About this episode

The episode explores the brutal double murder of Sally Snowden McKay and Joseph Lee Baker, the subsequent arrest of Travis Lewis, and the complex relationship between Martha McKay and her family's legacy of forgiveness.

In 1996, the quiet community of Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas was shattered by the brutal double murder of seventy-five-year-old Sally Snowden McKay and her fifty-two-year-old nephew, Joseph Lee Baker. The historic Snowden House, a landmark family estate that had belonged to Sally's family for generations, was set on fire to cover up the crime. Investigators eventually arrested fifteen-year-old Travis Lewis, a local teenager who lived across the field in a home his family rented from Sally. Travis eventually pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to twenty-eight and a half years in prison, though he never publicly admitted to pulling the trigger. Decades later, Sally's daughter, Martha McKay, made a decision that shocked her family and friends. A practicing Buddhist who believed deeply in redemption and forgiveness, Martha began writing to Travis in prison. She visited him, supported his parole, and eventually hired him to work as a handyman at the newly restored Snowden House after his release in 2018. For a while, the arrangement seemed to work, but when a large sum of cash went missing from the home, Martha suspected Travis of stealing it and fired him. On the morning of…

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