Robert Eugene Koehler, 63, who is suspected of being the “Pillowcase Rapist,” was found guilty by a Miami-Dade County jury on Wednesday of an attack committed in 1983.
The jury convicted Koehler on charges of sexual battery, kidnapping, and burglary for an attack on a 25-year-old woman, now 65, in northwest Miami-Dade in December 1983, according to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.
“With a DNA trail linking Koehler to at least 25 sexual batteries in Miami-Dade alone, the work of two generations of police officers and forensic scientists seems to have come to a just and final end,” Rundle said in a statement via CBS Miami.
Koehler is believed to have committed several rapes in South Florida during the 1980s and has been charged in six other cases in Broward County, according to the Associated Press.
The “Pillowcase Rapist” would reportedly conceal his identity using a pillow, blanket, or shirt before allegedly attacking his victims. He would often enter the victims’ residences through open windows and unlocked sliding glass doors before threatening them with a knife, assaulting them with a knife, and fleeing with stolen property.
A task force was created to find the identity of the “Pillowcase Rapist,” but it was disbanded in 1987 after the investigation went cold. Koehler was not caught until 2020, after investigators collected DNA from his son, according to CBS Miami.
Koehler took the stand at his own trial but told a bizarre story where he claimed corrupt police officers kidnapped and tortured him, according to NBC Miami. He then claimed police used a device to extract bodily fluid from him to plant evidence against him at crime scenes in order to implicate him as a serial rapist.
He is facing life in prison and is set to be sentenced in March.
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