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Joanna Lewis’s family never believed she took her own life.
In 2011, investigators found her hanging from a bath robe’s belt inside a closet. The Solano County Cororner’s Office declared her death a suicide. But Lewis, 36, had previously sought restraining orders against her husband, Vacaville pastor Mark Lewis, accusing him of domestic violence.
Four years after her death, Mark Lewis was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading no contest to hiring three people to throw a molotov cocktail through the window of his ex-girlfriend’s Vacaville house. He had started dating that woman within days of his wife’s death, she told ABC News .
Lewis has never faced charges in Joanna Lewis’ death, although deputies have opened the case twice. This week, a Solano County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson told CalMatters that the agency has reopened the investigation into Joanna Lewis’s death for a third time.