Robert Koehler, who authorities accuse of being the "pillowcase rapist" who sexually assaulted more than 40 women in South Florida during the 1980s, pleaded not guilty Monday in his trial for a crime committed four decades ago.
Koehler, 63, took the stand and claimed that he was the victim of a police plot in which they extracted fluids from his body that, according to him, were used to implicate him in various crimes.
According to the indictment, in December 1983 Koehler raped a 25-year-old woman in an apartment building near Miami International Airport, reported WTVJ, the Florida affiliate of NBC News, sister network of Noticias Telemundo.
Although the trial that started a week ago is based on this case, the authorities suspect that he is responsible for other similar crimes that occurred at that time.
Robert KoehlerBroward Sheriff's Office
Koehler was arrested in 2020 thanks to a DNA test
and the Prosecutor's Office said Friday that the odds that he was not the source of that sample are almost 90 billion to one.
An unsolved mystery for four decades
The "pillowcase rapist" case has been staking for 40 years.
The suspect's nickname arose from the way he operated by using a pillowcase or any other cloth to cover his victims' faces or his own.
According to the authorities, he broke into houses and apartments to commit the attacks at the point of a knife or razor.
"The investigation shows that Koehler carried out his attacks with diabolical precision
," the Broward Sheriff's Office said in a statement in June 2022.
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“On at least eight occasions in 1984 and 1985, detectives believe Koehler broke into Broward County homes late at night or early morning through unlocked doors and
attacked his victims as they slept or prepared to lie
down,” authorities revealed.
The suspect threatened to kill his victims before raping and robbing them, police said.
Last June he was linked to some 45 sexual assaults in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, said Sergeant Kami Floyd of the Broward Sheriff's Office at the time, the EFE news agency reported.
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The connection between the attacks was made possible after Floyd launched an investigation into thousands of sexual assault cases from the 1980s in 2019.
Despite causing a stir at the time and after a group was created to investigate the crimes, the investigation stalled and there were no arrests due to lack of clues and evidence.
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According to WTVJ, Koehler was convicted of rape in 1990 in Palm Beach County and sentenced to probation which he failed to serve 120 days in jail.
That case was not linked to the serial assaults in South Florida.
Two years after his arrest, the Broward Sheriff's Office announced that
Koehler would be charged in at least six sexual assault cases in the county
, including the 1984 assault on a woman in a Pompano Beach apartment.
If found guilty, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Police believe that Koehler is responsible for more assaults that have not yet been reported and asked the population to contact the authorities for any similar unresolved cases.