Linda Collins: Ex-aide confesses to murder of Arkansas state senator

AP
AP

A woman in Arkansas has been sentenced to 50 years in prison after accepting a plea deal connected to the murder of former state lawmaker.

Court records show that Rebecca Lynn O'Donnell, 49, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder as well as the abuse of the corpse of Arkansas state Senator Linda Collins.

The conservative lawmaker went by the name Linda Collins-Smith during her time in office.

While she was in jail awaiting trial, she asked inmates to kill Ms Collins' ex-husband and other people, which resulted in her also pleading no contest to two charges of criminal solicitation. Ms O'Donnell hoped to frame the ex-husband for the lawmaker's murder.

Ms Collins was found stabbed to death in 2019 outside her home in Little Rock, Arkansas. According to prosecutors, Ms O'Donnell killed Ms Collins in an attempt to avoid arrest over a money-related issue, but declined to go into further detail.

Prosecutors were planning to seek the death penalty before offering her the plea deal.

"The plea deal was not what my first choice would have been, but at least we do have a guaranteed amount of time that she will be imprisoned for and we will have the ability as the victim's family to argue against her release at her parole hearings," Butch Smith, Ms Collins' son, told Fox News.

Ms Collins' daughter, Tate Williams, said that "no amount of punishment will ever fill that void that Rebecca O'Donnell made in our lives the day she killed our mother."

"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," she said.

The women were friends, with Ms O'Donnell serving on Ms Collins' campaign staff and as a witness in the lawmaker's divorce proceedings. According to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Ms O'Donnell's fiance, Tim Loggains, has publicly claimed that Ms Collins' granted him power of attorney following her divorce.

Ms Collins served for one term as a state representative. She was elected as a Democrat in 2010 but switched parties to run as a Republican in 2011. Then, in 2014, she was elected to a seat in the state's senate.

Ms Collins lost her 2018 re-election campaign.

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