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

Now part of the Darkcast 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 story of trust rebuilt 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 the case of love and murder starts. Welcome, lambs. Welcome to love and 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 and my cat was like, really just bull. She wouldn’t even eat. And this is a chunky widow 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 minutes. So it just turned out she was hot. So I am not turning off the AC because I’m not trying to kill my cats. So I apologize for the background noise. I am going to try and take it out in 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 victim. So you’re probably going to hear some ranting and raving throughout the episode. Don’t be surprised. As usual, I invite you to take a seat, take a listen all the way to the end, and if you do like my retelling, then go ahead and subscribe so you don’t miss any of other episodes. If you didn’t know, you can also subscribe on, um, my patreon for free. Patreon.com loveandmurder. You do get some benefits for subscribing for free. But if you want to be a voice of the victim, help me be a voice of the victim, keep the show going and get bonus extras yourself. Like bonus cases, behind the scenes, and so much more. Then choose one of our bonus tiers and become part of the LaM Patreon fam. Patreon.com forward/loveandmurder. Uh, now, without further ado, 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 25, 2020, 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, which is a small town about 35 miles southwest of Memphis, Tennessee. This town has been associated with the influential and wealthy Snowden family. Have y’ all heard of the Snowden family? Because I haven’t. Their historic Snowden house, a grand 6,000 square foot mansion built in 1990 and later renovated, stood as a symbol of their generations of privilege and civic benevolence. This estate was even once Featured in the 1994 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 influence dating back generations. After the Civil War, the family played a major role in developing both Horseshoe Lake and Memphis. Names like Brinkley, Snowden and McKay carried weight in the region. Robert Bogartus Snowden, that’s a 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 with landmarks like Snowden Avenue and Snowden School. His son, R. Brinkley Snowden, built the famous Ashler hall mansion. The central person in this case, Martha McKay. Her grandparents Bob and Grace Snowden, built the original farmhouse that would one day become the Snowden House, later transforming into what it is now. But this isn’t just a history lesson. I’m going somewhere with this. On September 10, 1996, 75 year old Sally Snowden McKay, Martha’s mother and her 52 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 a, uh, 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. 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 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. The break came when hair, fingerprints and a palm print were discovered inside Sally’s crashed Toyota Camry. One of Lee’s sons pointed investigators towards a possible suspect. 16 year old Travis Lewis, 16. Now, Travis wasn’t just some random name to this family. He lived with his mother, Gladys, in a house rented from Sally right there on the Snowden property there. 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. I mean, littering. When police questioned him, Travis denied having anything to do with the murders, and his mother gave him an alibi. And 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 the murders, he had skipped school with a friend named Andre to burglarize Lee’s house. He said Andre had a.25 caliber semiautomatic pistol and that they decided to split up. Travis targeting Lee’s house and Andre head into Sally’s. According to Travis, moments later, Andre pulled up in Sally’s Camry telling him he had just killed 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 and he denied everything. And his fingerprints and DNA didn’t match anything found at the scene. Travis 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 penalty. Even though Travis did have 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. And criminal mischief. I mean, I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t. It sounds like a misdemeanor. So even though he did have those under his belt, uh, everybody 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 committed the murders on his own. At his probable cause hearing, the prosecutor said they had three informants placing Travis at the scene, end quote. Evidence tying him to the crime. They also claimed he’d admitted to breaking in. Still, the prosecutor acknowledged that they hadn’t yet seen a full statement or direct confession to the murder. Despite defense arguments 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 7, 1998 in Marion, Arkansas. But there was no trial. Instead, the then 17 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, 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, uh, 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. 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 28 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 70% of his sentence. At the time, the deputy prosecutor said the families had agreed to the plea because they felt a trial would be too traumatic. The 1996 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 manage the Snowden property. Martha had a passion for historic preservation, having restored old homes in Nevada and Seattle in 2004. After Aunt Edie died, she bought the Snowden house from her family and poured $100,000 into bringing it back to its former glory. She moved in, turning it into an upscale bed and breakfast and a, uh, wedding venue. 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 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 an accomplice was true. Sheriff Mike Allen later said that Martha made it her quote, unquote mission to find out what happened to her mother and to find out if someone else was involved. Martha, uh, 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 idea what they said bad juju. But she ignored them. Whenever Travis came up for parole, Martha was the only family member who spoke in his favor. Everyone else opposed his release. In 2018, after serving just 20 years, Travis was granted parole. He was 37 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 job as the groundskeeper at, ah, the Snowden house, where his mother, Gladys still worked as a housekeeper. For a while, it seemed to work out until Gladys gave Martha a warning. 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 sold an antique chandelier for $10,000 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 M. Realized Travis was the only one who could have taken it. 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 25, 2020. This is what I told you. I was getting to it. It wasn’t a history lesson. It all ties together. So remember I 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 is in there with any weapons or anything. They spotted a man trying to escape, being that he couldn’t get away from the cops by running downstairs and running out the front door. And 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 and dove straight into Horseshoe 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, uh, James Bond. Did he have scuba gear under there or did he just die like, okay. Inside the house, police found a horrific scene. At the top of the grand staircase was 63 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 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 crews 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 looking for in the lake without having to like 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 where this person was. So I guess he wasn’t James Bond. I guess he just swam and then couldn’t swim anymore and then drowned. So they found him and they were able to pull the suspect’s body from the lake and he was identified as the then 39 year old Travis Lewis. An autopsy later revealed that he had cocaine, meth and marijuana in his system at the time of his death. Chief investigator Todd Grooms said that Travis had come back to the house intending 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 moment as like a bad dream or deja vu, really. Back to this again, add in that it pointed to, quote, issues with the parole 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 such a close family member. Psychologist Dr. Todd Grande later said that Martha’s downfall came from trust in someone who had already shown who he was. Forgiveness and compassion are, uh, noble, he said, but too much of it, especially towards someone with no empathy, can end in tragedy. Travis Lewis, who 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 OB reasons. But in Horseshoe Lake, the memory of Martha McKay, the lady of the Lake, who poured herself into restoring her family home and caring for others, still lingers. What did 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 16 years. And then he ended up being paroled because his friends, family and pastors supported him. And later the pastor became his father in law. 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 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, the link to Gregory Greene 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? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Uh, 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, 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, um, 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 around your whole family. And you know that that’s not what necessarily forgiveness is. Now maybe I’m being too harsh and you think forgiveness should be like completely forgive and forget. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. And that is all I have for you with today’s episode. Don’t forget that if you want to continue supporting Love and Murder, if you want to be a voice of the victim, and if you want to get bonus episodes like the Deadly Duo series that I do have out, which the next episode of that is coming out this Thursday, then head on over to our Patreon and choose one of the bonus tiers. Patreon.com forward/loveandmurder now the first case of the Deadly Duos is out for everybody to hear it. So even if you signed up under the free Patreon, then you can hear the first episode of Deadly Duos moving forward. The rest of the episodes are on the $10 and above tier for those deadly duels. The case that’s coming out this Thursday is the case of Erica and Benjamin Siffret. 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Like I said, patreon.com uh, forward/loveandmurder I do invite you to support the victim story. I do invite you to support Love and Murder. I do invite you to become part of the lam fam. And I look forward to seeing you in the Patreon. And that is all I have for you today. As I remind you at the end of each full episode, it’s say it with me now. All, uh, love and no murder, y’. All, thanks for joining me. Thanks for listening, and thanks for supporting me, and I will see you in the next episode. Bye.