Florida’s infamous ‘Pillowcase rapist’ to appear in Miami-Dade court for sentencing hearing

MIAMI – DNA tech advances helped detectives to in finding new proof to determine a serial rapist this is set to appear in Miami-Dade County court on Thursday, as he awaits sentencing and may just face existence in jail.

Robert Koehler changed into referred to as the “Pillowcase Rapist” after detectives accused him of the usage of pillowcases to quilt the faces of dozens of his rape sufferers in the Nineteen Eighties in South Florida.

Earlier this yr, Koehler seemed in court as a 63-year-old grandfather who makes use of a wheelchair when a jury discovered him in charge of a 1983 rape in Miami-Dade. The sufferer, a 65-year-old girl, used to be 25 when he dedicated the sexual battery, kidnapping, and housebreaking, in accordance to prosecutors.

“He terrorized an innocent woman in her home,” Assistant State Attorney Laura Adams mentioned all the way through her remaining observation.

According to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Koehler’s DNA path related him to no less than 25 sexual batteries in Miami-Dade by myself.

“The work of two generations of police officers and forensic scientists seems to have come to a just and final end,” Fernandez Rundle mentioned in a observation previous this yr.

Before DNA tech, the primary detectives in the circumstances knew the serial rapist had an extraordinary O-blood kind subgroup.

“We had to depend on a blood-typing system that our serology department in the crime lab used,” retired Miami-Dade Sgt. David Simmons, who used to be a lead detective on one of the circumstances, mentioned all the way through his testimony in court. “That was sophisticated but not nearly as exact or precise as DNA.”

Edna Buchanan, the Miami Herald’s mythical crime reporter, lined the quest for the serial rapist in 1985. After successful a Pulitzer Prize in 1986, Buchanan wrote about it once more in “The Corpse Had A Familiar Face,” which used to be printed in 1987 when the duty power to catch the rapist disbanded.

“Scientists at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, produced a five-page psychological profile,” Buchanan wrote in her e book.

The case went chilly till established felony databases supplied different detectives with forged clues many years later.

According to the arrest warrant, the rape package of the 25-year-old sufferer in the Miami-Dade case used to be ultimately integrated in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. Koehler were convicted of sexual battery in Palm Beach in 1991, so he used to be a registered intercourse perpetrator, however he used to be no longer integrated in the CODIS database, which started in 1990.

When Koehler’s son used to be arrested for a home violence legal in 2019, and he submitted a DNA pattern for a felony database, The Florida Department of Law Enforcement discovered a familial fit and notified the police departments, in accordance to prosecutors. Detectives pieced all of it in combination and adopted Koehler to acquire his DNA.

Decades after his crimes and with a warrant in hand, detectives reported discovering a “dungeon in progress” and safes with “keepsakes” from his sufferers at Koehler’s house all the way through his arrest in 2020 in Palm Bay.