Martha McKay, 63, was killed at her home in Horseshoe Lake in Arkansas by a man who was convicted of killing her mother and cousin in 1996, authorities say
On any given day, Martha McKay could be found hosting parties under the canopy of cypress trees at her family’s home on picturesque Horseshoe Lake in Hughes, Ark., or sitting on her filigreed veranda catching up with one of her many friends.
“She lived life to the fullest,” McKay’s sister Katie Hutton, previously told PEOPLE. “She loved her life.”
After years of being away from her beloved home, McKay returned, renovating the ornate antebellum-style house in 2005 and opening it to the public as a luxury bed and breakfast and wedding venue called Snowden House.
The happy locale, however, was once the scene of great tragedy. In 1996, McKay’s mother, Sally Snowden McKay, 75, and their cousin, Memphis blues guitarist Joseph “Lee” Baker, 52, were murdered on the estate’s grounds.
A quarter century later, in a shocking twist of fate, McKay was killed in the same home — by the same man who had killed her mother and cousin.
McKay, 63, was found stabbed and bludgeoned to death at the top of the stairs of the home she revered on March 25, 2020.
Catching her killer didn’t take long. The man who fatally attacked her jumped from a second story window when police arrived and ran down the sweeping lawn into the lake, where he drowned.
When police pulled the man’s body out of the water, they realized who it was: former neighbor Travis Lewis, who had been convicted at 17 years old for the 1996 murders of McKay’s mother and cousin.
Lewis pleaded guilty to the murders but never confessed to them, telling police that another man was responsible, authorities said.
Even though Lewis was convicted of killing McKay’s mother and cousin, she befriended him after he went to prison, even supporting his early release.
McKay also felt bad that Lewis was just a teenager when the crimes occurred and believed him when he maintained that someone else was responsible, Crittenden County Sheriff Mike Allen said.
Longtime friend Frank Byrd told McKay he didn’t think befriending Lewis was a good idea, but “she didn’t answer me,” he said.
In 2018, Lewis was released on parole and McKay hired him to do work on the property.
About a year and a half later, their relationship soured when $10,000 in cash from the sale of a chandelier at the home vanished.
McKay knew that Travis had been at the house that day and she fired him, Hutton said.
Hutton and her family were shocked when they learned that the same man killed her sister, mother and cousin — 23 years apart.
“We are all just in disbelief,” she said.