A MAN accused of killing Hampshire DNA expert Helena Greenwood is today due to go on trial for her murder.

David Frediani is accused of murdering Dr Greenwood in San Diego on August 22, 1985 - just 21 days before she was due to testify that he raped her at gunpoint.

The former Southampton Grammar School For Girls pupil had been strangled. She was 34. Her body was left in the front yard of her luxury home.

Her partner, Roger Franklin, found her body in the inner part of the couple's landscaped front garden. She had bruises around her head and face and her business papers were strewn around the lawn. The trial, which is expected to last three to six weeks, is due to begin in San Diego today after legal delays. If convicted, Frediani, 45, faces life imprisonment without parole. At the time of her death, Frediani, who works as a phone company analyst, was awaiting trial for seriously assaulting her a year earlier. Dr Greenwood was due to testify that Frediani had broken into her Northern California home and raped her.

The case remained unsolved for 14 years until San Diego police made a major breakthrough matching DNA found on Dr Greenwood to Frediani. Prosecutors have said the chances it could have come from another person were 230,000,000,000 to one.

The trial was due to start last November but was delayed while lawyers argued over whether key scientific evidence could be heard.

Dr Greenwood, moved to Atherton, San Francisco, in 1977 with long-time love Mr Franklin. 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 Greenwood, 87, lives in Lymington. In an earlier interview, he told the Echo: "It is wonderful that justice is being done at last, and all because of a technology which Helena helped to develop." Her mother died two weeks before her daughter and Mr Franklin died in 1999.