory that
Travis had broken in planning to steal, but when Sally
and Lee caught him in the act, he shot them both.
That's when he gathered the valuable and set the house
on fire to cover his tracks. His trial was set
for April seventh, nineteen ninety eight in Marion, Arkansas, but

(09:33):
there was no trial. Instead, the then seventeen year old
Travis pleaded guilty to both murders. Even with the guilty plea,
though he never actually admitted to killing Sally and Lee,
and he continued to insist someone else was responsible, which
I don't understand that. I went back through all my
research and that's what they keep saying. He pled guilty,

(09:56):
but he said he didn't kill them, somebody else did it.
So I don't understand how the two can happen. You
plead guilty, but you say you still didn't do it,
so that I don't understand. If I'm missing something, please
let me know in the comments below, because I honestly
don't understand it. Like I even paused the recording to
go back and make sure that that's what my research said.

(10:17):
I went to each report, each article. This is what
they're saying. I don't get it. Anyway. Apparently the judge
didn't get it either, and he was sentenced to twenty
eight and a half years for the murders and five
years for the burglary to run Concurrently, the judge also
set a requirement that he had to serve at least
seventy percent of his sentence. At the time, the deputy

(10:38):
prosecutor said the families had agreed to the plea because
they felt a trial would be too traumatic. The nineteen
ninety six murders broke the Snowden family, especially Sally's daughters,
mostly Martha McKay. After her mother's death, Martha left her
life on the West Coast and came back home to
help her aunt, Edie Dewey, managed the snowde In property.

(11:02):
Martha had a passion for historic preservation, having restored old
homes in Nevada and Seattle. In two thousand and four,
after Aunt Edie died, she bought the Snowden House from
her family and poured one hundred thousand dollars into bringing
it back to its former glory. She moved in, turning
it into an upscale bed and breakfast and a wedding venue.

(11:23):
In talking about her connection to Horseshoe Lake, Martha was
recorded as saying, quote, I felt like I was royalty
with the big house and servants. Everything was fresh from
the garden, fresh eggs and all, and we even had
a peach orchard. We got to swim every day and
it was just ideal. Locals even came to know her
as quote, the lady of the Lake. Even with the

(11:47):
pain of her mother's murder hanging over her, Martha believed
in forgiveness. She had empathy for Travis, thinking about how
young he had been when he went to prison, and
even wondered if his claim of having and accomplice was true.
Sheriff Mike Allen later said that Martha made it her
quote mission to find out what happened to her mother

(12:08):
and to find out if someone else was involved. Martha
started writing letters to Travis in prison. Over time, they
formed an unusually close friendship. Letters turned into prison visits.
Her friends and family warned her repeatedly to stay away
from him, calling the ideare what they said quote bad juju,
but she ignored them. Whenever Travis came up for parole,

(12:31):
Martha was the only family member who spoke in his favor.
Everyone else opposed his release. In twenty eighteen, after servant
just twenty years, Travis was granted parole. He was thirty
seven at the time, and it was Martha's words on
his behalf that played a big role in the court's
decision to grant him parole. She even gave him a

(12:52):
job as a groundskeeper at the Snowden House, where his mother,
Gladys still worked as a housekeeper. For a while, it's
seem to work out until Gladys gave Martha a warning quote,
just stay away from Travis, because he's going back to
his old ways. So his own mother is warning her
to stay away from him. Not long after this, Martha

(13:16):
sold an antique chandelier for ten thousand dollars cash, and
for reasons no one actually fully understands, kept the money
in the house. Travis was there the day she made
the sale. The next day the cash was gone. Martha
realized Travis was the only one who could have taken it.

(13:36):
She fired him and banned him from the property. She
even wrote about the theft in her diary, but never
called the police. This all brings us back to the
day of March twenty fifth, twenty twenty. This is what
I told you I was getting to it. It wasn't
a history lesson. It all ties togain. So remember I

(13:57):
said that police were called out to the property on
that Wednesday because there was an alarm that sounded on
the property. When police arrived, they found the back door
of the house standing open. As they started clearing out
the house, so you know, going room by room making
sure nobody's in there with any weapons or anything. They
spotted a man trying to escape. Being that he couldn't

(14:19):
get away from the cops ride running downstairs and running
out the front door. He ended up jumping from an
upstairs window. It was the second story window. He jumped
from that window, He hit the ground and just took
off running. He made it to his car, but when
he tried to drive away, his car got stuck in
the yard. He ditched it and took off on foot

