The Hands of a Killer

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Speaker 5 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 7 He said, we found her.

Speaker 6 She's been murdered.

Speaker 8 And I said,

Speaker 2 murdered? I said, did you say murdered?

Speaker 9 I mean, my world just falls apart.

Speaker 10 I was breaking down crime. It's my mom.

Speaker 11 There was a large spot of blood that was on the floor. It appeared that's where the homicide actually took place.

Speaker 12 People couldn't believe that this former state senator was now dad.

Speaker 13 She embraced hot button issues.

Speaker 2 She did.

Speaker 13 You got to consider maybe there's political enemies here.

Speaker 10 Everyone thought the ex-husband, they were going through a divorce and the divorce was ugly.

Speaker 11 Linda had a feeling someone was trying to harm her.

Speaker 15 She was in fear for her life.

Speaker 16 A former state senator murdered.

Speaker 17 A stunning loss to so many.

Speaker 16 And the killer, that was a stunner too.

Speaker 11 Video cameras had been placed around that house. Those cameras possibly recorded the actual murder.

Speaker 12 You see this white sheet, somebody trying to disguise themselves they walk into the house

Speaker 18 this is our killer i'm lester holt and this is date lying

Speaker 16 here's dennis murphy with the hands of a killer

Speaker 20 Moving out of my office today, I just want to say how humble I am to be your senator, how proud I was to serve you.

Speaker 2 For elected officials, it comes with the territory. Now and then, you get tossed out of office.
For Arkansas State Senator Linda Collins, that day of reckoning with the voters arrived in 2019.

Speaker 2 She'd been primaried and lost her seat in the state capitol.

Speaker 22 That's the way I voted, as your conservative senator and your friend.

Speaker 2 After nearly 10 years of service, she was packing up her boxes.

Speaker 2 It was an altogether bad patch for the senator. She'd been going through a messy divorce as well.
Her kids, Butch and Tate, knew all the turbulence had taken a toll on their mom.

Speaker 21 If you knew Linda, you knew that most important things to her were God

Speaker 21 and then her family and then probably the people of Arkansas.

Speaker 13 That's her motto. That's what she's got stitched on her pillow.

Speaker 23 Exactly.

Speaker 23 Exactly.

Speaker 2 But Linda, a force of nature, if there ever was one, picked herself off the mat and did a little reinventing.

Speaker 2 She returned to her rural hometown of tiny Pocahontas, Arkansas, in the northeast part of the state, soy and rice-growing country, and within months was dating a new guy.

Speaker 2 She was looking into good-paying lobbying jobs around the country.

Speaker 10 You know, she loves politics. Why not continue that, maybe in a different, different role, and turn it into an actual paying, you know, gig.

Speaker 2 But as the philosopher observed, life is what happens when you're making other plans.

Speaker 2 After a job hunting trip to DC, Linda Collins simply disappeared.

Speaker 2 Tate's last conversation with her mom was on Monday, May 27th. The interview had gone well, she said.
Everything seemed fine.

Speaker 13 Talk about anything in particular?

Speaker 21 No, not really. Just made some plans, and that was

Speaker 21 it.

Speaker 2 But two days later, Tate sent her mom a text message and never heard back.

Speaker 21 It was a picture of shoes, and mom loved shoes, and she didn't say anything back. And so I thought, okay, well, that's a little weird, but she had said that she was going to be busy doing some stuff.

Speaker 2 Busy, maybe. But as the disturbingly silent days passed, Tate grew concerned.
A week after Linda's last contact, Tate, two hours away outside Little Rock, called her brother Butch.

Speaker 21 I was like, I still haven't heard from mom, and she was supposed to be in Little Rock getting a dress because she was going to be going to the Arkansas Music Awards.

Speaker 21 And we still hadn't heard from her.

Speaker 2 Butch, who still lived in Pocahontas, agreed to swing by his mom's house. Her truck was in the driveway, but she wasn't answering the door, and he didn't have a key.

Speaker 2 Still, everything seemed to be in order.

Speaker 13 Did you reassure Tate then? I just was over at the house and

Speaker 13 everything seemed to be okay, but she's not coming to the door?

Speaker 10 Right. I didn't see.
I was like, you know, I don't see anything out of place or anything that's odd.

Speaker 2 But Tate could just feel it. Something was off.

Speaker 2 The The next day, she called her grandfather, Linda's dad, who had a key to the house. Tate was on the phone with him when he arrived.
Right away, her grandpa noticed something peculiar.

Speaker 2 Linda's truck was unlocked.

Speaker 23 That isn't mom. That's not her.

Speaker 21 Yeah, mom locks her vehicles obsessively.

Speaker 2 Her grandpa went to the back door and gave it a shove. It was open.

Speaker 2 Tate could feel the panic rising as her grandfather began searching the house, which was under renovation.

Speaker 21 He's, you know, saying her name, Linda, Linda, you know, and he's looking and he says, I've checked every closet, I've checked in the tub, I've checked everywhere.

Speaker 2 But then, in the kitchen.

Speaker 21 He says, there's something in the floor.

Speaker 2 It was a mean-looking stain, tarish.

Speaker 21 I can hear it in his voice that he knows that it's something, you know.

Speaker 21 And I say, okay, I said, do you want me to call Butch and have him come?

Speaker 24 And he said, yes, sis.

Speaker 21 He said, I think that's what you need to do.

Speaker 2 Butch was there within minutes.

Speaker 25 What'd you think it was?

Speaker 10 Mom was a heavy, heavy coffee drinker. So it looked like a coffee pot had been dropped.
And then there was dark liquid just had splashed out from like a coffee pot buster.

Speaker 13 So the coffee could explain the stamp, do you?

Speaker 10 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 But was it coffee? They sent Tate a video. It gave her the chills.

Speaker 21 I'm thinking, this is, that's blood.

Speaker 21 And they're like, no, it's, you know, you can tell they're trying to make sense of it you know make it logical no one goes in thinking that's what you're going to find

Speaker 2 unsettled butch and his grandpa hung up with tate and closed up the house they were walking back to their cars when grandpa caught a bad whiff the worst my grandpa's like hey you know do you smell that i said you know come to think of it i i do it smells like something's dead like a dead animal and uh He said, yeah.

Speaker 10 He goes, why don't you go check that tarp real quick?

Speaker 2 There was a tarp atop some construction material in front of the garage.

Speaker 10 I went over there and I moved a brick out of the way off the corner of the tarp, and when I raised it, a swarm,

Speaker 10 a swarm of flies came out, and I saw her.

Speaker 2 It was his mom's body, lying face down with her arms above her head, wrapped in a comforter Butch had taken to college. She'd been there a while.

Speaker 10 I just threw the tarp down and my grandpa was coming over and I said, listen,

Speaker 10 I was like, you can't, you can't. I found her.
I said, you can't, you can't go over there. And he tried, and I physically shoved him back.
I said, you can't, you can't see her.

Speaker 13 I'm sorry, you had to see that, Butch.

Speaker 10 And he made me just physically sick to my stomach.

Speaker 2 Butch tried to stay calm as he called 911.

Speaker 2 What is your name, honey?

Speaker 11 Butch Smith. I'm her son.
We came to do a wellness check at her house. I think I found the body.

Speaker 23 Okay, honey, we'll get an ambulance out of that way, okay?

Speaker 2 Then he had to call Tate.

Speaker 6 He said, we found her.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I'm sitting on the couch. And he said,

Speaker 27 we found her.

Speaker 6 She's been murdered.

Speaker 6 And I looked at my husband.

Speaker 8 And I said,

Speaker 2 murdered?

Speaker 29 I said, did you say murdered?

Speaker 6 He said, yeah.

Speaker 9 And I mean, my world just falls apart.

Speaker 2 Linda Collins, one-time state senator, mother, businesswoman, had indeed been murdered. Not any doubt about that.
But who could possibly and why?

Speaker 2 Questions left to the authorities. They were about to arrive on the scene.

Speaker 15 Have y'all been inside the homes?

Speaker 2 Yes. Yes, we have.

Speaker 30 When we come back, the hunt for a killer begins.

Speaker 31 There's going to be something up with this. We are going to need CID out here.

Speaker 13 How horrible to think that the home that you knew so well is now a scene.

Speaker 10 A crime scene. A murder scene.
I couldn't imagine. You know, is my family in danger? Could it have been me? Are they coming for us next?

Speaker 23 Linda Collins Smith.

Speaker 33 We got a 911 call from a butch Smith.

Speaker 2 It was early evening when the call went out over police frequencies. Former state senator Linda Collins had been found dead at her home, murdered.

Speaker 2 The first Randolph County Sheriff's Deputy arrived at the scene, body cam rolling.

Speaker 31 There's going to be something up with this. We are going to need CID out here.

Speaker 10 While we were there on site, the sheriff's deputy had showed up and they immediately brought out the crime scene tape, started reporting off the area.

Speaker 31 You can do it to this stump if you want to.

Speaker 10 And of course the neighbors were coming out trying to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 2 The whole thing was was beyond surreal for Butch.

Speaker 13 How horrible to think that the home that you knew so well is now a scene.

Speaker 10 Your crime scene.

Speaker 13 A murder scene. And your mother's the victim.

Speaker 10 I would have never, never in a million years had ever expected it. I mean, for somebody to just love their community and everybody so much to be martyred,

Speaker 10 I couldn't imagine.

Speaker 2 To Butch and his sister Tate, there was nothing about their mom's murder that made a bit of sense.

Speaker 2 Linda was a loving mom and beloved figure in Northeast Arkansas. Someone who had made something of herself despite a hard Scrabble upbringing.

Speaker 10 She grew up very poor out in the country on dirt roads. They didn't have running water even.

Speaker 13 What is that word? I'll give you like grit, determination, character?

Speaker 35 What kinds of things are you talking about here?

