POCAHONTAS — The murder of former state Sen. Linda Collins will be revisited on national television Friday when Dateline NBC airs “The Hands of a Killer.”
The network said the two-hour episode will air at 8 p.m. It will feature interviews with family members, law enforcement and other insiders in the case.
Butch Smith found his mother’s body on June 4, 2019, wrapped in a blanket and placed beneath a tarp in the driveway of her Pocahontas-area home. The state medical examiner determined she died of multiple stab wounds.
Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell, a former friend, was arrested 10 days later.
O’Donnell eventually entered into a plea deal and in August 2020, was sentenced to a total of 50 years in prison.
In addition to pleading guilty to first-degree murder, O’Donnell pleaded no contest to two counts of criminal solicitation in a separate case where she was charged in Jackson County with asking fellow inmates to kill Collins’ ex-husband and others while she was in jail.
Leading up to the scheduled trial, prosecutors had said they intended to seek the death penalty.
