File: Collins’ slayer investigated in 2007

LITTLE ROCK — More than a decade before her arrest and eventual conviction for the murder of former state Sen. Linda Collins, the Arkansas State Police investigated allegations Rebecca O’Donnell sought a hit on her ex-husband, according to records released Thursday.

The previously undisclosed investigation was revealed as part of a records request filed with the state police this week as it prepared to close the investigation into Collins’ murder.

That investigation ended when O’Donnell, a friend and former campaign aide to the senator, admitted to killing Collins in the lawmaker’s Pocahontas home last summer and attempting to conceal the body. As part of a plea deal reached Aug. 6, O’Donnell pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Many of the records produced as part of the yearlong investigation into Collins’ death were sealed until last week, though the bulk of the investigative file has not been released.

The file released Thursday covered the state police’s 2007 investigation into comments friends alleged O’Donnell made about wanting to have her then-husband, Jeffrey O’Donnell, killed.

The investigation ended without any charges in late 2007 after the couple divorced.

According to the records, the state police began investigating O’Donnell that March after Jeffrey O’Donnell contacted troopers to say he was aware of his wife’s plot to have him killed.

Police later spoke to a friend of Rebecca O’Donnell, who said O’Donnell called her “wasted one night” and spoke about finding someone to kill Jeffrey O’Donnell after he found out about three affairs the friend said Rebecca O’Donnell was involved in.

According to notes from their investigation, police later attempted to have the friend call Rebecca O’Donnell again on a recorded line, but O’Donnell responded by saying she had been drunk and didn’t remember what she said during the first phone call.

When police interviewed Rebecca O’Donnell, she admitted she had spoken to friends “about some figures, but we were joking,” according to a signed, handwritten statement included in the investigative file.

Those figures included her husband’s $50,000 life insurance policy, O’Donnell told police, according to the file. In her statement, O’Donnell went so far as to call the life insurance company to ask about getting the beneficiary changed, but never followed through.

O’Donnell ended her signed statement to police by writing, “Jeff, he travels a lot. I would think maybe he would wreck, but I would never do anything. I don’t want him to die.”

Lee Short, Rebecca O’Donnell’s attorney, said Thursday the 2007 investigation didn’t turn up enough evidence to prove O’Donnell committed any crimes. He noted prosecutors declined to bring charges.

“I don’t think anyone seriously thought that she was actually soliciting to have someone killed,” Short said.

Jeffrey O’Donnell declined to comment Thursday, and asked for privacy for his children and Linda Collins’ family.

The prosecutors who brought charges against O’Donnell for Collins’ death didn’t mention the earlier investigation in publicly available court filings. The lead prosecutor, Robert Dittrich, said Thursday, however, he would have considered raising the investigation in a similar case brought against O’Donnell after her arrest last year.

In that case, O’Donnell was accused of seeking to recruit several other women at the Jackson County jail into a plot to kill Collins’ ex-husband, Phil Smith, and frame him for the senator’s murder by having his death look like a suicide.

As part of plea agreement last week, O’Donnell also pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to solicit capital murder, receiving a total of seven years in prison as part of her 50-year sentence.

Dittrich said the case out of Jackson County had a “similar tone” to the 2007 state police investigation.

“If the case in Newport had gone to trial, I’d have brought it up,” he said.

Rebecca O’Donnell’s other criminal history includes a three-year probation sentence for theft in Randolph County, according to the Arkansas Division of Community Correction.