Speaker 10 Absolutely, all the above, and then some.

Speaker 2 All her life, they say, Linda had used that drive to try and better the community. Early in her career as as a realtor, she decided that tiny Pocahontas could use some first-rate lodging.

Speaker 2 So she and her husband Phil, the kid's stepfather and a judge, built one hotel, a day's inn, and remodeled another, a way cool rock and roll theme motel decked out with 60s muscle cars and vinyl records.

Speaker 13 Linda ran them both. Do you guys get pulled into the business? Because you're there

Speaker 23 absolutely.

Speaker 13 You're cheap labor and you're available.

Speaker 9 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 21 Our first jobs were picking the weeds out of the flower beds.

Speaker 2 But Linda didn't settle for being just an innkeeper. She founded a county tourism association and decided to run for public office.

Speaker 2 In 2010, she was elected to the Arkansas State House of Representatives. Ken Yang is a political consultant who worked for Linda in Little Rock.

Speaker 13 Did you think she was a star when you signed on?

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 14 If Linda was alive today, in this political climate, she would just be a superstar right now.

Speaker 13 You saw maybe a future governor in her house.

Speaker 2 Yeah, easily.

Speaker 13 What was her political strength?

Speaker 14 Being around people. She just had this spirit about her.
She was a hugger, so she'd hug you, she'd embrace you, she cared about you.

Speaker 14 If you were on the other side, she'd cared about you, she listened to you.

Speaker 2 But Ken, a Republican campaign strategizer, thought there was something off-kilter about Linda's politics. She was a Democrat, but her faith-based beliefs were deeply conservative.

Speaker 2 So seven months into her first term, Linda took a risky plunge and switched to the Republican Party.

Speaker 36 I'm here today to announce that I have joined the Republican Party of Arkansas.

Speaker 13 Was that a cynical, opportunistic move on her part? Oh, no. To switch parties.

Speaker 14 In that day and age, it was more of a political suicide move. You know, you're not going to get reelected because it's a Democrat state.

Speaker 36 Hello, I'm Linda Collins-Smith.

Speaker 2 During disasters. But Linda did get re-elected.
In fact, she won an even bigger job, state senator.

Speaker 13 So here you are, the Arkansas Senate.

Speaker 2 Where's your seat, Senator?

Speaker 38 Seat right here to the right.

Speaker 2 Gary Stubblefield served with Linda in the Senate from 2015 to 2019. He worked with Linda on some of the hottest of the hot-button conservative issues of the day.
Issues were abortion,

Speaker 2 gun rights,

Speaker 17 children's rights especially.

Speaker 38 Children's rights, freedom, everything that the Bill of Rights stood for in the Constitution. That's what Linda was for.

Speaker 2 And was she effective, Senator?

Speaker 38 Yes, she was very effective.

Speaker 13 She got business done, huh?

Speaker 21 Yeah, she did.

Speaker 39 We've got to hold people accountable, and this is the way we handle this.

Speaker 2 Effective, he says, because of how tirelessly Linda fought for her constituents.

Speaker 2 She was only five feet tall, but her pugnacious style won her a football nickname in the chamber, the linebacker.

Speaker 8 This bill was hijacked. It was hijacked on the Senate floor.

Speaker 8 And it turned into something that it shouldn't have been.

Speaker 38 If she knew she was right, she would fight to the very end. She would not give up.

Speaker 13 Of course, that stock could put a lot of noses out of joints.

Speaker 35 You know, in some cases.

Speaker 38 Sure, but

Speaker 38 she wasn't there to make friends.

Speaker 2 Linda's kids knew their itty-bitty mom wasn't cowed by anybody.

Speaker 10 There was a few instances, I guess, where some other people there had tried to

Speaker 10 physically intimidate her by standing up to her because they were larger, you know, folks.

Speaker 10 And so she'd come up to like their chest, and she'd just put that nose right up against her and just tell them that's not how this is going to work.

Speaker 13 And the alpha stuff, thank you very much.

Speaker 10 Right, right. It's not going to apply.

Speaker 2 Political pundits in the state thought it was Linda's strong-headedness that may have caused her to get on the wrong side of the Arkansas governor.

Speaker 2 Whatever, but in 2018, he supported a primary opponent against her, and she lost her seat.

Speaker 2 Linda's marriage to Phil had gone sideways as well. They divorced after 23 years.

Speaker 21 Their business relationship was great, but just personally, they couldn't get past their issues.

Speaker 2 Linda's life was changing at warp speed, but she wasn't one to feel sorry for herself.

Speaker 2 She dusted herself off and saw the what-might-bees of the years ahead, that promising DC lobbying job, and for sure, more time with Butch and Tate's kids, her grandchildren.

Speaker 21 She absolutely loved having grandkids. She was the fun, the fun grandparent.

Speaker 2 Jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Speaker 2 But now she was gone. Her life erased in brutal fashion by person or persons unknown.
Police were swarming the property.

Speaker 31 We'll wait till my sheriff gets here. But yeah, we're going to need in there.
Okay, so.

Speaker 2 With a murderer on the loose, Butch, who lived nearby, couldn't help but wonder about his own safety.

Speaker 10 We didn't have a clue who had done it or what the reasoning was behind it or the motive.

Speaker 10 You know, is my family in danger? You know, could it have been me? Are they coming for us next?

Speaker 2 The sheriff's team, joined by state police, had their work cut out for them, and the pressure to solve the case would be intense.

Speaker 2 Because the death of Linda Collins wasn't just a local story, it was about to become the most explosive news story in the state.

Speaker 2 Rumor quickly had it: her killing was a political cover-up that went right to the top.

Speaker 2 Coming up, close friends learn the awful news.

Speaker 35 I know, Miss Becky. I know it's hard.

Speaker 32 She was my best friend.

Speaker 5 And a cover-up by the killer?

Speaker 11 That was a security camera at one point. And looking at it, the camera's gone.
You know, someone removed those cameras.

Speaker 17 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 24 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 24 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 24 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 24 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 2 Linda Collins, a former state senator, had been murdered. And it seemed that everybody in Arkansas was panting to hear every detail.

Speaker 2 No one was more aware of that than Randolph County Sheriff Kevin Bell.

Speaker 13 And you got all the world looking over your shoulder, don't you? That's correct. Armchair Detectives playing.
Yes, sir.

Speaker 11 Who done it?

Speaker 2 Sheriff Bell spent years with the Arkansas State Police before coming to rest in Randolph County. When he got the call early evening, June 4th, 2019, he knew a storm was coming.

Speaker 11 The dispatcher told me that a person had been found.

Speaker 11 Appeared to have been wrapped in a blanket outside underneath a tarp at Linda Collins' residence.

Speaker 13 Looked like a homicide.

Speaker 11 Sounded like a homicide to me.

Speaker 2 If there's such a thing as a run-of-the-mill murder, this wasn't it. This was personal.

Speaker 11 I've known Linda and her her entire family for many many years gone to church with them and just knew linda from the the community her being a political leader business leader in in our town and you're being rolled out to what's going to be her murder scene yes when the sheriff arrived at linda's home he began logging observations even before setting foot inside i noticed on the house there were some places where security cameras there's still a pole right there there's a mounting bracket right there that's correct and that that mounting bracket i noticed was a security camera at one point because I had seen those security cameras before.

Speaker 11 And looking at it, the camera's gone.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Someone removed those cameras.

Speaker 2 And not just one camera. He'd later learned there were a bunch of them, both inside and outside the house.
Now gone. Who removed them? And when would they ever turn up?

Speaker 13 Where is that? Are we going to get a little help from these cameras?

Speaker 23 Right.

Speaker 2 Then he noticed something else.

Speaker 11 On the sidewalk area, we found a small piece of plastic.

Speaker 8 Plastic.

Speaker 11 A piece of black plastic that appeared to be a tooth off of

Speaker 11 a hair beret.

Speaker 11 So we were able to track back around and you could find the trail where someone had removed Linda from the house and brought her out this way.

Speaker 2 The sheriff was pondering those things when he entered the house. First, the kitchen.
He saw right away the mean dark stain on the roughwood subflooring. Definitely not coffee.

Speaker 11 There was a large spot of blood that was on the floor. It appeared that's where the homicide actually took place.

Speaker 13 Did you know that you had a stabbing rather than a firearm incident here?

Speaker 11 Initially, we did not know exactly what it was. Once the Arkshall Crime Lab arrived and we examined the body and could determine at that point that it appeared to be a stab wound.

Speaker 13 Multiple stab wounds.

Speaker 11 Multiple stab wounds, yes.

Speaker 2 They didn't find the murder weapon, but in the kitchen were signs of a cleanup attempt. a Clorox bottle with what looked like blood on it.

Speaker 2 As for the rest of the house, there was home renovation chaos, but nothing signaled a botched robbery.

Speaker 2 There had been no forced entry, and that suggested, but not much more, that maybe Linda knew her killer or killers.

Speaker 13 But there was nothing in the house, I'm guessing, to explain to you what's really happened here,

Speaker 13 which way your perpetrator's gone, how many people there were.

Speaker 23 Correct.

Speaker 2 State investigators called in to help turned to Linda's inner circle to build a timeline of her last days.

Speaker 2 Two of her closest friends, so distraught they'd come out to the crime scene, offered to sit down with investigators, anything to help.

Speaker 15 I love that woman like a sister, and this is killing me.

Speaker 2 Tim Loggins, Linda's friend, confidant, and staunch political ally, had been tight with her for years.

Speaker 15 If she walked in that door right now, this entire room would light up. You would feel her, hear her, and see her.
She would be the focal point of this room in a good way.

Speaker 2 Tim had introduced Linda to his fiancée, Becky O'Donnell, a few years earlier. That night, an emotional Becky talked to investigators in a separate room.

