Gage County Inmate Arrested Following Alleged Assault of Corrections Staff

BEATRICE – A Gage County inmate has been arrested for assaulting correctional staff members with bodily fluids, and obstruction of government operations.

Sheriff’s officials say deputies were summoned to the Gage County Jail Sunday night at ten o’clock, to assist corrections personnel, who were enforcing sanctions for violation of inmate rules and regulations.

Authorities say 48-year-old William Kelley Jr., an inmate, allegedly spat on correctional staff members and threw toilet water containing urine, on them.

Kelley has been held at the Gage County Jail since May of 2018, charged with first degree sexual assault of a child and third-degree sexual assault of a child.  The charges were filed through the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office, August 31^st of last year.   He has an appeal pending on those charges, contending he could not be charged with assault of one of the alleged victims because of a past plea agreement.  A district judge sided with the state in rejecting the claim.

Kelley is the former husband of Anne Marie Riekenberg-Kelley, a missing person who was last seen in Beatrice, April 15^th, 2008.  Her disappearance has not been solved.  William Kelley Jr. has not been charged in her disappearance, but in May of 2018, Chief Deputy Gage County Attorney Amanda Spracklen-Hogan said Kelley remained a suspect in his wife’s disappearance.

William Kelley served nearly nine years of a 16-to-20-year prison term, for child abuse and firearms convictions in Gage County.  When he was released in May of 2018, the sexual assault charges were filed against him.  

The new charges allege that Kelley sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl when he was 36, at a residence near Filley and at a Beatrice hotel room.  The assaults are alleged to have occurred between June of 2007 and June of 2008.