Authorities arrested Robert Eugene Koehler, suspected of being the "pillowcase rapist," as a criminal who assaulted more than forty women in southeastern Florida became known in the 1980s.
Koehler was arrested last Saturday in Brevard County, in central Florida, and must appear this Tuesday before Judge Benjamin Garagozlo, according to court documents obtained Monday by the EFE agency.
The 60-year-old man must be transferred to Miami-Dade County, in the south of the state, where he faces a charge of "aggravated assault" dating from June 1980, according to court records.
The Miami Herald newspaper said Monday that the bulk of the "sexual predator" attacks occurred between 1981 and 1986 and forced the creation of a special police force to find his whereabouts. This body failed in the attempt and disintegrated a year later.
The "pillow case rapist", who was only found to have a rare subset of type O blood, managed to slip away because he almost always covered his face with a pillowcase.
Until the moment there was only the spoken portrait made with the description of what is presumed to be his last victim, who convinced him to discover his face.
The victims
The rapist always wore a pillowcase, a towel or a shirt over his face to hide his identity when he broke into women's homes, according to police reports.
The Miami Herald, which intensely covered the steps of the "pillow case rapist" in the 1980s, explained that he was registered as a sexual predator and was convicted of rape in 1991 in Palm Bay (in central Florida).
He said that his alleged victims included, among other women, a school teacher, a flight attendant, an artist, a model, a nurse and a gym instructor .
According to the reports of the time, the rapist chose young, attractive and professional women who lived in upper middle class neighborhoods, sneaked into their homes through the windows and threatened them with knives before attacking them.
Edited with information from EFE and the Miami Herald
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