HONOLULU -- Opening arguments were made Thursday in the murder trial of a young woman who was raped and strangled 10 years ago.

The prosecution said DNA evidence links Darnell Griffin, 50, to the cold case. The defense said that the killer is still on the loose.

Evelyn Luka, 20, was found unconscious on a dirt median along the H-2 Freeway in Waipio on Sept. 6, 1999.

"Witness described her flailing away with her hands and feet, like someone would make a snow angel," prosecutor Kevin Takata said.

Luka never regained consciousness and died a month later.

A break in the case did not come until 2007, when a national criminal database came up with a DNA match.

"That swab, taken from Evelyn, in which DNA was recovered, finally matched to Darnell Griffin," Takata said.

Griffin's DNA was in the database because felons are require to submit a sample. He was convicted of murder in 1983 in the death of a woman who was strangled.

Griffin's defense attorney, Edward Aquino, said the DNA evidence proves nothing.

"DNA will not show that Darnell and Evelyn had sex on the night that she disappeared," Aquino said.

On the night Luka disappeared, witnesses said she left the Venus nightclub with a black man with short hair.

"Mind you, the witnesses said short hair. They did not say bald. The evidence will show that as much as Darnel is bald now, he was bald in 1999," Aquino said.

Aquino also said that after a CrimeStoppers bulletin was released days after the murder, someone reported to the police a man who fit the description of the suspect and the car in which Luka was last seen.

The witness gave authorities a license plate number. However, detectives did not follow up on that tip until last year, the defense said.

"This is but one of the many avenues, one of the many leads, that the police did not explore to solve the mystery of what happened to Evelyn Luka September the 6th, 1999," Aquino said.

The trial is expected to last several weeks.