MIAMI (WSVN) - After four days of testimony, a jury has reached a verdict in the trial of a man accused of a rape that was part of a series of rapes in the 1980s.
Sixty-three-year-old Robert Koehler, was found guilty on all three counts of kidnapping, burglary and sexual battery, Wednesday.
Details of a rape in the 1980s were laid out in court during closing arguments in the trial of the accused pillowcase rapist, early Wednesday.
“He grabbed her from behind,” said prosecutor Laura Adams. “He stabbed her. He’s pushing her into the bedroom.”
Koehler was arrested and charged back in 2020 after investigators said DNA evidence linked him to the decades old crimes.
This trial though, focused on just one from December of 1983.
Last Thursday, the victim offered her testimony.
“He spoke to me kind of like in hushed tones,” she said. “‘Shut up, quiet.’ He made me get up, took me to the bedroom, threw me down on the bed, and he covered my head with the blanket.”
Investigators said in the rape kit taken from that case revealed Koehler’s DNA was a match.
But during testimony, the defendant told jurors he was innocent and that he was a victim claiming he was kidnapped, tortured and framed by corrupt police.
“I was naked in some kind of chair,” he said during testimony. “I had a hood over my head. I received [electrical] shocks over and over.”
Prosecutors responded to that tesimony Wednesday morning.
“Who could come up with a such a crazy theory? A desperate man, a man who knows he’s been caught,” said Adams.
“This is not a who do you believe?” said Defense attorney Damaris Del Valle. “More, the state and the state alone, absent anything you heard from Mr. Koehler has to prove beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that he is the person who committed this crime.”
In the end, jurors would find him guilty.
“Today’s jury verdict finding Robert Koehler guilty of sexual battery, kidnapping and burglary, finally closes the book on a terror that gripped the women of South Florida for far, far too long,” said State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in a statement.
Members of the jury were not interested in speaking with the media.
Sentencing for Koehler is set for March 17.
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