MIAMI (WSVN) - An accused serial rapist took the stand in his trial Monday where he is being accused of assaulting dozens of women.
Sixty-three-year-old Robert Koehler, nicknamed the “Pillowcase Rapist,” took the stand and told jurors he was innocent and framed by police.
7News cameras captured Koehler at the courthouse in his wheelchair as he gave his testimony.
“Let’s just get this right out of the way, did you rape her? Did you kidnap her?” asked a prosecutor.
“No,” said Koehler.
Investigators believe Koehler is responsible for dozens of rapes in South Florida in the 1980s that involved placing a pillow or blanket over the face of the victims.
Decades after the crimes, he was arrested in 2020 after investigators said his DNA is linked to at least six cases.
During opening statements Thursday, his defense attorney told jurors that he was also a victim, and that he was framed by corrupt police officers.
When he took the stand, he told jurors the same thing, along with a story about how he was kidnapped by police and tortured.
“First thing I got was terrific pain I was in. I was naked in some kind of chair. I had a hood over my head. I received [electrical] shots over and over, felt the cocking of the mechanism with the gun right here to my temple,” said Koehler.
According to Koehler there was was at least 7 straps holding him down.
He said he was forced to witness killings and was even forced to kill a little girl, when his captors used a string to press his finger against the trigger.
“Next thing you know, it jerked and shot the girl and killed the girl,” said Koehler.
He said, then, police put some kind of tracking device in his left arm, pumped him full of drugs and threatened to kill his family if he ever told anyone.
Koehler said he was repeatedly raped over the course of several years by the same group and taken in a van from 1981 to 1986, where his captors collected his semen and hair samples.
“If I was to cross that threshold and go to authorities and tell them about what has happened to me, and what this plan was they had, that the family members would be murdered. I would be set up for their murders on multiple counts of murder one,” Koehler said. “I’d be sitting in a prison with nobody helping me on death row.”
The prosecutor equated some of Koehler’s account to some kind of “bad LSD trip.”
“That’s your opinion,” he responded.
Then he was asked what day he was abducted to which he replied, “It was the last day of ’80 or the first days of ’81,” said Koehler.
“You don’t remember what day you were kidnapped?” said the prosecutor. “Mr. Koehler, you remembered you had seven straps on your body, but you can’t remember the date you were kidnapped?”
“That’s correct,” said Koehler.
The trial has ended for the day and is expected to continue Tuesday.
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