Speaker 49 And I know you're upset, and I don't want to upset you anymore.

Speaker 35 I know, Miss Becky. I know it's hard.

Speaker 32 She was my best friend. I started out

Speaker 32 working for her as her personal assistant.

Speaker 2 Becky was so reliable, she was soon driving Linda everywhere and even managing her motel. She told investigators she picked Linda up at the airport after her trip.

Speaker 2 Becky was hazy about the travel details because one more complication on that hellish day, she'd misplaced her phone.

Speaker 37 I'm lost without my phone.

Speaker 11 God, bless your heart. I'll beat you over.

Speaker 32 I think I have some screenshots in my text of her flight details.

Speaker 2 She remembered that Linda flew back on Monday, May 27th, Memorial Day. As Becky drove her home, the two talked on the phone with Tim.
His last call with Linda, just chit-chat.

Speaker 15 She's like, hey, buddy, how you doing?

Speaker 15 I'm good, Linda. She said, boy, it's been been a tough day.
I've got a lot of stuff to talk to you about, but I'm too tired to do it today. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Speaker 2 The following day was May 28th, a Tuesday. Becky said she got a text that morning from Linda asking her to bring lunch to the house.

Speaker 32 I went out there and she told me all about the night before because the man out there, Rendell, spent the night with her.

Speaker 2 The man was Rendell Wallace. Linda had just started seeing him.
Rendell had arrived late and left early. Becky told investigators she and Linda argued about him.

Speaker 32 She was talking about how the night before it had taken Rindall like four hours to respond to her texts and calls.

Speaker 37 This is before he came over, I'm assuming. Okay.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 32 she was kind of upset about it, and

Speaker 32 I told her she had no right to be upset. And I told her she needed to slow down and take it easy and get to know him.

Speaker 2 Well, well, that would make her mad.

Speaker 2 I would say, well, my mother.

Speaker 32 Linda does not like.

Speaker 2 Well, she's a senator.

Speaker 49 She's telling people what to do, not being told what to do. She really is.

Speaker 32 She really is.

Speaker 2 Becky told investigators she never saw Linda again. She recounted the details of the two women's final call.

Speaker 32 She said, somebody, well, I may just go over to Rendell's or something like that. And I said, I thought you didn't want me in your personal stuff.
Don't tell me. And she hung up on me.

Speaker 2 And Becky said, early evening, Linda was a no-show for a meeting at the motel. But that Rendell guy, who was he? How did he fit in?

Speaker 2 He certainly caught the investigators' interest when Tim offered this.

Speaker 15 He was probably the last person to see her.

Speaker 2 The last person known to have seen her alive? Not a good place to be in a murder investigation.

Speaker 19 Coming up, the case takes a sudden U-turn.

Speaker 12 Bombshell, another former state senator in Oklahoma, is found dead in his home.

Speaker 2 Investigators were eager to interview the new boyfriend in the matter of Linda Collins' murder.

Speaker 13 What'd you learn about him?

Speaker 11 He was somewhat of a mysterious figure at first. We didn't know a whole lot about him.

Speaker 2 Rendell Wallace. Remember, Becky told investigators that she and Linda argued about Rendell the last time they saw each other.

Speaker 2 Linda grousing that he took his sweet time in returning her calls the night before. Becky telling her to chill.

Speaker 32 You know, she was wondering if he had been with somebody else, and that's why he went responding.

Speaker 32 And I just told her she was going over the top. You needed to stop.

Speaker 2 Becky's fiancé, Tim Lawgins, who had been in uniform himself as a state corrections officer for 28 years, shared his impressions of Linda's new guy with the investigators.

Speaker 15 My entire life has taught me that you never ever

Speaker 15 think you know what's going on and no one is above anything.

Speaker 34 Today is June the 4th, 2019.

Speaker 2 And then investigators got Rendell in the chair.

Speaker 34 Mr. Wallace, would you stage your name for me?

Speaker 2 They discovered that Linda's new guy wasn't new at all. Rendell and Linda had dated briefly back in the day, then drifted apart.
Linda had talked wistfully to Tim about that long-ago relationship.

Speaker 15 At one point, Linda had

Speaker 15 Linda told me she was dating Phil and Rendell before she got married with Phil. And I think I chose the wrong person is how she put it.

Speaker 15 She was seeing both of them, you know, 20 something years ago and chose Phil. And I think she regretted that.

Speaker 2 Rendell told investigators he and Linda got reacquainted a couple of weeks before she died.

Speaker 11 It just picked up

Speaker 34 and was just happy to be with one another, you know.

Speaker 2 Investigators soon learned something else about Linda Collins. She was a good old girl who liked to dance, and Rendell was right there with her.
He remembered a recent evening out.

Speaker 34 We went down to the Eagles and had a few drinks and danced because we love to dance, me and her bow.

Speaker 34 So we hooked up and we went to dinner and dance and wound up spending the night in Jonesboro at a motel, okay.

Speaker 2 In fact, when Linda went off to D.C. for that job interview, she tacked on a trip to Arizona specifically to do some dancing.

Speaker 21 She has some cousins there and she wanted to go dancing for her birthday and she got to go dancing with her cousins in Arizona.

Speaker 13 Was she a good dancer? Was she a rip up the floor looking at me dancer?

Speaker 21 She loved to line dance. She could do some line dancing.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Rell said that while Linda was in Arizona, she texted him asking him to come on out.

Speaker 34 I told her,

Speaker 34 I didn't have the money.

Speaker 34 And so she said, well, I'll be in Monday. She said, I want to see you.

Speaker 2 True to her word, Linda called Rendell when she got home. It was about 11.30 when they talked, late.

Speaker 34 She said, what are you doing? I said, nothing. I'm laying here on the couch watching TV.
And she said, why don't you come over? I said, I'd love to.

Speaker 2 Rendell spent the night, and at 7 a.m., Linda walked him to the door. He told the cops they parted like teenagers in love.

Speaker 34 And we hugged and kissed, and she let me out the door and locked the door behind me. Okay.
I went out the patio door.

Speaker 13 Hold on just a minute. Okay.

Speaker 34 So she walked you out, walked me out, and the patio door?

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Rendell told investigators he texted Linda several times that week, but got nothing back.

Speaker 34 But I thought, well, she's just in meetings, you know, down in Little Rock, you know, she'll get back to me later on. And then I never heard anything from her since.

Speaker 2 Tim and Becky said they hadn't heard anything for days either, but they had an explanation.

Speaker 15 I asked Becky, have you heard from Linda? And she had said she was, she being Linda, was going to go spend the week with Rendell. Well, where Rendell lives at doesn't have cell service.

Speaker 15 It's way up in the hills. Which kind of explained why I hadn't heard from Linda, you know, a couple of days.

Speaker 24 A former lawmaker found dead.

Speaker 2 Former state leaders. Two days later, the news galloped away with a fresh lead.

Speaker 12 Bombshell. Another former state senator in Oklahoma is found dead in his home.

Speaker 2 Reporter Mitch McCoy covered the Linda Collins story extensively for NBC affiliate KARK-TV in Little Rock.

Speaker 12 And that lit this case on fire.

Speaker 13 So who's going around targeting state legislators?

Speaker 12 That was a lot of the questions that a lot of people had.

Speaker 2 Tim heard the news and went, huh? Because.

Speaker 15 Literally just a few weeks before that, Linda had driven to Oklahoma.

Speaker 2 Was it a coincidence or was a killer on the loose targeting local politicians?

Speaker 5 Coming up.

Speaker 13 You got to consider maybe there's political enemies here.

Speaker 12 We heard a lot of rumor about maybe even some senators who would try to bully her into voting one way or another.

Speaker 19 Politics turned poisonous. Could that be a motive for murder?

Speaker 17 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 2 At the marbled state capitol in Little Rock, shock prevailed. Their linebacker was dead, suddenly and horribly stabbed with a knife.

Speaker 2 A second political death that made headlines days later jangled everyone's nerves.

Speaker 12 People couldn't believe that this former state senator who had just lost

Speaker 12 an election was now dead.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 our neighboring state, there was also somebody dead that had been in politics.

Speaker 2 What was going on?

Speaker 2 Reporter Mitch McCoy says it was difficult to know for sure.

Speaker 2 Possible murder appearing. Because the authorities in Randolph County slapped a gag order on the investigation just hours after the discovery of Linda Collins' body.

Speaker 13 You don't know what's happening.

Speaker 12 We have no idea what's happening other than this home is taped off and the rumors are circulating heavily.

Speaker 13 So your audience is eager for the next detail on this thing and nothing's really coming out of the edges of the investigation, is it?

Speaker 12 We would hear rumors days before they would become factual news headlines.

Speaker 2 Linda's friend and former aide Ken Yang says gag orders like this were rare in Arkansas.

Speaker 14 And if a gag order does happen, it typically doesn't happen like the very next day.

Speaker 50 We're back now with a roundup of other news headlines, starting with the mysterious deaths of two former state senators found dead in their

Speaker 2 rumor that the Oklahoma death was linked to Linda's murder fell apart. That death was later ruled a suicide.
But in Arkansas, in the absence of hard fact, speculation about Linda's death exploded.

Speaker 14 And you know, with social media the way it is now, everyone starts coming up with reasons of why it happened or why it didn't happen.

Speaker 12 It immediately blew up and it was the story of the month, if not longer, because of the political nature of her job and the circumstances surrounding her death.

Speaker 2 A little fact, a lot of fiction. All of it bubbling in one unholy brew.

Speaker 2 It was no secret that Linda was a feisty, hardcore conservative had someone silenced her in the ultimate fashion.

Speaker 13 You've got to consider maybe there's political enemies here. Maybe there's a political inquiry that needs to happen.

Speaker 12 One thing that we heard a lot of rumor about was

Speaker 12 politics at the state capitol and maybe even some senators who would try to bully her into voting one way or another.

