POCAHONTAS, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas woman pleaded guilty Thursday to killing a former state lawmaker who was found dead from multiple stab wounds outside her home last year.

2015: Sen. Linda Collins speaks at the Arkansas state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston, File) 
Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell was a close friend and former aide to Linda Collins, whose body was found June 4, 2019, outside her home in Pocahontas.

O’Donnell, 49, also pleaded no contest to two counts of criminal solicitation in a separate case where she was charged with asking fellow inmates to kill Collins’ ex-husband and others while she was in jail.

She was sentenced to 50 years in prison under a deal with prosecutors.

Prosecutors had said O’Donnell had been stealing from Collins and killed her to avoid arrest.

“No amount of punishment will ever fill that void that Rebecca O’Donnell made in our lives the day she killed our mother,” Tate Williams, Collins’ daughter, said after the hearing. “Today we find some shred of peace that Rebecca O’Donnell will be put away in prison for a very long time, unable to hurt anyone else.”

O’Donnell was originally charged with capital murder, and prosecutors last year said they planned to seek the death penalty.

“The plea deal was not what my first choice would have been, but at least we do have a guaranteed amount of time that she will be imprisoned for and we will have the ability as the victim’s family to argue against her release at her parole hearings,” said Collins’ son, Butch Smith, who found his mother’s body outside her home.

O’Donnell worked on Collins’ unsuccessful reelection campaign in 2018 and was a witness in the former lawmaker’s divorce proceedings.

Investigators determined that Collins was last seen alive on May 28, 2019. Video footage from Collins’ security system showed O’Donnell removing security cameras from inside the former lawmaker’s residence that day, investigators said.

Collins served one term in the state House and was originally elected as a Democrat in 2010. She switched parties and became a Republican in 2011, a year before the GOP won control of both chambers of the Legislature. She was elected to the state Senate in 2014 and was one of the most conservative lawmakers in the majority-GOP chamber.