When theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said that forgiveness is the final act of love, he couldn’t have known, more than 60 years later, just how final Martha McKay’s act of love and forgiveness would be.
Martha’s story began just after the American Civil War, when her great-grandfather, Colonel Robert Bogardus Snowden, began building an empire in Memphis, Tennessee, by buying land and properties and pursuing lucrative business ventures.
On May 5, 1868, Robert married Annie Overton Brinkley, the daughter of Memphis businessman Colonel Robert Campbell Brinkley, who founded the famous Peabody Hotel and helped to develop the Memphis to Little Rock railroad. The development of the railroad brought growth to the area and led to the founding of the town of Brinkley, Arkansas.
The Snowden family continued to prosper, buying 1,000 acres of land around Horseshoe Lake, just 30 miles from Memphis.
Robert and Annie’s grandson, Robert Bogardus Snowden Jr., married Grace Whitney Mountcastle in 1919 and had four children, one of whom was named Sara but was better known as ‘Sally’, and it is with Sally that the story really begins to take hold.
Sally grew up in Snowden House. When originally built, the house was a modest affair with just enough room for the family’s growing children, but in 1949, it was transformed into a showstopping, 6,000-square-foot building with three stories, marble floors, and glittering chandeliers.
The Snowden children had a happy childhood, and when their father died in 1982, Sally, who was by then divorced from her second husband, David McKay, moved back to Horseshoe Lake to manage the family’s estate.
By this time, Snowden House was being run as a bed and breakfast by a couple who leased the building, so Sally moved into a house nearby.
Also nearby was Sally’s nephew, Joseph Lee Baker.
He lived on Horseshoe Lake with his wife and three children, but when fire tore through the family home, Joseph and his family moved into one of the family’s 30 lakefront cabins, just 100 yards from Sally’s.
Joseph was well-known and loved in the local community. Not only was he an English teacher at nearby Hughes High School, but he was also a talented blues musician who had played at the Memphis Country Blues Festival.
When fire ripped through his home, it took with it a carefully curated collection of music memorabilia; police believed that the fire was deliberately set to cover up a burglary, as there had been a number of home invasions in the affluent community.
On September 10, 1996, fire struck the family again when flames ripped through Sally’s home. When firefighters had extinguished the flames, they found the bodies of both Sally, 75, and her nephew, Joseph, 52, who had been visiting with his aunt to discuss business.
Autopsies revealed that both had been shot and killed prior to the fire, which police believed had been set to cover up the murders.
For more than three weeks, the local community waited and worried as the killer was still at large. Sally’s car had been found in a ditch around a mile from her home, and police were able to extract DNA from the door and the windshield that showed where the driver had hit their head.
Police arrested 16-year-old Travis Lewis, a local boy and former pupil of Joseph Lee Baker, with a history of criminal activities. Travis claimed that he had been at the property but hadn’t pulled the trigger, pointing the finger at an accomplice; the other person named, however, had a watertight alibi and was ruled out of the investigation.
Although Travis had been 15 at the time of the murders, he was tried as an adult and faced a possible death penalty. The McKay family showed leniency towards the killer, though, and asked for the death penalty to be taken off the table.
Instead, Travis pled guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 28 years, with the possibility of parole after serving no less than 70% of his sentence.
Management of Snowden House passed to one of Sally’s sisters, Edie, but when she died in 2004, Sally’s daughter, Martha, bought Snowden House and moved into the grand home herself.
Martha was known for her kindness and compassion, and under her guidance, the estate flourished, earning Martha the nickname of ‘The Lady of the Lake’. Martha’s gentle and generous nature grew even more when she became interested in Buddhism, and following the principle of ‘kshama, ’ or forgiveness, she befriended her mother’s killer.
Wanting to understand why he murdered Sally and Joseph, Martha began writing to Travis and even visited him in prison against the wishes of other members of the family. When Travis’s parole hearing came around, Martha spoke in his favor, and in 2018, Travis was released.
Martha’s compassion for the man didn’t end there, however; the killer’s mother, Gladys, had been a housekeeper at Snowden House for many years, and Martha gave Travis a job working alongside his mother as a groundskeeper.
It didn’t take long for Travis to return to his old ways; so much so that his own mother begged Martha to stay away from her son. Martha resisted, believing that she could rehabilitate him, but when thousands of dollars went missing from the house, Martha knew that only one person could be responsible. She fired Travis and, in doing so, sealed her fate.
On March 20, 2020, police received notification of a silent alarm being triggered at Snowden House. When police arrived, a man was seen jumping from a second-story window.
In a bizarre reenactment of the double murder more than twenty years earlier, the suspect jumped into a car and attempted to flee the scene. When the car got stuck in mud, the man fled on foot and, in full view of the pursuing officers, jumped into the lake and never resurfaced.
Meanwhile, inside the palatial home, the body of 63-year-old Martha was discovered at the top of the stairs. She had been stabbed and beaten to death, managing to raise the alarm before collapsing and succumbing to her injuries. A bag of valuable items was found close to Martha’s body, suggesting that perhaps this had been a robbery gone wrong.
When the lake was searched, the body of 39-year-old Travis Lewis was brought to the surface, sending shockwaves through the community. The same man who, at the age of 15, had slaughtered Martha’s mother and cousin had taken the life of Martha, the only person to show him compassion and kindness, more than 20 years later.
An autopsy revealed that Travis had cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana in his system; perhaps the cocktail of drugs had prevented him from swimming, or maybe he wanted to end his life, knowing that he would be sent back to prison, but either way, the triple murderer’s life of crime had come to an end.
They say that a good deed never goes unpunished, and while that’s not the case for most acts of kindness, in Martha’s case, no truer words have ever been spoken.
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