Speaker 2 Political hardball was one thing, but murdering an out-of-office politician, did that even make sense? But conspiracy theorists did latch onto Linda's job hunting trip to D.C. days before her death.

Speaker 2 Was there something all dark and QAnon there? Even the Clintons, those fixtures of Arkansas politics, were pulled into the crazy.

Speaker 13 There was a feeling out there in some quarters that the reason we're not hearing much about this is the authorities are coming up for the Muckety Mucks.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I think there's some big names here that know what's going on.

Speaker 14 One conspiracy theory was Linda was

Speaker 14 researching or investigating child protected services and found out about the Clintons and so you know the Clintons got her.

Speaker 23 So Hillary, Hillary did it.

Speaker 14 Yeah, yeah, Clintons did it.

Speaker 14 Deep state cover-up.

Speaker 2 Of course, the Clintons had nothing to do with it. But that's how ridiculous the speculation got.

Speaker 2 In the midst of the madness, Ken Yang helped organize a memorial for Linda in the state capitol in Little Rock.

Speaker 13 So, Ken, the memorial, why did it seem to you the only place to do it was here in the Capitol?

Speaker 11 Well, she loved, she loved serving the people.

Speaker 13 Did she love all the grandeur, the marvelosity of the city?

Speaker 23 Oh, she loved.

Speaker 14 She loved all of it.

Speaker 2 Many of her colleagues that day wore her favorite color.

Speaker 13 Your mom's signature color was red.

Speaker 21 Absolutely loved red.

Speaker 13 Had that always been?

Speaker 35 Always.

Speaker 21 She always had red lipstick, red fingernails, red shoes, red jacket. She drove a red truck.

Speaker 2 That day in the rotunda, feelings were still raw.

Speaker 2 I found it extremely difficult to express

Speaker 2 my sadness

Speaker 2 and work for her neighborhood.

Speaker 15 I admired her tenacity.

Speaker 2 Senator Gary Stubblefield, Linda's former colleague and steadfast political ally, also spoke.

Speaker 38 When I spoke that day, I hadn't gotten over the shock that this had really happened.

Speaker 38 It was a sad day. A sad day for Arkansas

Speaker 38 and a sad day for the Arkansas legislature.

Speaker 2 Sheriff, how did you? Meanwhile, Sheriff Bell was working hard to ignore everything but the facts of the case. But if the gag order worked for him, it also worked against him.

Speaker 11 You know, we had a lot of high-profile political leaders that were questioning us about the case.

Speaker 11 And one thing I had to do is just step back and say, I want to work this case and solve this case and catch this killer. And we had to ignore a lot of outside interference in order to do that.

Speaker 2 And a name kept bubbling up. Somebody wants close to Linda.

Speaker 2 Somebody with a possible motive to kill.

Speaker 5 Coming up.

Speaker 11 She gets real quiet and she breaks out in tears.

Speaker 15 And I'm like, Linda, what's wrong?

Speaker 5 A marriage on the rocks and Linda on edge.

Speaker 15 I'm going to tell you another thing. Linda was scared to death.

Speaker 40 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena and I'm Ash and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 27 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 40 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 56 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 40 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 57 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts. Yay! Woo!

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Speaker 2 Who would want to murder the former state senator? Was the clue to be found in her political ties or her private life? With Linda Collins, those strands were deeply entwined.

Speaker 2 But going back to the scene in the first moments of the case, the EMT speaking with the victim's father and son Butch were hearing about a divorce. They passed that nugget on to the arriving deputies.

Speaker 11 We said that her and Phil just recently divorced.

Speaker 2 So, no surprise, they needed to take a hard look at Linda's ex-husband, Phil Smith. Linda met Phil when he was working as an attorney and a municipal judge in Pocahontas, Arkansas.

Speaker 2 Linda's kids, Tate and Butch, were in elementary school at the time, and though he wasn't their father by blood, he'd raised them as his own.

Speaker 21 In the beginning, I think we called him, we both called him Phil for a little bit, you know, until we got used to it. He did what dads do.
He was there every day, and he, you know, he was our dad.

Speaker 13 So things worked.

Speaker 21 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 2 The marriage worked, too. They opened those hotels together.
Linda became a state senator, and Phil was appointed to the bench of a circuit court.

Speaker 2 But 10 years along, Tate and Butch came to view the marriage as an arrangement that went into a deep chill.

Speaker 21 People referred to him as like a power couple,

Speaker 21 but as far as a relationship, it just ran more like a business than what you would imagine, you know, a husband and a wife, you know, from a perspective of us looking in on it.

Speaker 2 Eventually, Linda and Phil separated and filed for divorce. But the settlement dragged on as they fought over their businesses, the money, properties, and pensions.
The case grew increasingly bitter.

Speaker 10 They can get preheated.

Speaker 11 Especially when you're going through a divorce.

Speaker 10 Especially one of that magnitude, I suppose.

Speaker 2 Tate and Butch were stuck in the middle. They tried to avoid choosing a side, but.

Speaker 21 She felt like we shouldn't have any involvement with him. You know, she felt like we should be very on her side

Speaker 21 and shouldn't have a relationship with them anymore at that point. So it did cause

Speaker 21 a strain on all of our relationships, you know, especially with mom.

Speaker 2 No picking sides for Linda's close friend, Tim Loggins. He was solidly behind Linda.
She confided in him about the divorce when they met one day for lunch.

Speaker 37 She

Speaker 11 gets real quiet

Speaker 15 and she breaks out in tears.

Speaker 23 Linda does.

Speaker 11 She did.

Speaker 15 And I'm like, Linda, what's wrong? I came to find out that she was having marital problems.

Speaker 2 Tim said Linda later made a shocking accusation about Phil. Linda claimed to have walked into the judge's chambers and found him watching pornography.
She went nuclear on him.

Speaker 13 She says he's looking at porn. She did.
On his state-provided state-provided computer.

Speaker 6 She did.

Speaker 13 That's a tough charge.

Speaker 2 It is.

Speaker 15 She said it.

Speaker 2 Linda didn't tell just him about it.

Speaker 4 She made it part of her divorce case.

Speaker 2 Phil Smith denied the allegation. However, he was investigated by the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission.

Speaker 2 He accepted its determination that he improperly used court computer equipment after regular work hours at the office.

Speaker 2 The damage was done, according to reporter Mitch Mitch McCoy.

Speaker 12 It took his judicial powers away.

Speaker 13 You can't come away from that, huh?

Speaker 12 The state disciplined him. The state said you could never be a judge in Arkansas again.

Speaker 13 The divorce became ugly. Absolutely.
Very strong consequences for Phil.

Speaker 4 Phil's judicial career was over.

Speaker 2 But when that knockdown drag out divorce ended, Linda was financially on the short end of it, as Tim explained in his interview with police.

Speaker 35 She got screwed.

Speaker 15 Phil got almost everything.

Speaker 15 Here's the kicker.

Speaker 2 Linda appealed it.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 when the judge says that could be another 17 months, Phil just

Speaker 11 collapsed.

Speaker 2 Oh my god, is this never going to end?

Speaker 2 Tim told police something else about Phil Smith. Something darker.

Speaker 15 I'm going to tell you another thing. Linda was scared to death of him.

Speaker 2 Scared of Phil. Of Phil.

Speaker 2 He wasn't the only one saying that. Friends and family said they'd seen her fear too.

Speaker 44 Linda was deathly afraid of Phil for whatever reason.

Speaker 63 She felt scared that he was going to do something.

Speaker 49 Everybody I talked to says she's scared to get the Phil.

Speaker 21 She is.

Speaker 2 Why? Why was Linda so afraid of Phil?

Speaker 5 Coming up.

Speaker 63 My mom was sick for several, several years, and nobody could figure out what in the world was wrong with her.

Speaker 16 Before her mysterious death, a mysterious illness.

Speaker 13 She's saying, I now have a suspicion about about what was happening and that was he was poisoning me.

Speaker 21 That was something that she said. Yes.

Speaker 17 When dateline continues

Speaker 2 police had an urgent question. Who killed Linda Collins? After interviewing her new man, Randall Wallace, police ruled him out as a suspect.

Speaker 2 Those closest to the scrappy politician, including her own kids, pointed the finger at one person, her ex-husband, Phil Smith.

Speaker 21 My first thought went to him just because, you know, he would be the one to gain the most.

Speaker 10 The only person that made sense to me without knowing anything else in her life is, you know, my dad.

Speaker 2 Butch told police Linda was concerned he would do something.

Speaker 49 Do you think your mom scared your dad?

Speaker 2 Was scary your dad?

Speaker 63 Yes, you do. Yes.

Speaker 11 You really believe that there was a fear there?

Speaker 11 It wasn't an act. It was a fear there.

Speaker 63 I fully believe, firmly, firmly, with all, everything, believe that she was afraid of him.

Speaker 2 And Linda believed. Phil may have tried before.

Speaker 10 Let me tell you a story.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 63 my mom was sick for several, several years, and it was kind of

Speaker 63 everybody that knew her knew that she was sick, and then nobody could figure out what in the world was wrong with her.

Speaker 2 It was the early 2000s. Phil and Linda were still married.
when she came down with a bizarre malady.

Speaker 10 My mom is, she's never wanted to lay down. She didn't take naps during the day.
She'd stay up late, got up early, and was just constantly running.

Speaker 10 And there was a period in time where she did about two years where she couldn't, she was basically bedridden, just couldn't get up and do anything, had no energy, which was not like her.

Speaker 2 After a year of various tests, her blood work finally revealed a possible cause of her illness, an extremely high level of mercury in her system.

Speaker 13 Did she have a heavy diet of fish?

Speaker 10 No, not at all. And that was one of the things I asked.

