Forgiveness Gone Fatal: Killer Strikes Twice

An Arkansas woman extended radical forgiveness to the man who murdered her mother in 1996, hiring him to work on the very estate where the crime occurred—only to be murdered by him in the same location 23 years later.

Story Snapshot

Travis Lewis killed Glenda McKay and Joseph Snowden at Little Rock’s Snowden House estate in 1996 when he was 16 years old
Martha McKay, Glenda’s daughter, hired the paroled killer as a groundskeeper after his 2018 release despite family warnings
Lewis stole $14,000 in cash from McKay, prompting his firing in early 2020
On March 25, 2020, Lewis returned to kill Martha McKay at the top of the estate’s stairs, the same location as the original murders
Lewis’s body was recovered from nearby water shortly after, his death ruled an apparent suicide

The Historic Estate Where Violence Repeated Itself

The Snowden House estate in Little Rock, Arkansas became the setting for two murders separated by more than two decades. Travis Lewis’s grandparents rented property from the McKay family, creating generational ties that made the 1996 crime particularly devastating. Glenda McKay worked as a housekeeper at the estate when 16-year-old Lewis, already convicted of assault, shot her and Joseph Snowden during what investigators determined was a burglary gone wrong. The teenager pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, receiving a lengthy sentence that would keep him imprisoned until 2018.

A Dangerous Act of Christian Forgiveness

Martha McKay’s decision to hire Travis Lewis after his parole shocked family members and the Little Rock community. She offered him work as a groundskeeper at the very location where he had murdered her mother, viewing the gesture as an ultimate expression of Christian forgiveness and belief in rehabilitation. Lewis worked alongside his own mother, Gladis, who also served as a housekeeper at the estate. The arrangement blurred employer-employee boundaries, given the intertwined family histories and the weight of the unresolved trauma hanging over every interaction at the property.

Warning Signs That Went Unheeded

Gladis Lewis warned Martha McKay about her son’s deteriorating behavior after he stole $14,000 in cash from a chandelier sale. Despite this clear red flag and the mother’s concerns about her son’s pattern of theft, McKay’s response came slowly. She eventually fired Lewis and banned him from the estate in early 2020, but the decision arrived too late. Experts in restorative justice later pointed out that McKay’s informal approach lacked the months-long mediation and professional oversight that formal victim-offender reconciliation programs require to succeed safely.

The Final, Fatal Encounter

On March 25, 2020, Martha McKay activated her silent alarm system. Police arrived to find the 63-year-old woman’s body at the top of the estate’s stairs—stabbed and bludgeoned in a scene eerily mirroring the 1996 murders. Travis Lewis had returned to the property despite being banned, attacking McKay in an act of apparent retaliation for his termination. Investigators later recovered Lewis’s body from nearby water, with the death ruled an apparent suicide. The Arkansas State Medical Examiner confirmed both deaths, closing a case that could never reach prosecution given the perpetrator’s death.

The Wider Debate on Informal Restorative Justice

The McKay tragedy illuminates critical flaws in unstructured forgiveness efforts between victims’ families and convicted murderers. Restorative justice expert Sujatha Baliga emphasizes that successful victim-offender reconciliation requires extensive preparation—months of mediated dialogue before any face-to-face meeting occurs. McKay’s do-it-yourself approach, however well-intentioned, bypassed these safeguards entirely. The case parallels Florida’s 2017 Debbie Liles murder, where an unprecedented prosecutorial arrangement allowed family involvement that experts deemed insufficiently prepared. Arkansas parole officials faced no accountability for releasing Lewis without adequate supervision or intervention when theft warnings emerged.

McKay’s forgiveness represents an admirable Christian ideal, but the outcome demonstrates why personal virtue cannot substitute for institutional safeguards when violent offenders re-enter society. Parole boards must weigh rehabilitation claims against concrete behavioral evidence. Employers—especially crime victims’ family members—need professional guidance when considering hiring parolees connected to their own trauma. The Snowden House estate stands as a monument to both extraordinary mercy and the devastating consequences when forgiveness proceeds without wisdom. Common sense dictates that radical grace toward convicted killers demands equally rigorous protective measures, particularly when warning signs like theft emerge. Martha McKay’s compassion deserved better than a system that failed to protect her from the very person she tried to redeem.