A two-year-old initiative to compare felons' DNA samples with evidence from old crimes has yielded its first arrest, a convicted killer now accused of the 1999 strangulation murder of a 20-year-old woman.

"As we test more and more offenders, we believe we'll get more hits," said Tommy Johnson, administrator for the Hawai'i Paroling Authority.

On Thursday, police arrested Darnell Griffin, 48, in connection with the death of Evelyn Luka. She was found in a coma on a grassy area near the H-2 Freeway's Ka Uka Boulevard off-ramp in Waipi'o on Sept. 6, 1999. She died in a hospital on Oct. 2, 1999.

Griffin was charged yesterday with a single count of murder in the second degree. He is in custody in lieu of $5 million bail.

This is the first apparent success since the Honolulu Police Department's DNA serology lab began cross-checking DNA samples taken from convicted felons with DNA evidence from long-unsolved murders.

A state law that took effect in 2005 required that DNA samples be collected from all convicted felons and added to a national database.

It was an HPD criminalist who notified detectives that a database sample matched evidence taken from Luka's body while she was in the coma, court records show.

Police on Wednesday served a search warrant on Griffin and obtained a blood sample for further DNA testing, court records show. The new sample also matched the old evidence in the case, police said.

Griffin, who was in custody on a parole violation, was arrested at the Halawa Correctional Facility.

"We will be looking at other unsolved cases to see if there may be a connection" to Griffin, said Honolulu police Capt. Frank Fujii.

An autopsy of Luka determined the cause of death was "anoxic brain damage" due to assault by suffocation and strangulation, court records show.

While she was hospitalized, evidence was collected as part of a sexual-assault examination. The sample was tested, and DNA from an unidentified male was detected, court records show.

Luka was seen at the Venus nightclub on Kapi'olani Boulevard, where her husband had dropped her off, the night before she was found in a coma.

In an interview with police, her husband said Luka called him around midnight and said "she was catching a ride home with a friend who lived in Salt Lake," records show.

Detectives learned that Griffin lived in an apartment on Ala Ilima Street in the Salt Lake area when Luka was killed.

Griffin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 1983. An O'ahu jury convicted him in the rape and strangulation murder of a 26-year-old X-ray technician in her Liholiho Street apartment on Oct. 11, 1980.

Griffin was paroled March 5, 1996.

In that case, police found the body of Lynn M. Gheradi in her apartment after she failed to meet a friend at the beach. Detectives later found a rattan chair belonging to Gheradi in Griffin's apartment.

During his trial, friends of Gheradi testified that she met Griffin in a disco and he became obsessed with her. Gheradi rebuffed his advances, angering him, her friends testified.

At the time of Gheradi's death, Griffin was a 22-year-old Army soldier.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.