Speaker 10 I said, well, you know, if your body's not able to process the mercury from the fish, and if you eat a fish, a lot of it could build up in your system. But she doesn't.

Speaker 35 So what was going on?

Speaker 21 What do you think that was all about? They were concerned that maybe it was her fillings, that it came from,

Speaker 21 she loved to drink canned Diet Coke. So they were also concerned maybe from the cans.

Speaker 21 But, you know,

Speaker 21 they really just said, you know, the amount is like you basically cracked yourself.

Speaker 2 Drink a thermometer was the amount.

Speaker 2 There was no scientific proof to those theories, so Linda wasn't sure exactly how the mercury got into her body, but she was convinced the person behind it was Phil.

Speaker 2 Though she never reported her suspicion to police, she wasn't quiet about it.

Speaker 13 And she's saying, I now

Speaker 13 have a suspicion about what was happening, and that was, he was poisoning me.

Speaker 21 That was something that she said. Yes.

Speaker 21 She thinks Phil tried to kill her.

Speaker 2 Becky O'Donnell and her fiancé Tim Loggins had heard the mercury poisoning stories too, and after her death, shared their suspicions with police.

Speaker 15 Linda told me that herself now, and said, Phil done it

Speaker 15 almost killed her.

Speaker 10 I just can't believe that they let that go, you know.

Speaker 2 He's a judge, a powerful judge who may have had other secrets, according to a very emotional Becky.

Speaker 32 I keep thinking she's going to get mad at me for telling this stuff.

Speaker 37 No,

Speaker 37 she wouldn't get mad at you, baby.

Speaker 37 Phil used to hit her.

Speaker 37 feel used to hit her

Speaker 2 yeah linda claimed phil would terrorize her during the divorce her joint at the hip aide becky told police she'd seen it happen okay where linda's house is

Speaker 32 and he was just sitting there

Speaker 32 i think he's a stalker i saw firsthand when he showed up at his house that day we were moving stuff out

Speaker 32 She was uncontrollably shaking. Let's get out of here.
Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here.
She's scared of him.

Speaker 37 She's scared of of him.

Speaker 32 She's very scared of him.

Speaker 2 Becky said he would show up at the Rock and Roll Highway 67 Inn.

Speaker 32 I called Linda and I had her on the phone.

Speaker 32 And she was telling him, you're not supposed to be there, you need leave and all that.

Speaker 32 Linda told me he could get these crazy eyes. He got these crazy eyes and looked at me and said,

Speaker 32 you stay out of it.

Speaker 32 Or something to that effect.

Speaker 2 So you were kind of scared of him too, a little bit.

Speaker 32 Well,

Speaker 2 yes.

Speaker 2 Linda changed the locks on her house. She kept a gun in her nightstand.

Speaker 2 And she asked Tim for help in installing a security system.

Speaker 15 I knew nothing about home security systems. I went into deep research and started researching what was out there.

Speaker 15 She wanted a wireless system that wasn't hardwired. She didn't want to lose the system if

Speaker 15 he cut the power.

Speaker 13 So she had scenarios in her head where he was going to come to her house.

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 13 Cut the power, scare her, maybe kill her like a bad movie or something, huh?

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 2 Once the cameras were installed, Linda could access the footage from her laptop or phone.

Speaker 15 I think there was nine cameras altogether. Nine cameras?

Speaker 15 I did the placement so there was coverage of every corner, every window, every entrance.

Speaker 2 All to protect herself against Phil, Linda said.

Speaker 15 She called me one night at 11.30 at night, screaming that Phil's here, Phil's here.

Speaker 2 So this wasn't just her paranoia?

Speaker 15 I don't know, but I know what she told me.

Speaker 15 And she was terrified.

Speaker 2 Terrified and now dead.

Speaker 15 My friend was dead. I knew who killed her.

Speaker 2 Tim immediately shared his suspicions with police.

Speaker 14 What do you suspect then?

Speaker 15 Her ex-husband killed her.

Speaker 2 Really? Phil?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Of course, Sheriff Bell had to speak with Phil.

Speaker 11 I actually talked to him myself on the phone and

Speaker 11 questioned him over the phone about if he knew anything or because it had been an ugly divorce and didn't disgrace for him.

Speaker 13 Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 Phil Smith told police he didn't kill Linda, and he also denied to police and in a statement to Dateline the allegations Linda and others made against him.

Speaker 2 He said he hadn't heard Linda's accusation that he tried to poison her with mercury and he did not do so.

Speaker 2 He acknowledged that the divorce was unnecessarily bitter, but said he was never physically violent or emotionally abusive toward Linda.

Speaker 2 He also said he never stalked Linda at her home work or any other place.

Speaker 2 So police went back to those missing security cameras. By now they determined Linda had been killed on Tuesday, May 28th.
The question was, when were the cameras removed? Tate made a key discovery.

Speaker 21 I was actually able to get into mom's email account and she would get alerts whenever the camera picked up something.

Speaker 21 And so I went back to the date she had been murdered and I scroll, I remember scrolling down and there they are. There's notification, notification, notification.

Speaker 21 And I just remember I picked up the phone and I, you know, I called the lead investigator and I was like, the cameras were there.

Speaker 2 So if the cameras had been up and running on the day Linda was murdered, investigators needed to get their hands on that footage.

Speaker 5 Coming up.

Speaker 11 We speculated that those cameras possibly recorded the actual murder.

Speaker 30 Was Linda's killing caught on tape?

Speaker 11 They finally get the images on the computer screen and they put it on a projector so everybody in the room can see it.

Speaker 16 What were investigators about to witness?

Speaker 52 Hey weirdos, I'm Elena and I'm Ash and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 27 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 40 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 56 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 40 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 57 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts. Yay! Woo!

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Speaker 23 Under this one?

Speaker 46 This is on.

Speaker 2 It had been 10 days since Linda's body was discovered. Yep.

Speaker 2 Her family and friends were preparing for her visitation and memorial service at the church. But things were about to take a surreal turn.

Speaker 10 Some of the parking lot was sectioned off from media. We had undercover agents that were in plain clothes.
The church even had a group of able-bodied men that were part of the security team.

Speaker 10 And so we had this big multi-level of security for this visitation.

Speaker 2 The security was put in place because rumors were swirling about a planned protest outside the church.

Speaker 13 Who was going to be up in arms?

Speaker 21 People that thought there was some conspiracy.

Speaker 10 That this was a cover-up, written to cover-up.

Speaker 2 Sheriff Bell was more concerned about what might happen inside the church, his church.

Speaker 11 Our pastor had approached me and asked me the question. He said, are we safe? I told the pastor, if something doesn't change, you're going to shake hands with the killer.

Speaker 13 Well, that got his attention.

Speaker 11 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Questions followed?

Speaker 11 A lot of questions.

Speaker 13 But you weren't given any answers.

Speaker 11 I couldn't give him any answers. That's all I could tell him.

Speaker 2 The sheriff believed Linda's killer was someone she knew, someone who would likely show up that day. At the same time, back at the station, investigators were looking at a key piece of evidence.

Speaker 2 Remember, Tate told detectives that the security cameras outside her mother's home had been triggered the day she was likely murdered.

Speaker 11 We speculated that those cameras possibly recorded the actual murder or at least recorded the events leading up to the murder.

Speaker 2 The cameras were missing. Sheriff Bell felt Linda's killer or killers must have taken them from the crime scene.
However, the footage could be accessed online.

Speaker 2 Investigators learned that someone, they couldn't tell who had logged into Linda's account after she died. Perhaps the killer trying to delete the footage.

Speaker 2 If any still existed, they needed to find it.

Speaker 11 So we reached out to the camera company and we served them with subpoenas and search warrants.

Speaker 11 And a couple days later, we received a package from FedEx at the sheriff's office that had a thumb drive in it that had all of the information that was on the cloud on Linda's camera system.

Speaker 2 The package arrived the same day as Linda's visitation.

Speaker 2 And so as mourners prepared to gather at the church, Sheriff Bell and the other investigators moved into high gear, screening the security camera footage.

Speaker 11 And we're gathered around with our I.T. people and they're trying to get all this footage downloading and get it going.

Speaker 11 So they finally get the images on the computer screen and they put it on a projector so everybody in the room can see it. And we're going through that in real time with them.

Speaker 13 You don't know what you're going to see. Right.
There's no table of contents with this thing. Right.

Speaker 2 Clip by clip, the videos played, revealing a timeline to investigators. They could see Linda at home that afternoon talking with her assistant Becky.

Speaker 23 Look.

Speaker 36 It has a delay in sending, it's what's happened.

Speaker 2 Then after a few minutes, Becky left Linda's house, saying goodbye, just as she told investigators.

Speaker 2 Cut to three hours later, that's when the camera on the garage revealed something frightening. The sound of blood-curdling screams.
Linda's.

Speaker 11 The household camera actually recorded the audio of the actual murder itself.

Speaker 2 We aren't playing it here, but the camera's microphone had captured the last moments of Linda's life as she was being brutally murdered.

Speaker 2 There was also this video taken the night of the murder, someone or someones hiding under a white sheet, sneaking back into the house.

Speaker 2 And as the team continued to watch the videos, it became abundantly clear to them who killed Linda.

Speaker 11 That was a moment when all of the investigators were like, this is our killer.

Speaker 2 But they had no time to celebrate because they knew the suspect would most most certainly show up at the visitation only minutes away. They needed to make an arrest now.

Speaker 11 At that point, I left, took a couple of deputies with me and a couple of state troopers, and we set up surveillance knowing that our investigators are in the process of preparing an arrest warrant.

Speaker 2 The sheriff and his team scoped out the suspect's house, waiting for news that the warrant greenlighting the arrest had been signed.

Speaker 11 So we're in the middle of a cornfield watching, and all of the sudden, a vehicle pulls out and they're leaving and heading in the direction of the church.

