Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
My friend and partner-in-crime, David in TN, linked earlier to this story, but I felt like it deserved more publicity.
Woman found dead at Horseshoe Lake, where mother was killed 24 years earlier
By John Beifuss
Memphis Commercial Appeal
Published 8:41 p.m. CT March 25, 2020 | Updated 11:09 a.m. CT March 26, 2020
A man convicted in one of the most infamous murders in recent Mid-South history appears to have killed the daughter of one of his original victims, 24 years later.
Martha McKay — a member of the influential Snowden family that once owned the Peabody hotel — was found dead late Wednesday morning at her home, the historic Snowden House at Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas.
The suspect in the killing is Travis Santay Lewis, according to Crittenden County Sheriff Mike Allen. Lewis was 17 when he pleaded guilty to the 1996 Horseshoe Lake murders of McKay's mother, Sally Snowden McKay, and Sally McKay's nephew, Lee Baker, a popular Memphis blues/rock guitarist.
War criminal Travis Lewis (Photo: Crittenden County Sheriff)
Lewis, 39, had been paroled in 2018, according to Allen. He had been charged as an adult in connection with the 1996 murders.
"Deputies today responded to an alarm at the historical Snowden House in Horseshoe Lake," Allen said, in a statement. "Two deputies that arrived found an open back door and upon clearing the house located a possible suspect who jumped from an upstairs window and ran to a vehicle that he drove across the yard and got stuck in the yard.
"The suspect then jumped from the car and ran and jumped into the lake. He was observed going under the water and never came back up."
According to Allen, rescue teams from the sheriff's department and Arkansas Game and Fish used sonar equipment to locate and recover the body of Lewis, who had drowned.
In addition, "the body of a female was found deceased inside the house." Allen identified the woman as Martha McKay.
Allen said the state medical examiner will determine the cause of death. Neighbors, who asked not to be identified, reported that deputies told them McKay — who was in her mid-60s — had been stabbed, while others said a hammer was the weapon.
Built in 1919, the Snowden House is located several houses away from the Sally McKay home where McKay, 75, and Baker, 52, were found shot to death on Sept. 10, 1996.
Located about 35 miles southwest of Memphis, Horseshoe Lake is notable for its many upscale and vacation homes, and has long been a popular gathering place for Memphis artists, restaurateurs, socialites and others. The Snowden House was perhaps the lake's most impressive property, functioning in recent years as a bed-and-breakfast and as "Memphis'
Premiere Wedding Venue," according to its website.
The site describes the three-story, 6,000-square-foot home as "stately, elegant" and "luxurious," with "architectural details" that include a "grand marble-floored entrance with a sweeping staircase," an antique crystal chandelier and a Carrara marble fireplace, all of which are "heirlooms from one of the original family homes in Memphis." Many items were moved from Ashlar Hall on Central Avenue, a castle-like structure built in 1896 by Brinkley Snowden.
"Snowden" is among the most prominent names in regional and local history, as evidenced by the presence of Midtown's Snowden Avenue and Snowden School. Martha McKay was the granddaughter of Grace Snowden and Robert Snowden, a business investor and real estate developer who once bought and sold The Peabody Hotel "within hours," as reported by The Commercial Appeal.
In a 2015 interview titled "The Lady of the Lake," Martha McKay told Memphis magazine that growing up on Horseshoe Lake had been "just wonderful."
"I felt like I was royalty, with the big house and servants," she said.
"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."
The property also served as a location for the 1994 movie adaptation of the John Grisham murder mystery, "The Client."
Wednesday's events will open wounds that may still feel fresh to Memphians who remember the 1996 murders, which resonated around the world because of the cult fame of Baker. A distinctive guitarist with an original style honed in the presence of one of his mentors, bluesman Furry Lewis, Baker had been a key member from the 1960s until his death of such influential Memphis bands as Moloch and Mud Boy & the Neutrons. In addition, he performed on albums by Big Star, Alex Chilton and Jim Dickinson.
Lewis — who lived at Horseshoe Lake and whose parents lived on Snowden-owned property — pleaded guilty to the two murders on April 7, 1998, the day his Circuit Court trial was about to begin in Marion, Arkansas. He was sentenced to 28 1/2 years. "The families felt it would be traumatic to go through a trial," the deputy prosecutor told The Commercial Appeal at the time.
7 comments:
jerry pdx
The connection to John Grisham is interesting, wonder if he'll take an interest in the case and write a book using the story like he did with The Client. Of course he made the black criminals white in The Client, what do you think the odds are he'd make Lewis white if he wrote a story about it?
What was the motive regarding the first murders and what could possibly be the motive now? What happened to his family that lived on the property at the time, and what are they saying now?? Something deeply is disturbing regarding this, there is something that's not being said, and why?
When I saw the news about the Martha McKay murder, and how her mother had been murdered 24 years earlier by the same individual, it jogged my memory.
In 2009, John Floyd Thomas was identified through DNA evidence as the so-called Westside Rapist who preyed on elderly white women in Los Angeles County for decades.
Here (http://www.laweekly.com/how-lapds-closers-nabbed-the-westside-rapist/) is the 2009 story by Christine Pelisek (sort of LA's Jamie Satterfield).
Among Thomas' victims in 1983 was Elizabeth Askew. In 1986, Thomas returned to the same apartment to rape and kill her 56-year old daughter, Adrienne Askew. Pelisek wrote:
"In Fact for 'closers' working on dusty, cold cases, this kind of multiple DNA hit is the Holy Grail. Webb's genius stroke had allowed LAPD to reach far across the years into the vague gloom of the 1950's, the decade in which the Westside Rapist apparently began his hideous career. Thomas is now charged with the murders of Elizabeth McKeown and Ethel Sokoloff. Officials also now say his DNS was left at the 1975 scene of the murder of 79-year old Cora Perry in Lennox, and Thomas is also the menace who terrorized a single block in Claremont in the 1980s, first raping and killing Isabel Askew--and three years later returning to the same ill-fated apartment to rape and kill her daughter, Adrienne Askew. Inglewood police say Thomas' DNA also connects him to the 1976 murder of 80-year old Maybelle Hudson."
I checked the Calofornia Inmate locator. Thomas, age 83, is in the R.J. Donovan Correctional Center near San Diego under a sentence of "LWOP."
Why was this bad guy even let out of prison in the first place??
"Of course he made the black criminals white in The Client, what do you think the odds are he'd make Lewis white if he wrote a story about it? "
They big bad old whitey man. Of course. Always the "novelists" and TV series have the whitey guy doing the deed when in reality it is a POC.
"In 2009, John Floyd Thomas was identified through DNA evidence as the so-called Westside Rapist who preyed on elderly white women in Los Angeles County for decades."
The negro brute. Attacking the least able to defend themselves. As would a predatory animal on the Serengeti of Africa. But that is where the come from, Africa, isn't it!!
"I checked the California Inmate locator. Thomas, age 83, is in the R.J. Donovan Correctional Center near San Diego under a sentence of 'LWOP.'"
Rape and murder is normally the type of crime that gets you the death penalty. And should.
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