Search Results: forgiving someone

Take this case for example.

It started in 1996 when Sally Snowden McKay, 75, and her nephew, musician Joseph ‘Lee’ Baker, 52, were found shot dead inside their home.

It was understood they’d disturbed a burglar and the suspect – 16-year-old Travis Lewis – had shot them in fright.

He then, reportedly, set fire to the house. The teenager, who had been living with his parents nearby, was quickly arrested and charged with the double murder. Despite saying someone else had been involved, on April 7, 1998, Lewis pleaded guilty to the crime. Tried as an adult, he was handed a 28-and-a-half year jail sentence of which he had to serve at least 70 per cent.

Sally’s big-hearted daughter, Martha McKay, believed he deserved to be rehabilitated. A practising Buddhist, she forgave Lewis for what he’d done and began writing to him in prison.

When Lewis was eventually freed in 2018, after serving 22 years, Martha quietly gave him a job. By this time, she had moved to Snowden House (the house her mother was killed in), having bought it from the rest of the family. She had renovated and restored the run-down property, with all its ghosts and dark past, into a high-end bed-and-breakfast and wedding venue. It meant that Lewis, 39, was literally back at the scene of his crime with Martha, locally known as the Lady of the Lake, demonstrating the ultimate forgiveness.

But on Wednesday, March 25 of this year, police responded to an alarm at Snowden House. History was repeating itself as they quickly discovered a body.

Martha, 63, was found at the top of the marble stairs wrapped in a blanket. She’d been stabbed. The suspect, Travis Lewis, fled the scene and was observed by the police jumping into the lake and swimming under water but he never came back up. Forensic specialist later recovered his body.