MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — A convicted felon known as the “pillowcase rapist” shouted at the judge and a prosecutor on Monday during his sentencing hearing in Miami-Dade County.
Detectives identified Robert Koehler as a suspect in dozens of rapes in the 1980s in South Florida before moving to Brevard County.
“Make this as pleasurable for me as possible,” Koehler told a victim, according to a detective who testified.
During the sentencing hearing on Monday, after a jury found him guilty of four counts of sexual battery, Koehler shouted that he was the victim of a conspiracy.
Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge David Young said it was clear that Koehler is a serial rapist and described the case of a victim who was 22 in 1984.
“He breaks into her house. He then puts a pillowcase over her head, he forces a garment in her mouth,” Young said. “He ties her up with telephone wire.”
Young said Koehler, who has alleged before that he was abducted and framed for the rapes, was combative, obnoxious and lacked remorse.
“A woman should not be a prosecutor in any case that has to do with elderly, or women, or children because they are not neutral,” Koehler said in court about Assistant State Attorney Laura Adams, who prosecuted the case.
Young sentenced Koehler to four consecutive life sentences.
“These rapes are manufactured ... DNA is not unique,” Koehler said in court.
DNA EVIDENCE
Koehler got married to Laurie Savage and had a son they named Robert, on Jan. 23, 1990, and a daughter named Brandy, on March 21, 1991. Koehler and Savage got divorced, and he had a second daughter with another woman named Emma, records show.
After a sexual battery conviction in Palm Beach County, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement registered Koehler as a sex offender on Oct. 31, 1991.
Koehler son’s arrest and DNA on a separate case provided important clues in 2020 that helped detectives solve cases in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
Miami-Dade corrections booked Koehler on Jan. 22, 2020, at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, and later held him without bond at the Metrowest Detention Center.
Koehler was already behind bars when prosecutors filed the case against him on Feb. 28, 2023, for the 1984 rape in Miami-Dade. He pleaded not guilty to two counts of armed sexual battery, armed kidnapping, and armed burglary.
Court records show DNA evidence from April 20, 1999, a DNA report generated on Aug. 2, 2023, and latent fingerprint analysis were also part of the evidence in the 1984 case.
Koehler was convicted of raping a 25-year-old woman on Dec. 28, 1983, sentenced to 17 years in prison on March 16, 2023, and booked in a Florida prison on Jan. 9, before prosecutors filed a new 1983 case against him earlier this year.
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