Suspect arrested for reign of terror
DNA hit leads to break in 40 South Florida rape cases from 1980s
A man believed by law enforcement to be the infamous Pillowcase Rapist, who is wanted for sexually assaulting over 40 women in South Florida during the early 1980s, has been arrested in Brevard County, the Miami Herald is reporting.
The suspect is 60-year-old Robert Eugene Koehler, a registered sex offender from Palm Bay. He was arrested Saturday, as a result of a DNA hit, and is being held at a jail in Brevard County while awaiting transfer to Miami-Dade.
“I don’t believe it,” said Koehler’s ex-wife when reached over the phone. When asked why she didn’t believe the accusations against her ex-husband, she hung up.
The Pillowcase Rapist terrorized women from South Miami to Deerfield Beach between May 1981 and February 1986.
Using a pillowcase, towel or shirt to hide his identity, the rapist broke into townhomes and apartments and attacked at least 44 women over the course of five years.
The rapist generally targeted young, attractive, professional women who lived in upper-middle-class neighborhoods, threatening them with knives after forcing his way into their homes.
In virtually every attack, the rapist covered his own face, and often those of his victims, with a pillowcase.
But one victim did manage to get a glimpse of the rapist’s features.
The 44th victim managed to somehow convince him not to cover her head. The information she later gave to investigators resulted in a composite sketch and a sculpture.
But neither the sketch, copies of which were stuffed into shopping bags, nor the sculpture, nor a wide-ranging police investigation, managed to identify the rapist, even though it was determined that he belonged to a rare O blood type subgroup.
It is unclear what Koehler has been formally charged with. A search of Brevard County criminal records revealed only that he had been detained on an out-ofcounty warrant.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office could not be reached for independent verification of the Herald’s reporting.
“We are aware of the arrest, however we are trying to get into contact with the lead investigator in order to confirm the details of this particular case,” said a spokesperson for the Miami-Dade County Police Department.
A search of public records revealed that Koehler, a longtime South Florida resident, was forced to register as a sex offender with the state after a 1991 conviction for sexual battery.
He was a Palm Beach county resident at the time. Miami-Dade criminal records also show a 1980 felony aggravated assault charge.
State and county records also show that Koehler had at least a dozen criminal and misdemeanor driving infractions, and that he was at one point taken to court over a dispute about child support.
Public records also indicate that Koehler may have been working as a handyman in the 1990s.
Koehler is listed as being 6-foot-1, balding and weighing 235 pounds in the Florida Sex Offender Registry.