Disclaimer: The article contains mentions of murder. Reader discretion is advised.
Dateline NBC plans to re-examine the brutal murder of former Arkansas State Senator Linda Collins that took place in June 2019. Titled “The Hands of a Killer,” the episode will reveal details about the gruesome crime and how a politician lost her life. It would also shed light on how authorities investigated the case and concluded that one of the senator’s close friends might be responsible for her untimely demise. The episode will air on the network on Friday, July 12, at 9 p.m. ET.
On June 4, 2019, authorities discovered the lifeless body of former Senator Linda Collins outside her house in Pocahontas, Arkansas. Her former press secretary told KATV that Collins’ neighbors had heard gunshots just a day or two before the police discovered the body. According to the Arkansas Times, investigators faced difficulties in identifying the body at first. The outlet mentioned that Collins’ body had already started to decompose by the time police found it. Police initially believed that Collins died because of a gunshot wound. However, after reviewing the security camera footage, they discovered that the killer stabbed her to death, per ABC News.
As authorities continued the investigation, they arrested a woman named Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell for Collins’ murder. She initially pleaded not guilty to the charges against her. However, in August 2020, O’Donnell changed her plea and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, reported ABC News. The outlet stated O’Donnell changed her plea after the prosecution announced that they would be going for the death penalty. The court sentenced her to 50 years in prison.
What happened to former Arkansas State Senator Linda Collins?
ABC News reported that the security footage obtained by the police showed Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell destroying the cameras while holding a knife. Initially, she pleaded not guilty to the charges of first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. Moreover, she blamed Linda Collins’ ex-husband, Phil Smith, for the slaying. Eventually, she admitted to her friend’s murder and pleaded guilty. In her changed plea, she said, “I went to Linda’s house, and I intentionally killed her and then hid the body.” Although she never revealed why she killed her friend, Collins’ son alleged that O’Donnell stole money from his mother, and after a confrontation, she killed Collins.
However, this isn’t the only case in which O’Donnell was found guilty. Another ABC News report stated that Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell started talking to cellmates before pleading guilty. At the time, she told some of her cellmates that she was planning to kill Linda Collins’ ex-husband, Phil Smith, and his new wife. The publication mentioned that O’Donnell knew how she would pay for the murders. Citing the cellmate’s statement, ABC News noted, “She had said at Phil’s house he had a bunch of gold and silver. And we could take that and we could just keep it.”
Her cellmates even showed a forged suicide note to the authorities in which she pretended to be Smith. They sent the note for handwriting analysis and found that O’Donnell wrote it. Apart from pleading guilty to the murder, Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell pleaded guilty to the murder-for-hire charge. She received a sentence of 40 years for the first-degree murder of Linda Collins. Subsequently, O’Donnell received an additional seven years for the solicitation counts. On the other hand, she received a three-year prison sentence for abuse of corpse charge.
After Linda Collins’s guilty plea, the family released a statement saying that it gave them some sort of peace. ABC News reported, “Today our family has found swift justice by way of a plea deal. We know that there will be some who will not be satisfied with that outcome today. And we realize that whatever punishment [O’Donnell] receives will never be enough.”
Dateline NBC will feature the murder case of Senator Linda Collins in this week’s episode.
