Next month, a 50-year-old Wisconsin man will go on trial for allegedly attacking a correctional officer while incarcerated. He is already serving dual life sentences for killing his girlfriend and her best friend, stabbing them both to death when he “snapped in a jealous rage because he saw them being intimate and felt “humiliated.”
According to court records reviewed by Law&Crime, Richard Wendell Sotka will go on trial in Green Bay on one count of violence by a prisoner on January 8, 2025.
Sotka previously made headlines for his conviction on two counts of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon in the 2023 deaths of Rhonda Cegelski, his 58-year-old lover, and Cegelski’s best friend, Paula O’Connor, 53. The court sentenced Sotka to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
The court postponed Sotka’s battery trial from October 16, 2024, to December 11. Sotka’s attorney, Jeff Cano, told the court last week that his client has been unable to confer with counsel or review information in the case, according to WLUK, the Green Bay Fox station. Brown County Circuit Court Judge Beau Liegeois then allowed Cano’s motion to reschedule the trial until next month.
A copy of the criminal complaint that the station received states that Sotka repeatedly struck the correctional officer in the head with close-fisted blows.
“Sotka screamed something, and that is when Sotka struck me for the first time with a fist,” the victim said in a statement after the alleged attack. “His fist hit me on my left ear. The strike hurt my ear and I saw stars. I yelled, ‘What are you doing?’ I heard Officer AG call for backup on the radio. Sotka continued to strike me over and over again with his fist and we moved back. It felt like all the strikes were on my head.”
The victim claims he never gave Sotka permission to strike him.
“At one point I went into a defensive position as he kept hitting me,” the victim said. “I finally was able to extend my arms and stop his strikes from hitting me. Officer AG arrived, and I felt Sotka’s level of tension drop.”
According to Law&Crime, on Jan. 29, 2023, police arrived at Sotka and Cegelski’s duplex after the latter’s daughter discovered the two victims dead inside and contacted 911. Both had been stabbed several times with an 8-inch blade discovered at the site.
The Green Bay Press Gazette reported that both women sustained multiple stab wounds to their faces and necks. The body of O’Conner lay closer to the duplex’s front entrance, with a knife still lodged in her neck. We discovered Cegelski’s remains in the kitchen.
Investigators swiftly identified Sotka, who was dating Cegelski, as a person of interest in the women’s deaths.
Sotka was out on bond at the time for an unrelated case in Oconto County, Ohio, where he was accused of stalking, harassment, and violating a restraining order and ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor. However, Sotka removed the monitoring device from his leg and disposed of it along Interstate 41, which led to the allegation of criminal damage to property.
Sotka, on the other hand, was driving his employer’s truck, which had its own OnStar GPS tracker and showed he was in Arkansas.
Authorities in Arkansas caught Sotka about ten hours after discovering the victims’ bodies. He was carrying around $4,000 in cash and his passport, according to officials.
According to a prosecution complaint, Sotka confessed to the double murder after being arrested, telling detectives that he felt “humiliated” after stepping out of the shower and witnessing the two ladies engaged in sexual activity after a night of heavy drinking. He also consistently denied the stalking charges he was facing in a separate case.
“He said he asked [Cegelski] where he was supposed to go and at that point he said he lost it, he just lost it. He said he couldn’t tell [police] details or tell [police] exactly what happened but he knows he completely lost it,” authorities wrote. “[Sotka] stated, ‘I’m guilty of killing these girls but I’m not guilty of what they said I did in Oconto County.”
Sotka also admitted to officials that he had “snapped” on a different lady he was seeing around 20 years before the deaths, according to the Gazette. In that case, he allegedly knocked the victim’s teeth out, shattered her leg, and cracked her head. The victim testified in Sotka’s murder trial.