Video details about Linda Collins slaying revealed

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Photo: Linda Collins (left) and Rebecca O’Donnell

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – Details from security camera footage from inside the home of a former Arkansas state senator where police say she was killed were released after a woman pleaded guilty to the crime.

Rebecca O’Donnell pleaded guilty on Aug. 6 to the June 2019 slaying of former state Sen. Linda Collins, whose decomposed body was found outside her home in Pocahontas.

O’Donnell, 49, was sentenced a total of 50 years, which included seven years for an attempted murder-for-hire plan to have her ex-husband killed.

The affidavit describing the security footage showing O’Donnell inside the former senator’s home was sealed by a court order until O’Donnell’s guilty plea. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Monday obtained a copy of the unredacted affidavit from state police.

In the affidavit that led to O’Donnell’s arrest, police say the security footage from inside the victim’s home showed O’Donnell stashing a kitchen knife in a red purse with what appeared to be blood on her hands.

“The video showed the specific location inside the residence where agents believe Collins-Smith was stabbed,” state police investigators wrote in the affidavit. Police used the surname Collins had before a divorce from Judge Phil Smith.

In the video, O’Donnell was also carrying a white purse with what seemed to be “a significant amount of blood on the exterior of the purse,” investigators said. Later, a white purse similar to the one in the video was found in a vehicle that O’Donnell was in as a passenger when she was arrested in June on her way to a memorial service for Collins.

At her plea hearing, O’Donnell didn’t say why she killed Collins. But her attorney, Lee Short, said Monday that O’Donnell’s guilty plea was mainly motivated to gain closure for both Collins and O’Donnell’s families. He added that his legal team spent more than a year investigating the case while knowing that prosecutors had evidence tying O’Donnell to the crime scene.

“It wasn’t until fairly recently that we made progress with regards to negotiations,” Short said.

Collins served one term in the state House and was originally elected as a Democrat in 2010. She switched parties and became a Republican in 2011, a year before the GOP won control of both chambers of the Legislature. She was elected to the state Senate in 2014 and was one of the most conservative lawmakers in the majority-GOP chamber. The senate district includes eastern Fulton County and all of Izard, Sharp, Independence and Randolph counties. She lost her re-election bid in 2018.

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