People Magazine Investigates are in Crittenden County in Arkansas to investigate triple murderer Travis Santay Lewis, who killed Sally McKay and Lee Baker during a burglary in 1996.
Incredibly, 24 years later, Lewis would go on to murder McKay’s daughter, Martha McKay, in a house not far from where he’d killed her mother.
In 1996, 75-year-old Sally Snowden McKay, and her first cousin, Memphis musician Lee Baker, 52, entered her home by Horseshoe Lake, approximately 35 miles southwest of Memphis, TN, when they startled Lewis, who was in the process of robbing the place.
The 16-year-old Lewis reacted by murdering the pair and setting fire to the house.
Despite being only 16 years old, Lewis was tried as an adult. McKay’s family opposed the death sentence, and they got their wish when he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 28 and a half years in prison; he served 20 years before he was paroled in 2018.
Years later, Sally McKay’s daughter, Martha McKay, bought an old colonial-style mansion by the lake just a short distance from where her mother had been murdered. She ran the old house as a bed and breakfast.
And in the meantime, she forgave and even befriended Lewis as he served time for killing her mother.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelTravis Santay Lewis killed again 24 years later
Tragically, in March 2020, the police responded to an alarm sounding at McKay’s lakeside home. They found the back door open, and when they began searching the property, they spotted Lewis, now 39, jumping from a window.
Lewis then ran to a nearby vehicle and attempted to drive away, but when the car got stuck, he fled into the lake. The cops saw him go under the water but didn’t see him come back up again. A diving team eventually found Lewis’s body; he had drowned.
Martha McKay was found deceased inside the home. She had either been stabbed or bludgeoned to death; she was in her 60s. A clear motive for the murder was never established.
More from People Magazine Investigates
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People Magazine Investigates airs at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.