A NEIGHBOUR of Hampshire DNA expert Helena Greenwood yesterday recalled hearing a muffled scream just hours before her body was found.

Recalling the fateful day, in 1985, Douglas Perkins told a court in Vista, California: "I heard a sound I'll never forget.

"It was something like a muted scream."

Dr Greenwood, a former pupil at Southampton Grammar School for Girls, was found strangled in the front yard of her luxury home in San Diego.

Her husband Roger Franklin discovered her body amid scattered paperwork on August 22, 1985.

She died just 21 days before she was due to testify that David Frediani raped her at gunpoint.

On Tuesday, lawyers opened the case against Frediani, 46, who prosecutors allege killed Dr Greenwood to prevent her from testifying that he had sexually assaulted her a year earlier.

Prosecutor Valerie Summers told the court: "He didn't want his family and friends to know the monstrous deed he did.

"She died because she was going to testify against that man David Paul Frediani."

Dr Greenwood and Mr Franklin moved to the United States in 1977. She worked in DNA analysis, specialising in its development as a forensic detection tool.

At the time of her death she was vice-president of a large pharmaceutical company. Her father Sydney still lives in Lymington.

Jurors heard a tape of the emergency services call made by Mr Franklin when he discovered his wife's body.

He told an operator: "My wife has been attacked. She's lying in the garden. I think she's been killed."

Detectives trimmed Dr Greenwood's fingernails and saved the tissue.

Ms Summers said: "In 1985, they didn't have DNA evidence. This case remained unsolved until now."

The case was reviewed in 1999 when San Diego detectives reviewed 300 unsolved murders looking for any that could benefit from new technology.

Frediani's DNA was tested and it matched the skin tissue found in the fingernail scrapings 14 years ago.

However, Frediani's lawyer David Bartick said the test can't be trusted because the company that makes it won't share its methods with other scientists.

After she was killed, Dr Greenwood's testimony was used to convict Frediani for the 1984 sexual assault.

Frediani served three years of a six-year prison sentence after pleading no contest - which under Californian law has the same effect as a guilty plea.

The murder trial is expected to last at least two weeks.

Proceeding