The home where Richard Wendell Sotka, from the Mississippi County, Arkansas Sheriff’s Department, murdered Rhonda Cegelski and Paula O’Connor can be seen in this WBAY screenshot.
A 50-year-old man in Wisconsin 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” — is scheduled to go to trial next month for allegedly attacking a correctional officer during his incarceration.
Richard Wendell Sotka is currently scheduled to go to trial on Jan. 8, 2025, in Green Bay on one count of battery by a prisoner, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Sotka previously made headlines when he was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder with a dangerous weapon in the 2023 slayings of Rhonda Cegelski, his 58-year-old girlfriend, and Cegelski’s best friend, Paula O’Connor, 53. Sotka was subsequently ordered to serve two consecutive life sentences without the chance for parole.
Sotka’s battery trial was originally supposed to begin on Oct. 16, 2024 and was pushed back to Dec. 11. However, Sotka’s attorney, Jeff Cano, last week told the court that his client has been unable to meet with counsel or review discovery in the case, according to a report from Green Bay Fox affiliate WLUK. Brown County Circuit Court Judge Beau Liegeois subsequently granted Cano’s request to have the trial date moved to next month.
According to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by the station, Sotka attacked the correctional officer with a series of close-fisted strikes to the head.
“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 said 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.”
As previously reported by Law&Crime, police on Jan. 29, 2023, responded to the duplex Sotka and Cegelski shared after the latter’s daughter found the two victims dead inside and called 911. Both had been stabbed multiple times with an 8-inch blade recovered from the scene.
According to a report from the Green Bay Press Gazette, both women had been stabbed multiple times in the face and neck. O’Conner’s body was closer to the front door of the duplex with a knife still stuck in her neck. Cegelski’s body was located in the kitchen.
Investigators quickly sought Sotka, who was dating Cegelski, as a person of interest in the women’s murders.
Sotka at the time was out on bond from an unrelated case in Oconto County, Ohio, where he was charged with stalking, harassment, and violating a restraining order and was required to wear a GPS ankle monitor. But Sotka cut the monitoring device from his leg and ditched it along Interstate 41, resulting in the criminal damage to property charge.
However, Sotka was driving a truck from his employer that was equipped with its own OnStar GPS tracker showing he was on the road in Arkansas.
Authorities in Arkansas apprehended Sotka about 10 hours after the victims’ bodies were discovered. He was carrying about $4,000 in cash and had his passport with him, authorities said.
“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.”
Additionally, Sotka told authorities that he had also “snapped” on a different woman he was dating about 20 years prior to the murders, per the Gazette. In that case, he reportedly knocked out the victim’s teeth, broke her leg, and fractured her skull. The victim in that case also testified during Sotka’s murder trial.