Speaker 13 It's showtime, huh?

Speaker 19 We are rolling.

Speaker 2 The truck carrying the suspect began the roughly 15-mile drive from the house to the church by then filled with mourners.

Speaker 10 And so we were meeting and greeting all the family and friends and crying and hugging. And there was a whole group from Little Rock of senators and stuff that came in.

Speaker 10 And, you know, here we are trying to do that and just grieve and just memorialize our mother.

Speaker 2 They were unaware that Linda's alleged killer was heading straight for them. But the sheriff knew exactly what was about to happen, and it was an affront.

Speaker 11 We are headed toward the church, which was a church where I go to church at, and a church where Linda went to church, and her entire family went to church, and to walk in there like nothing had happened.

Speaker 2 Not on his watch.

Speaker 11 So we're following the vehicle.

Speaker 11 And I've got a parade of unmarked vehicles behind me, of state troopers and deputies, and we're following along and I'm on the phone with the lead investigator from the state police asking him where are you at on this warrant because we are headed to the church and I would give him a play-by-play you know we're five minutes out we're three minutes out and finally I told the investigator I said we are within a mile of the church where are you at on this warrant At that point, the investigator told me the judge just signed the warrant, you're good to go.

Speaker 11 So I told the deputy that was driving the vehicle I was in, I said, light them up.

Speaker 5 Coming up.

Speaker 10 The police came to us and they said, we're sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 19 Police deliver the news that will stun everyone.

Speaker 10 We were just as surprised as everybody else was.

Speaker 2 Didn't compute to you. Didn't make sense.

Speaker 12 How is this possible?

Speaker 17 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 2 Sheriff Kevin Bell and his team of deputies and state police were convinced they knew who had killed Linda Collins.

Speaker 2 They were now following that suspect, the passenger in a truck headed toward Linda's visitation. And they needed to make the arrest before the alleged killer got there.

Speaker 13 So all of a sudden here comes a blue light and you got on the dash.

Speaker 11 Correct. And nothing happened.
They didn't stop.

Speaker 2 And now they were getting closer and closer to the church. Time was running out.

Speaker 11 And I told my deputy, I said, well, I don't know know what's fixing to happen, but it's fixing to go down right here.

Speaker 2 Finally, the truck stopped. Deputies and state police surrounded it, guns drawn.

Speaker 13 What are the words?

Speaker 11 We've done what's called a felony traffic stop, ordered them to get out of the vehicle and, you know, to walk back to us backwards and show us your hands, you know, the whole deal, because we don't know if they're armed.

Speaker 2 Thankfully, the situation did not escalate.

Speaker 11 We were able to take her into custody. And you cuffed her right there? Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 Her. A female suspect.
Not Phil Smith, the ex-husband. It was someone you've already met, none other than Becky O'Donnell, Linda's seemingly loyal friend and employee.

Speaker 2 There she sat, now shackled in the county jail, with no idea about the evidence the investigators had against her. An unlikely suspect for sure.

Speaker 2 But there was no confusion on the part of the investigators. They believed Becky was their killer.

Speaker 15 You're under the risk of the murderer, Linda.

Speaker 32 You understand that.

Speaker 2 We got you. We got you.

Speaker 2 After the arrest, Sheriff Bell had driven straight to the church.

Speaker 10 While we're there, halfway through, the police came to us and they said, we're sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 2 The family was escorted into a back room where they were met by several high-ranking law enforcement officials, including Sheriff Bell.

Speaker 11 I wanted to make sure that Linda's family found out from me what had just taken place before they heard it from anywhere else.

Speaker 21 They said, well, you know, we've arrested her. And I think I said, for what?

Speaker 21 And that was when they said, for the murder of your mom.

Speaker 10 Right. We were just as surprised as I suppose everybody else was.

Speaker 11 And it was a very emotional moment for all our parts at that time that we've got this person in custody.

Speaker 2 But the authorities weren't ready to let the public know, not just yet. So the family went back out into the church.

Speaker 21 We're there at a visitation.

Speaker 21 It's an overwhelming situation as it is and you're expected to take in this information and then they kind of tell you to go back out, you know, to your visitation and try to act normal.

Speaker 10 And act like you didn't, you don't know what happened.

Speaker 21 Yeah, act like you don't know that this arrest just happened.

Speaker 2 The family did tell Ken Yang, Linda's friend, who was also acting as the family spokesperson. Ken says it never crossed his mind that Becky O'Donnell was Linda's killer.

Speaker 14 Everyone thought the ex-husband and then maybe some mystery person they just Linda kept from us or some random murder of a state senator.

Speaker 13 But not the lady that ran the books at the motel.

Speaker 14 No, not the lady that she considered a good friend, that she trusted with her campaign, trusted with her hotel. Never crossed my mind.

Speaker 7 We're breaking news tonight out of Northeast Arkansas State.

Speaker 2 Word of the arrest broke later that night and became the lead story on the local news.

Speaker 51 Details still limited, but we're told a woman was arrested in Pocahontas today. Key Cafor's Mitch McCoy joining us now live.

Speaker 2 Reporter Mitch McCoy says Becky O'Donnell wasn't on anyone's list of potential suspects, and certainly not those of the armchair detectives who'd filled the void of information with conjecture and conspiracies.

Speaker 2 He admits he had no idea who she was.

Speaker 12 There's been so much speculation that it was going to be Phil. And so I remember searching Rebecca O'Donnell on Facebook.

Speaker 12 And the first picture that pops up is this beautiful, heart-warming picture of the two of them, Linda and Becky, from the campaign days.

Speaker 13 Didn't compute to you. It didn't make sense.

Speaker 12 It didn't make sense. It was like, this is just out of left field.
You know, how is this possible?

Speaker 2 But possible it was. That's because investigators had learned a whole lot more about Becky O'Donnell.
It turned out Linda's once trusted aide was a keeper of dark secrets. Lots of them.

Speaker 19 Coming up, Becky's motive for murder. What could it be?

Speaker 13 Something's wrong with the books here.

Speaker 10 It makes no sense at all.

Speaker 21 I knew that the handwriting on there was not mom's.

Speaker 16 And what else had she been hiding?

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Speaker 2 Becky O'Donnell had been arrested for the murder of Linda Collins. A shock to so many, but for the investigators.
Becky had been on their radar from the very beginning.

Speaker 49 You know, I've talked to Tim and Becky, and I got to tell you something, Butch,

Speaker 49 there's things that ain't ending up there either.

Speaker 11 Becky was interviewed and made herself out to be very emotional.

Speaker 32 I keep thinking she's going to get mad at me for telling this stuff. No.

Speaker 11 And the investigators afterwards said that she appeared to be crying, but no tears were coming out of her eyes.

Speaker 11 So a red flag immediately and a few other things that Becky had said during that interview.

Speaker 2 Investigators learned that Becky had lied to them about losing her cell phone. Do you have a home phone? No.

Speaker 11 Used to sale?

Speaker 32 Yeah, I lost that today.

Speaker 2 You lost it?

Speaker 2 Today?

Speaker 2 Records indicated she was still using it after she said she'd lost it. They picked up on other inconsistencies too, and questioned her story about seeing Linda for the last time.

Speaker 2 Remember, Becky said they'd gotten into a fight.

Speaker 32 When I left, she was mad at me.

Speaker 37 Why was she mad at you?

Speaker 35 I don't know.

Speaker 2 In his police interview, Tim, the fiancée, said Becky had gone by more than once.

Speaker 15 Becky's been going by our house about every day, knocking on the door and, you know, calling her and texting her and, hey, you know, answer, we're getting worried.

Speaker 2 Remember, Linda's son Butch first went to her house on Monday, the day before they found her body. And when he arrived, he saw Becky there, too.

Speaker 2 She was knocking at the door, but he recalled Becky was acting a little odd.

Speaker 13 What's the demeanor you're seeing in her?

Speaker 10 It's just like a rushed rushed demeanor, not really any interest in me at all, more of a just trying to see if she could, I guess, get a hold of mom.

Speaker 2 This wasn't the first time Butch said his interactions with Becky had struck him as bizarre.

Speaker 63 I felt like for a while there was something fishy between the two of them.

Speaker 2 Butch told police his mother's friendship with both Becky and Tim seemed to come out of the blue around the time of Linda's divorce from Phil.

Speaker 63 I'd never heard of these people until divorce time and all of a sudden they were all up there in their business and helping move furniture and do stuff and I'd never met these people before.

Speaker 2 But Becky started doing much more than move furniture.

Speaker 10 From my understanding, she had started off driving her places or running errands for them.

Speaker 10 And that kind of turned into, hey, I really need somebody to go and kind of do some books for me at the office.

Speaker 10 And so she sort of took over a pseudo-management role.

Speaker 13 She's like the right-hand assistant, huh? Right, right. Looking back, had you become a little bit suspicious of why Becky and her fiancé Tim had become so close to your mother? Absolutely.

Speaker 13 What were the things that made you wonder?

Speaker 21 The ability for her to move in so quickly when mom was always so protective of her personal information, her money. You know, she was always so cautious.

Speaker 21 I mean, it took forever for her to allow me and Butch to take care of that stuff.

Speaker 2 What floored both Tate and Butch was a legal arrangement that Linda made during the divorce. She gave Tim power of attorney.

Speaker 2 Tim told police Linda needed someone to legally handle business and financial affairs since she traveled frequently and she trusted him.

Speaker 13 You thought that was strange or not?

Speaker 2 Oh yeah, absolutely. Something else strange.
In the days before Linda's death, Butch told police that money was missing from their grandfather's account, an account his mother had access to.

Speaker 63 My grandpa just recently started seeing money coming out of his account that he didn't authorize. My mom wouldn't just take from my grandpa.
This is not something that she's ever done.