(14:41):
and dove straight into horse Shoe Lake. Deputies watched as
he swam away from shore and then eventually disappeared beneath
the surface. Quote he was observed going under the water
and never came back up. What in the James Bond?
Did he have scoober g you're under there? Or did
he just die? Like okay? Inside the house, police found

(15:05):
a horrific scene. At the top of the grand staircase
was sixty three year old Martha McKay wrapped in blankets.
She had been stabbed and bludgeoned, but somehow managed to
trigger the alarm before she died. Near her body was
a cloth bag filled with valuables and a bloody utility knife. So,

(15:27):
because they never saw the person come back up out
of the lake and that's the only lead, they had
to go with search and rescue cruise along with the
Arkansas Game and Fish using their sonar. Basically, when I
researched this about using the sonar, using the sonar means
that they could immediately ping exactly where whatever they are

(15:47):
looking for in the lake without having to dredge the
whole lake. So they were able to tell the Arkansas
Game and Fish Department where this person had gone down,
and then they used the sonar to find exactly what
where this person was. So I guess he wasn't James Bond.
I guess he just swam and then couldn't swim any
more than drowned. So they found him and they were

(16:08):
able to pull the suspect's body from the lake and
he was identified as the then thirty nine year old
Travis Lewis, and autopsy later revealed that he had cocaine, meth,
and marijuana in his system at the time of his death.
Chief investigator Todd Groomes said that Travis had come back

(16:29):
to the house intended to burglarize it, but whether he
planned to kill Martha or that decision came later remains unclear.
Martha's sister, Kate Hutton said, quote, Martha didn't deserve to
be killed. She didn't deserve anything that happened to her.
Joe Baker, Lee Baker's son and Martha's cousin, described the

(16:50):
moment as quote like a bad dream or deja vu.
Really back to this again, add in that it pointed
to quote issues with the para system in Arkansas. About Martha,
he said, quote, I think that she really felt in
her heart he deserves to be rehabilitated, which really speaks
to her character after such a tragic event happened to

(17:12):
such a close family member. Psychologist doctor Todd Grande later
said that Martha's downfall came from trust in someone who
had already shown who he was. Forgiveness and compassion are noble,
he said, but too much of it, especially towards someone
with no empathy, can end in tragedy. Travis Lewis, who

(17:33):
he described as a psychopathic, took advantage of her kindness
and betrayed her in the worst possible way. Today, the
Snowden House is still standing, but it's closed for obvious reasons.
But in Horseshoe Lake, the memory of Martha Mackay, the
lady of the lake, who poured herself into restoring her
family home and caring for others, still lingers. What did

(17:56):
you think of this case? This reminds me of another
case I did last season of this guy named Gregory Green.
This guy he had stabbed his pregnant wife and he
went to prison for only sixteen years, and then he
ended up being paroled because his friend's family and pastor
supported him, and later the pastor became his father in law.

(18:18):
Then Gregory went through and murdered his entire family. Like,
you need to listen to the case. I'm only giving
you a short synopsis of it. But if you haven't already,
if you're new to love and Murder and you're only
just started, like at the end of season four or
even season five, and you haven't gone back, then you
need to go ahead and listen to that case. This
is what this case reminds me of, and that case.

(18:40):
The link to Gregory Green is in the show notes below. Now,
in my opinion, it's all good and fine, and apparently
the psychologist said the same thing as well. It's all
good and fine to forgive people. But I think in
the sense of murder, my forgiveness doesn't mean that I
need to invite you to be around me or any
of my loved ones. That's just me. What do y'all think?

(19:03):
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. I
just personally don't understand the whole forgiveness thing and bringing
that person around yourself or your family or your house
or you know. I just I don't get it. What
do you think? Do you think? Like if you forgive somebody,
that means forgive and forget, or forgive but don't forget

(19:24):
like I can forgive you. Doesn't mean we're about to
be buddy buddy, friend, friend and come over for dinner.
You know what I'm saying. I can forgive you for
my benefit because holding hatred in your heart is hard work.
You know, you can forgive and be completely indifferent to
the person. Just because you forgive doesn't mean now you
need to hold hands with the person and have them

(19:47):
around your whole family, And you know that's not what
necessarily forgiveness is. Now, maybe I'm being too harsh and
you think forgiveness should be like completely give and forget.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and
that is all I have for you with today's episode.

(20:07):
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(20:51):
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(21:11):
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(21:33):
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(21:55):
I remind you at the end of each full episode,
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