Photo: Former Arkansas Sen. Linda Smith
Thousands of pages of a case file involving the murder of a former state senator from Northern Arkansas have been released, following a judge’s order.
KARK reports a Pulaski County circuit judge ordered the Arkansas State Police to release the file into the death of former State Senator Linda Collins. Collins was from Pocahontas. She was elected to the Arkansas State Senate for District 19 in 2014. The district includes eastern Fulton County and all of Izard, Sharp, Independence and Randolph counties. She lost her re-election bid in 2018.
The Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports news agencies requested the materials in August 2020, the day after Collins’ killer, Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse in exchange for a 50-year prison sentence. The plea agreement spared O’Donnell from facing the death penalty at a capital murder trial.
Included in the case file were 911 calls by a family member of Collins’, whose body was found in June 2019. The files also contained information that blood was found in the kitchen along Clorox, with blood on the container nozzle, and details about home security footage from Collins’ home.
KARK reports the footage showed a woman screaming and O’Donnell then putting a large knife in a purse.
Investigators interviewed O’Donnell after Collins’ body was found. O’Donnell told authorities the pair had gotten into an argument about a text message not being returned quickly.
Officials have said the motive for the murder involved a financial matter.
Law enforcement said O’Donnell also took Collins’ home security cameras but forgot to delete some of the video. One of the videos showed a person hiding under a white sheet going back into Collins’ house hours after the murder.
O’Donnell pleaded no contest in a murder-for-hire scheme connected to the murder.
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