A man suspected of being the so-called “Pillowcase Rapist” was sentenced to 17 years in prison for assaulting a woman in 1983. NBC 6’s Christian Colón reports
A suspected serial rapist already serving 17 years in prison in connection with a Miami-Dade case is facing new charges connected to a horrifying rape four decades ago.
Robert Eugene Koehler, 65, is charged with armed sex battery, armed kidnapping, armed burglary with assault or battery and armed robbery, court records show.
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Koehler had been sentenced to 17 years in prison in March of 2023 in the December 1983 rape of a then-25-year-old woman who was living on the ground floor of an apartment building near Miami International Airport.
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Authorities said the case had gone cold until advancements in DNA testing led them to Koehler, who was arrested in January of 2020.
According to an arrest report, the new charges stem from a rape that happened the night of Feb. 5, 1985, at the victim's apartment on Southwest 128th Street in Pinecrest.
The alleged victim, now 59, was just 19 at the time.
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Koehler allegedly entered her second-story apartment through an unlocked window using a ladder, the report said.
He approached the victim as she was lying in bed and covered her face with a towel while placing the blade of a knife against her stomach, then told her not to scream and to do as she's told or he would hurt her, the report said.
Koehler raped her, then bound her hands and feet with a severed telephone cord and demanded money from her before he took $60 and various jewelry items from her purse and fled, the report said.
The victim was hospitalized and a rape kit was collected, but the line about the analysis of the rape kit is redacted from the report.
The "pillowcase rapist" was so named because he used a pillowcase or other fabric to cover the faces of his victims, usually after he broke into an apartment or town home. The assaults were often committed at knifepoint, authorities said.
Koehler had been convicted in a 1990 rape in Palm Beach County and sentenced to probation, which he later violated and served 120 days in jail.
But that case was never linked to the series of assaults in Miami and elsewhere in South Florida. Authorities said that was mainly because DNA samples were not yet mandatory.
More than two years after his arrest in the Miami-Dade case, the Broward Sheriff's Office announced Koehler would be charged in at least six sexual assault cases in the county.