Speaker 13 So what's happened with your grandpa's instinct that something's wrong with the books here?

Speaker 10 For money to be taken from my grandpa, his personal account, it makes no sense at all.

Speaker 2 Then their grandfather showed Tate pictures of the checks.

Speaker 21 I knew that the handwriting on there was not mom's handwriting.

Speaker 13 Your grandpa says something's off here.

Speaker 21 Yeah, and he was concerned.

Speaker 13 What did he think was happening when he looked at the ledgers?

Speaker 23 He thought,

Speaker 21 you know, obviously we knew that Becky had

Speaker 21 access to the accounts.

Speaker 2 But Becky was, after all, Linda's always their personal assistant. So when police asked Becky about those checks, she shrugged it off.
Of course she'd sign them with Linda's permission.

Speaker 32 A lot of times Linda had me sign off with sign checks or something or go get her cash or something.

Speaker 49 But she was on her account where she could sign, you could sign her check.

Speaker 32 No, she would just have me sign her name.

Speaker 49 Oh, you were signing her name. Yeah, she would.

Speaker 35 Oh, Becky, it was not smart back to it.

Speaker 2 Not smart. And police say not true.
Investigators believe Becky may have stolen upwards of $50,000 from Linda.

Speaker 13 So Becky, the employee, it turned out, had been stealing from Linda, what, for a while, huh?

Speaker 23 For a long time.

Speaker 13 And it didn't pop up just until those final weeks. Right.

Speaker 11 And my theory on that is that Becky had been stealing from Linda in the motel and the business. And Linda may not have realized that because she was traveling and busy.

Speaker 2 Police theorized that Linda, tipped off by Tate about the suspicious checks, wanted to talk to Becky about them. And that conversation turned deadly.

Speaker 10 We believe that mom had confronted her about the stolen money, the money from my grandpa's account, and probably had found some other money from the motel that was missing.

Speaker 10 And so I think mom confronted her about it, and in a fit of rage between the two of them, then she grabbed a knife and killed her.

Speaker 2 There is no video showing it happened, but investigators believe Becky stabbed Linda in the kitchen multiple times, then moved her body outside and hid it under that tarp.

Speaker 2 It wasn't a stretch for Sheriff Bell to come to that conclusion, because he knew something about Becky's past. She'd once been arrested and put on probation for theft, and that wasn't all.

Speaker 11 She had actually plotted to kill her ex-husband at one time.

Speaker 2 You heard that right. In 2007, Becky's husband at the time told police that Becky was trying to have him killed.
A friend came forward and said Becky was offering $50,000 for the hit.

Speaker 2 Becky admitted to authorities that she had talked about killing her husband, but claimed she was drunk and not serious. No charges were filed in the case.

Speaker 2 But it stuck with Sheriff Bell, who recognized Becky when Tim introduced them at a 2018 campaign event.

Speaker 13 This guy's saying, meet my fiancée, and your wheels are going around.

Speaker 11 My wheels are turning and I'm thinking, how in the world did Linda get mixed up with this person?

Speaker 13 Oh, man.

Speaker 11 Of course, you know, there's no way to look into the future.

Speaker 2 But as convinced as the sheriff was that Becky had murdered Linda, there was someone else just as convinced she was innocent. Her fiancé, Tim.

Speaker 13 Did you entertain the thought, well, maybe it could be Becky? Never. Maybe there's something I can't put together here, but never entered my brain.

Speaker 2 And who knew Becky better than Tim? Shocked and outraged over her arrest, he set off to clear her name and bring her home.

Speaker 2 Little did he know that the high hill he was climbing would tumble around him in catastrophic fashion.

Speaker 5 Coming up.

Speaker 64 The stuff they have

Speaker 64 made up on me right now.

Speaker 64 If I was on the outside looking in,

Speaker 2 I would say, oh, wow.

Speaker 15 Linda said, who was going to kill her?

Speaker 13 And it was not Becky.

Speaker 15 She said that Phil was going to kill her.

Speaker 15 Someone was being framed. That's what it felt like.

Speaker 17 When dateline continues.

Speaker 2 Authorities believe they had Linda Collins' killer in custody. But Becky O'Donnell's fiancé, Tim Loggins, thought the whole thing stacked.

Speaker 2 Starting with the arrest, Tim was driving the truck Becky was riding in when she was taken into custody. He says he stopped immediately once he noticed the flashing lights behind him.

Speaker 15 I saw the blue lights come on, and I saw an unmarked fly by me, and

Speaker 15 basically was surrounded by law enforcement, full-on felony stop.

Speaker 13 Again, you know the drill.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 13 You'd been on the other side of this, Tim. You would have worn the uniform.
Yes. And here were guys who probably knew by first name basis.
You certainly knew Sheriff Bell, and there he is.

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 2 Tim says he was cuffed along with Becky, but the sheriff had his removed.

Speaker 2 Tim says the sheriff then told him he wasn't being arrested or charged with anything, but Becky was going down for Linda's murder.

Speaker 15 I told him he had the wrong person, and he knew it. And he said, no, I got the right person.

Speaker 2 Tim still fumes at the dramatics of the arrest.

Speaker 15 All they had to do was say, Tim, bring Becky to the station, and I'd have done it.

Speaker 15 I felt like an injustice had been done. I felt like they had made a public spectacle on this arrest just outside the church that was unnecessary.
I'm still mad about that, by the way.

Speaker 2 Becky pleaded not guilty and was held in jail pending trial. She faced the death penalty if convicted.

Speaker 15 She maintained her innocence. She was broken, obviously.

Speaker 2 Tim says he spoke with Becky as often as he could to strategize her defense and to keep her spirits up.

Speaker 65 I love you. I love you.
I believe in you.

Speaker 65 She got a lot of people. I know that, honey.

Speaker 2 Tim says that as he learned about some of the evidence against Becky, it appeared the prosecution's case was on very thin ice.

Speaker 13 What's the allegation goes? She's stealing with both hands from her boss?

Speaker 15 They're saying she's stealing. She was doing what was part of her job, and that's how she explained it to me.

Speaker 15 Well, they're saying I stole money, but I went to Walmart and made a run for for the motel. I didn't steal anything.
I mean, and I'd seen her do that.

Speaker 15 I'd literally seen Linda hand her her credit card and say, go do this. That's not a motive for murder.

Speaker 15 That made no sense to me because I knew that Linda had granted her some permissions to do that sort of thing.

Speaker 13 And yet she was the last person known to have seen her. Yes.

Speaker 13 She admitted there'd been some sort of a dispute, an argument between them.

Speaker 31 Yes.

Speaker 13 And she lied to them about her cell phone. She said she'd lost it and she hadn't.
Cops don't like to be lied to as a uniform guy. A uniform guide, you know that totally.

Speaker 23 Absolutely.

Speaker 13 So she's getting herself in a jam here.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 2 A jam, sure, admits Tim. But none of it was evidence Becky committed murder.
No, for Tim, it felt like something else. Like Becky was a Patsy set up to take the fall for the real killer.

Speaker 15 It felt like there was a cover-up, that my friend had been murdered and justice wasn't going to be served and someone was being framed. That's what it felt like.

Speaker 2 And behind bars, the alleged frame-up job seemed to have Becky rattled.

Speaker 64 Baby, they're that good, they're that powerful.

Speaker 65 The stuff they have

Speaker 64 made up on me right now.

Speaker 64 If I was on the outside looking in,

Speaker 65 I would say, oh, wow.

Speaker 65 Okay.

Speaker 13 Aaron Casanelli is Tim's attorney.

Speaker 7 Tim was concerned that there was a cover-up and that they were trying to protect her ex-husband to the detriment of Becky.

Speaker 2 Tim still thought the real killer was Linda's ex-husband.

Speaker 15 Linda said who was going to kill her and she was killed and that was not Becky. She said that Phil was going to kill her.
She said that repeatedly over and over.

Speaker 2 But Phil Smith had been cleared by authorities.

Speaker 11 We felt pretty comfortable with Phil very early on in the investigation that he was not involved in it.

Speaker 2 Even so, Tim was unmoved. And according to his attorney, the man who had spent nearly 30 years in law enforcement was was fast losing faith in his profession.

Speaker 7 He couldn't believe that he had dedicated his life to a system that was going to make such a grave error in convicting an innocent person.

Speaker 2 Tim wasn't alone in thinking something potentially sinister was afoot.

Speaker 2 Because while the evidence in the case was kept sealed away from the public, every development was closely followed, reported on, and speculated about.

Speaker 12 There were headlines coming out for months, and it was,

Speaker 12 this judge has recused himself from the case. Now we have this prosecutor recusing himself.

Speaker 13 What's that about?

Speaker 12 Then we have another judge recusing himself.

Speaker 13 What's going on?

Speaker 12 And that added to the conspiracy theories behind her death and who all is involved in Linda's murder and the recusals of each of these figures contributed to the rumor mill here.

Speaker 2 But if the rumor mill agreed with Tim that there was more to this story, Tim bristled at the direction in which some of the conspiracies were pointing.

Speaker 13 You know, Tim, there's another way they tell this story. And I'm talking about the court of public opinion, who thinks that you're in on this all the way.
Do you go back to the house with her?

Speaker 13 Do you help her move the body? Because people wonder how Becky by herself can move. There's a reason they call it dead weight that she would have been able to wrangle that body outside

Speaker 2 without help.

Speaker 15 I know there's a certain percentage of people that don't know me on the outside looking in that said, yeah, he probably had something to do with it.

Speaker 11 I get that.

Speaker 13 Let me put it to you direct, Tim.

Speaker 11 Were you there?

Speaker 13 Did you help afterwards? Did you move the body?

Speaker 18 Asked and answered, and the answer is the same.

Speaker 15 Negative, I did not.

