A suspected serial rapist who police say terrorized South Florida for years in the early 1980s was sentenced to 17 years in prison in connection with one case in Miami-Dade.
Robert Koehler, now 63, was sentenced by Judge Daryl Trawick during a hearing Thursday. The 17-year sentence was the maximum Trawick could impose under the state's guidelines.
Koehler will get credit for time served.
Jurors in January had returned a guilty verdict for Koehler on charges of kidnapping with a weapon, sexual battery, and burglary with assault or battery while armed.
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But in court Thursday, it was learned Koehler couldn't be sentenced for the sexual battery charge, since it was barred by the statute of limitations.
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.
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The guilty verdict against Koehler involved only one case, 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.
Authorities said the case had gone cold until advancements in DNA testing led them to Koehler.
According to an arrest warrant, investigators obtained a DNA sample from Koehler's son following an unrelated arrest. That sample was linked to one of the assaults, leading detectives to Brevard County where they followed Koehler to obtain DNA samples from objects he touched.
Koehler was eventually arrested in January 2020 after detectives found a match.
It turned out Koehler was 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.
During the trial, Koehler testified that he was drugged, kidnapped, tortured and made to witness murders by crooked cops, who extracted semen from him and then planted it at rape scenes so they could justify asking for bigger police budgets.
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.
