Martha McKay had every reason in the world to hate Travis Lewis.
In 1996, when he was just 16 years old, he murdered her mother, Sally Snowden McKay, 72, and her nephew at the family home in Arkansas. Martha, however, chose a different path. As a devout Buddhist, she began writing him letters in prison, visited him for years, and became his main advocate before the parole board.
When Lewis was released in 2018, Martha went beyond any symbolic gesture: she gave him a job and a place to live in the restored Snowden House, the same property where he had killed her mother. They lived under the same roof for nearly two years.
In March 2020, an argument over stolen money ended in another murder. Lewis killed Martha, 63, inside that same house. He drowned shortly afterward while fleeing from the police. The most extreme forgiveness imaginable had an ending no one in that family could have foreseen.