Speaker 2 Seven months to the day after Becky O'Donnell was arrested for allegedly killing Linda, the case took a bizarre turn when startling new charges were brought against her, including solicitation to commit capital murder.

Speaker 11 She was going to try to arrange the killing of Phil Smith and make it appear to be a suicide and Phil Smith take responsibility for the killing of Linda.

Speaker 13 So they're going to put a note on his desk or in his hand or something saying, I killed Linda.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 2 The suicide note was to be Becky's ticket to freedom.

Speaker 2 At least that was the tale told by jailhouse informants, plural, who came forward to claim that Becky was trying to hire them to kill not just Phil, but also his wife as well as the judge and prosecutor.

Speaker 2 She also planned to have any evidence against her destroyed.

Speaker 13 Put viruses in the computer to destroy the case file.

Speaker 11 Blow up her car.

Speaker 13 In the impound lot. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah, she was going to whatever length possible to destroy whoever and whatever could get in her way of her freedom.

Speaker 2 Becky pleaded not guilty. And to Tim, it was just further proof that the fix was in.

Speaker 13 She was in there being a James Bond villain, right? She was going to destroy property. She's going to kill judges.
She was going to kill prosecutors.

Speaker 13 She's going to have her little minions go out there from the jail and take care of business for her,

Speaker 13 including killing the ex-husband.

Speaker 15 That was insane to me. It was so insane that I didn't believe a word of it.
I thought that that showed the desperation of the prosecutors.

Speaker 15 They were so desperate they didn't have enough evidence that they were just willing to listen to some jailhouse snitches.

Speaker 2 Tim remained steadfast in his defense of Becky. The authorities, meanwhile, were resolute that Becky would be held accountable for killing Linda.

Speaker 2 But before the case could reach trial, a key piece of evidence would force the shocking truth to be revealed.

Speaker 12 There was one image that turned out to be the smoking gun in this case.

Speaker 5 Coming up.

Speaker 13 Have you ever had an investigative moment like that?

Speaker 11 No, that was a high-five moment.

Speaker 30 The single image that solved the mystery.

Speaker 12 Becky's face drops.

Speaker 12 And I still don't even have words to describe what that facial expression means.

Speaker 2 The summer of 2020. A year after Linda's murder, it seemed like Becky O'Donnell was on her way to trial.

Speaker 13 She's saying I didn't do it.

Speaker 11 Correct. Wrong person.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 2 That's a look, Becky. But law enforcement was 100% sure Becky was the right person.

Speaker 36 It has a delay in sending, it's what's happened.

Speaker 2 And the reason why goes back to that home security camera video they'd recovered.

Speaker 2 Yes, it had captured the awful sounds of Linda being killed and video of the killer disguised in a sheet, but there was more.

Speaker 2 The day they downloaded it, they discovered a look-at-me piece of video that wrapped this case up in a bow for the investigators and prosecutors.

Speaker 13 Lo and behold, what do you see?

Speaker 11 Well, it pops up. There's Becky O'Donnell holding the bloody knife.

Speaker 2 The camera, as Becky took it down to try and cover her tracks, had actually captured this footage of her inside the house.

Speaker 2 Here is Becky with hands on the murder weapon, putting it into a bag, at the bottom of which was one of those security cameras running on battery, seeing everything. An investigator's dream.

Speaker 13 Have you ever had an investigative moment like that?

Speaker 11 No, that was a high-five moment for all of us investigators.

Speaker 13 No question it's her.

Speaker 11 No question it's her.

Speaker 13 It looks like Becky, it is Becky.

Speaker 11 It's a direct shot of Becky's face. You can see the knife in her hand.
You can see the blood on the knife.

Speaker 11 You can actually see her lip starting to quiver as she's placing this camera inside some kind of a bag, which handbag, like a purse.

Speaker 11 And when she dropped it into that bag, as luck would have it, the camera is pointing up toward the ceiling.

Speaker 2 It was this image that investigators showed Becky after her arrest.

Speaker 2 We got you. We got you.

Speaker 12 Becky's face drops.

Speaker 12 And I still don't even have words to describe what that facial expression

Speaker 23 means.

Speaker 2 With evidence like that, it was hard to imagine Becky's attorneys would be able to mount much of a defense.

Speaker 13 So that's say good night, right?

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 13 I mean, these are not dumb guys. They're lawyers that know what they're up against.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 2 So behind the scenes, they were talking to Becky about a plea deal. Of course, Tim Loggins, Becky's staunchest defender, knew nothing about any deal or that video.
He was still fully behind her.

Speaker 2 But then one day, Becky's attorneys contacted his attorney and asked to meet. He didn't know what to expect.

Speaker 15 Her entire team is there, investigators and all, and

Speaker 15 they had a non-disclosure form that they wanted me to sign.

Speaker 2 It was an odd request. There was something Becky wanted Tim to know, but he had to keep it to himself for the time being.

Speaker 2 Tim signed the form, and then came the words that he never thought he'd hear in a million years. Becky confessed.

Speaker 15 Her attorneys looked at me and said, Tim, Becky wants me to tell you that she murdered Linda.

Speaker 13 Rape between the eyes, huh? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was shocked.

Speaker 15 I was hurt. I was mad.

Speaker 15 Here's someone that's told me this whole time how innocent she is and how she's being framed and set up and owned now by the way I did it. Yeah, I was upset.

Speaker 2 The moment was hard for Tim's attorney to even watch.

Speaker 7 I have probably never seen somebody so shocked and

Speaker 20 upset since I started practicing law.

Speaker 7 I mean,

Speaker 24 he was

Speaker 7 beside himself.

Speaker 2 Tim had been so convinced that Phil Phil was Linda's killer.

Speaker 2 And here it was his own fiancée who had been guilty all along.

Speaker 30 What did you miss in her?

Speaker 13 How did she bamboozle you?

Speaker 15 The world's greatest actress or sociopath.

Speaker 15 I mean, obviously, I missed everything.

Speaker 13 So you were sleeping and spending your life with a stab and slash killer? Yes.

Speaker 15 Had no clue.

Speaker 15 That's why the range of emotions when I found out she did it. I mean, am I that big a fool?

Speaker 2 After several months of negotiations, Becky and the prosecutors came to an agreement. Becky would plead guilty to first-degree murder, which would mean the death penalty was off the table.

Speaker 2 Linda's friend Ken wasn't thrilled.

Speaker 13 Are you happy with that? Is that justice?

Speaker 14 Becky O'Donnell deserves a needle in her arm

Speaker 23 tomorrow.

Speaker 2 Butch wanted Becky to get the death penalty too, but the prosecutors needed to prove premeditation. They told them they didn't have that.

Speaker 10 So in the state of Arkansas, without having that, like that email or a text message saying, you know, tonight's the night, I'm going to do it, to get a death penalty is almost impossible.

Speaker 2 On August 6th, 2020, Becky O'Donnell was sentenced. She stood before a judge and said, I intentionally killed Linda Collins.

Speaker 2 She also pleaded no contest to two charges of solicitation to commit murder for the hits for hire she tried to orchestrate from jail. Yes, those stories were true too.
She received 50 years in prison.

Speaker 24 Ma'am, do you have anything to say to the family or friends with Linda?

Speaker 2 Afterwards, Tate and Butch addressed the media.

Speaker 21 We realized that no matter what punishment Rebecca O'Donnell receives, it will never be enough.

Speaker 65 It will never bring my grandpa's daughter back or our mother back.

Speaker 65 or our children's grandmother back.

Speaker 2 Despite all the speculation about Tim Loggins playing a role in Linda's murder, he was never charged. The police say he had nothing to do with the murder or the theft of Linda's money.

Speaker 13 So how do you feel about the court of public opinion hanging you for this thing?

Speaker 15 I cannot describe to you how hurtful it is

Speaker 15 for someone to think you're guilty of such a heinous crime when you know you're not.

Speaker 2 Perhaps Linda's ex-husband Phil, who Tim pointed the finger at, feels that way too.

Speaker 2 In a statement to Dateline, Phil Smith denied having anything to do with Linda's murder, saying, I understand that as a former spouse coming out of a bitter divorce, I had to be the initial prime suspect.

Speaker 2 I knew that I did not commit, solicit, desire, or have any knowledge of the terrible deed.

Speaker 2 He said her murder was a depraved and evil act that devastated not only her very life, but also the lives of her family and friends who loved her.

Speaker 2 Friends like Ken Yang.

Speaker 14 You know, I miss her hug.

Speaker 14 You know, she'd come up to my chest

Speaker 14 and embrace me, and

Speaker 14 I miss a Linda Collins hug.

Speaker 2 In spring 2021, Linda's former colleagues in Little Rock honored her on the floor of the Senate by adopting a memorial resolution in her name.

Speaker 11 All those in favor say aye.

Speaker 2 She received a standing ovation.

Speaker 2 But perhaps the people who miss Linda the most are her kids and grandkids. Butch still remembers how hard it was to tell his children that Grandma Linda wasn't coming back.

Speaker 10 You know, I just sat them down on the couch and said, hey buddies,

Speaker 10 you're not going to get to see your grandma no more.

Speaker 10 Somebody killed her and

Speaker 10 there's just not, you know, I hate it. Of course, I was breaking down crying.
It's my mom. And to try to tell two little kids that their grandma, their best friend,

Speaker 10 had been taken away from them and they just started getting to know her. This is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

Speaker 2 But in that void of loss, there is a legacy of a woman who cared deeply about her community and spent her entire life trying to make it better.

Speaker 13 You were saying back in the beginning, faith, family,

Speaker 13 state of Arkansas, and we had a grandchildren.

Speaker 10 Grandchildren.

Speaker 13 Is that a good legacy?

Speaker 10 Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 21 She just loved people and she loved life.

Speaker 24 And she just lived it to the fullest.

Speaker 16 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9:8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt, for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 19 Good night.

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