Lani Matunding was 15 years old when she last saw her sister nearly seven years ago. It was a grim sight.

"She didn't have a peaceful death," Matunding said yesterday following a Honolulu Police Department news conference seeking public assistance in the August 1999 unsolved case of her sister, Jubilee "Maile" Lum.

Matunding accompanied her mother, Melva Matunding, to the city morgue in Iwilei to identify Lum, whose nude body was found wrapped in layers of heavy-duty garbage bags left in front of a trash bin in a driveway in back of Beretania Florist at 1299 S. Beretania St. "There were bruises on her body ... it looked like she suffered," Matunding said.

The body was left at the site sometime between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on Aug. 24, 1999, but police were unable to develop any leads at the time other than a purple or turquoise pickup truck that may have been involved.

Lum, 21, a downtown-area prostitute, was four months pregnant when she was killed.

"She did what she did but we always loved her," Matunding said. "It still hurts a lot. She was more like a mother to me than a sister. When I needed money, she gave it to me. When my mom kicked me out of the house, she took me in. She took care of my son (who was 8 months old at the time).

"I didn't want to believe it, so just to go view her body was hard. She was such a happy-go-lucky person. I just hope someone who may know something will come forward so my sister can rest in peace."

The Matundings live in Waipahu, but at the time of Lum's death they lived in Kalihi.

"I always think about it, why did someone do this to my daughter," Melva Matunding said. Lum was the second-oldest of her six children.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 955-8300 or *CRIME on a cellular phone.

The Lum case is one of 47 unsolved homicides from the 1990s, according to police records. From 1970 through 1999, Honolulu police closed all but 192 of 1,129 homicide investigations. So-called "cold cases" or unsolved homicide cases are not affected by statutes of limitation.

July 6, for example, will mark the 21st anniversary of a high-profile "cold case" involving the 1985 disappearance of part-time dance instructor Diane Suzuki from an 'Aiea dance studio. In that case HPD used the chemical luminol for the first time, which can detect the presence of unseeen traces of blood.

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.