A South Florida man, Robert Koehler, 66, has been convicted of sexual battery in a decades-old Miami-Dade assault case. Known as the "Pillowcase Rapist" for his method of covering his victims' faces during the attacks, Koehler was found guilty yesterday of four charges: sexual battery, kidnapping, and burglary, as reported by NBC Miami. The trial, which spanned about four days, concluded with the jury delivering a verdict in just around 90 minutes after the closing arguments were presented.
The conviction brings closure to a case that had gone unresolved for over 35 years until a DNA match in 2020 implicated Koehler. He pleaded not guilty, with his defense attorney, Alex Shear, arguing that the DNA evidence did not match his client. However, prosecutors maintained a string of sexual assaults in South Florida during the 1980s point to Koehler as the perpetrator. As CBS News Miami informs, Kuehler's DNA has been linked to at least 25 sexual assaults in the region between 1981 and 1986.
In a statement obtained by CBS News Miami, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle expressed that the verdict "brings a long-delayed sense of justice to a young woman who had to wait some 40 years to hear the word guilty spoken in court." The survivor of the 1984 assault had recounted her harrowing experience during the trial, describing how she was threatened with a knife and had her head covered, unable to see her attacker. Sentencing is scheduled for November 24.
Koehler has a prior conviction for a 1990 rape in Palm Beach County and has been a registered sex offender since 1991. He was also sentenced in 2023 for another rape case in Miami-Dade dating back to the 1980s. Additional cases against him remain open, including one in Broward County, underscoring the extent of Koehler's alleged crimes across South Florida, as NBC Miami reports.
