
Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty Thursday to killing former state Rep. Linda Collins, Arkansas Business news partner THV 11 News reports. A judge sentenced her to 50 years in prison.
O’Donnell had been charged with capital murder, abuse of a corpse and evidence tampering. She had pleaded not guilty.
But in an agreement with prosecutors announced Thursday at the Randolph County Courthouse, O’Donnell pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse, according to Jonesboro ABC affiliate KAIT-TV, Channel 8.
Collins’ body was found June 4, 2019, outside her home in Pocahontas. She died from stab wounds. O’Donnell, 49 and a former campaign worker and a friend of Collins, was arrested about two weeks later.
Robert Dittrich, the special prosecutor on the case, said in April that O’Donnell killed Collins for money and to avoid arrest. But more about O’Donnell’s motives have remained a mystery, and the court and prosecutors have kept details under wraps. Little light was shed during Thursday’s hearing.
“I went to Linda’s house, and I intentionally killed her and then hid the body,” O’Donnell told the judge, according to Little Rock ABC affiliate KATV-TV, Channel 7.
Investigators determined that Collins was last seen alive on May 28, 2019. Video footage from Collins’ security system showed O’Donnell removing security cameras from inside the former lawmaker’s residence that day, investigators said.
O’Donnell also pleaded no contest to murder solicitation charges in a case brought by Jackson County. She received seven years in prison on those charges, a sentence that will run consecutively to a 43-year sentence for the Randolph County charges, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. She will be eligible for parole.
Collins was a member of the Arkansas House from 2011 to 2013. Elected as a Democrat, she switched parties in 2011. In 2014, she ran successfully for the state Senate and served one term, which expired in January 2019.
Collins-Smith was married to Philip Smith, a retired circuit court judge. They divorced in 2018.
“No amount of punishment will ever fill that void that Rebecca O’Donnell made in our lives the day she killed our mother,” Tate Williams, Collins’ daughter, said after the hearing. “Today we find some shred of peace that Rebecca O’Donnell will be put away in prison for a very long time, unable to hurt anyone else.”
In a statement, Collins’ son Butch, who discovered his mother’s lifeless body and called police, said the plea deal “was not what my first choice would have been.”
“The last memory of her that I have was of me making that 911 call and trying not to vomit all over at the sight and smell of my mother’s body,” he said. “My thought on the conclusion of this case is that none of the punishments allowed per Arkansas state law will come close to what I feel is right and equal punishment for her.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)