Almost a decade after 20-year-old Evelyn Luka was raped, strangled and dumped near death by the side of H-2 Freeway, the trial of her alleged killer began in Circuit Court yesterday.

Deputy Prosecutor Kevin Takata told jurors in his opening statement that the "cold case" homicide was solved in 2007 after a DNA sample obtained from Darnell Griffin in 2006 was matched to evidence collected from Luka's body before she died.

"The man who raped and murdered Evelyn Luka remained a mystery until 2007," Takata said.

Griffin's lawyer, Deputy Public Defender E. Edward Aquino, told the jury that Griffin and Luka "had consensual sex" two days before she was attacked and that Griffin was at home with his family the night of the assault.

Luka's murder "is a mystery today that does not get solved with Darnell Griffin as the answer," Aquino said.

What jurors won't be told during the trial is that Griffin, 50, was on parole in 1999 after he had served 16 years behind bars for the murder of another young woman, Lynn Gheradi, in 1980.

Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario ruled that use of that information in the Luka trial would violate Griffin's rights to a fair trial.

The first witness yesterday was Honolulu police officer Sharon Walden, who said she and another officer found Luka lying unconscious on a hillside near the Ka Uka Boulevard on-ramp to the freeway the morning of Sept. 6, 1999.

Luka was face down in the dirt, and movements of her arms and legs had dug an outline in the soil "like a snow angel," Walden said.

Luka was hospitalized and died the next month after her family removed her from life support.

Witnesses at the Venus Night Club on Kapi'olani Boulevard told police that they had seen her leave on the night of the attack with a black man driving a dark green Nissan Pathfinder.

Griffin, a computer technician and Army veteran who came to Hawai'i in 1978, generally matched the physical description of the man and he drove a black 1996 Pathfinder, Takata told the jury.

Luka had told her husband that a friend who lived in the Salt Lake area — where Griffin lived — would drive her home from the night spot, Takata said.

After the DNA match was made in 2007, Griffin was arrested by police and taken to the HPD cellblock, where an officer overheard Griffin say in a phone call to his wife, "Just clean the car, clean the car," Takata said.

AN EARLY WARNING

Aquino said in his opening statement that a valet who worked at Venus Night Club will testify that he remembered specifically that the car Luka left in had a metal tow hitch attached to the rear bumper, which Griffin's car did not.

A telephone tip that police did not pursue would have led them to another black male stationed at Wheeler Army Airfield who drove a black Pathfinder with a tow hitch, Aquino said.

Court records show that when Griffin was paroled from prison in 1996, a state sex offender specialist warned that he was a dangerous sexual predator whose movements on parole should be restricted.

That January 1996 memo virtually predicted the way in which law enforcement now says Griffin met and attacked Luka.

Coyne said that although Griffin was not convicted of sexual assault in the Gheradi murder in 1980, there was indirect evidence that he had raped the victim before killing her. And six months before his arrest in the Gheradi case, another woman had accused Griffin of raping her in her Waikiki hotel room after the two met in a disco, Coyne wrote.

"Given everyone's shared concerns, I would like to recommend that HPA (Hawai'i Paroling Authority) impose more intense supervision on Mr. Griffin than might be normal in such cases," he wrote. "Because he meets female tourists in nightclubs, I recommend that he not be allowed access to Waikiki, Kaka'ako, Ke'eaumoku, Downtown or other areas where nightclubs operate," Coyne said.

"A 9 p.m. curfew should further limit his access to new victims. And polygraphs will help maintain and verify his compliance to the parole contact," the memo concluded.

MATCHING DNA

Parole officials said last year that Griffin remained under "intensive supervision" through December 1996.

As of 1997, Griffin was transferred to general parole status, which included an 11 p.m. curfew and instructions not to consume alcohol or visit premises where alcohol is served, Otani said.

DNA evidence collected from Luka's body was entered into a national DNA database in 2004. In 2005, a new state law requiring all convicted murderers to supply DNA samples and Griffin's was collected in 2006. In 2007, the two samples were found to match.