'Pillowcase rapist' who terrorized dozens of women in Florida arrested following DNA match, say police
A man who is suspected to be the 'Pillowcase Rapist,' who terrorized South Florida during the 1980s and is believed to be responsible for more than 40 sexual assaults, was arrested in Brevard County this past week.
Robert Eugene Koehler, 60, a registered sex offender from Palm Bay, was arrested on Saturday, January 18, as a result of a DNA hit and is being held at a jail in Brevard County as he awaits a transfer to Miami-Dade, according to the Miami Herald.
If he is indeed proven to be the Pillowcase Rapist -- named so because he would cover his face with a towel, hood, a pillowcase, or even his own t-shirt -- it will bring closure to a case that has haunted law enforcement officials from South Miami to Deerfield Beach for close to four decades.
A task force to catch the rapist was first formed in March 1986, at which point he had already raped as many as 43 women, and police suspected, had stalked hundreds more.
His modus operandi was to target career women aged between 17 to 43 who were slender and attractive, and lived in upper-middle-class apartment complexes. His victims included school teachers, nurses, airline attendants, an artist, model, engineer, and more.
His first reported rape is said to have occurred on May 1, 1981, at the Alisian Lake apartments, with his second, third, fourth, and fifth victims occurring in the vicinity as well. By the next summer, he had expanded his stalking grounds to include Coconut Grove and Broward Count. At the height of his reign of terror, he was also targeting women across North Miami, Miami Lakes, Fontainebleau Park, Davie, Tamarac Plantation, Pompano Beach, and Oakland Park as well.
He had a pattern to his attack too. Police said he had started by waking his victim up before dawn by placing a pillow over her face, before then getting bolder and assaulting women earlier in the evening while they were still awake.
He carried an ice pick or a knife to cut telephone cords so his victims could not call the police, and then pressed the weapon against their throats or bodies. Sometimes, he used them to slash off their undergarments.
The Pillowcase Rapist spoke little and would move the victim from room to room and spin them around to disorient them. He made sure to cover his face, and that of his victims with pillowcases, blankets, bed linens, or other items. He also bound his victims' wrists and ankles with pillowcases before he left, and stole cash and jewelry from them.
On several occasions, he reportedly returned to victims' apartments. One time, he masturbated on the victim's lingerie. He then returned to the same apartment three weeks later and left her an obscene message on her bathroom mirror that only became visible due to the steam when she was bathing inside.
Thanks to his 44th victim, who had managed to convince him to not hide his face, police had a physical description of him. He was said to have a shoe size of 10.5, a rare blood type, was somewhere in his mid-20s to early-30s, was 5'8'' to 5'11'' tall, about 170 pounds, and had a slim muscular build with fair skin.
But that description did little to help investigators, who just could not track him down despite setting up a comprehensive task force that, at its peak, had 100 detectives working on the case.
They had tried everything, even setting up elaborate surveillance that involved moving victims out of apartments and replacing them with policewomen who physically resembled his targets in the hope they could bait him, but to no avail.
In April 1987, it was announced that the Pillowcase Rapist task force -- which, at one point, had as many 1,800 leads -- had been disbanded without successfully apprehending the culprit. Now, close to 23 years later, it appears they have finally gotten their man.
Koehler, while not formally charged in the case as of yet, has been detained on an out-of-county warrant, and appears to fit the profile of the Pillowcase Rapist. A longtime South Florida resident, he was forced to register as a sex offender in the state after a 1991 conviction for sexual battery.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported he also has at least a dozen criminal and misdemeanor driving infractions and has been taken to court over a dispute about child support.
For now, a spokesperson for the Miami-Dade County Police Department remained elusive about the case, saying, "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."