A 63-year-old Florida dental hygienist took the witness stand Thursday in his own defense at trial in the September 1982 murder of a visiting 25-year-old Delta Air Lines reservations clerk who was beaten and strangled to death, her body dumped off the side of Nuuanu Pali Road nearly 41 years ago.

When Thomas Lewis Garner was finally indicted in June 2021 in the murder of Kathy Warnette Hicks, Honolulu authorities said the cold case had been cracked using DNA evidence tied to him, but he explained why his DNA was found on her underwear.

He said he couldn’t remember her name, but recalls meeting Hicks at a Waikiki lounge where he was listening to jazz because she was beautiful, friendly and the first single Black woman he met there in his 2-1/2 years of going there, and they hit it off because he was also from the South — Tuskegee, Ala.

Then a young Navy sailor stationed at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, Garner admits he was looking to “hook up” with a woman that Saturday night, Sept. 18, 1982, and had taken a shuttle from the base and gotten a hotel room.

Garner testified the two eventually went to his hotel room, where they had sex, then went out dancing, and he paid for a cab to take her back to the Ilikai Hotel at about 2:30 a.m. Sept. 19, 1982.

He admits that he had sex with her but denies killing her.

Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bell told jurors in his closing argument that Garner “ferociously assaulted, then manually strangled to death” Hicks. “Her name was not important to him. He had already gotten what he was looking for.”

Bell cross-examined Garner and asked him whether he knew she was leaving Hono­lulu the next day. He also pointed out that Garner knew he was leaving Honolulu within five weeks with orders to ship out to Orlando, Fla.

The Oahu Circuit Court jury will begin deliberations today on whether Garner is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the evidence presented. But the prosecution could not pre­sent information concerning his previous conviction in May 2021 for first-degree murder in the 1984 beating and strangulation death of another 25-year-old woman in Florida, just two years after Hicks’ murder. Garner, who is serving a life sentence for the Florida woman’s murder, was extradited in December 2021 to Honolulu from Florida where he has been awaiting trial.

Bell said Garner was the last person Hicks was seen with.

She was found 10 a.m. Sept. 19, 1982, at the bottom of a grassy slope across from 4151 Nuuanu Pali Road in a relatively unpopulated area, fully clothed, wearing the same red halter top, beige pants, no jacket and no purse, just a small wallet.

She had two black eyes, an abrasion to her nose, a cut to her lip from biting down into the bottom lip as she was being strangled. Her bra had been pushed down below her breasts.

He presented taped witness statements of Hicks’ friends, who say they met Garner, who was tall, handsome, clean-cut and that his name was Tommy or Tony.

Garner said she invited him up to her Ilikai Hotel room after meeting at the lounge.

He met her hotel roommate, and two others in the elevator when they went down to the pool.

The friends told investigators she was a pleasant person, very friendly, who got along well with people.

Roommate Laverta Bynes said she was “not the type to stay out all night and not let me know where she’s going. She knows that I would be worried.”

The defense told jurors the prosecution’s case lacks a motive. She did not have any injuries to the vaginal area, and there was a man, Steven Tate, whom she was supposed to meet.

But when he wasn’t going to show up, Hicks left for the lounge.

Police ruled out Tate as a suspect because he cooperated with police, and there was no evidence they ever met after their initial meeting on Friday, Sept. 17, 1982.

Bynes said Tate called three times between 1 and 7:30 a.m. saying he was looking for Hicks.

But Deputy Public Defender Edward Aquino asked the jury why the 22-year-old would call Hicks’ hotel room at that hour.

Bell countered that if he was with Hicks, then why call the hotel room?

Aquino also questioned the source of other DNA on her underwear.

Bell reminded jurors of the testimony of analysts that found that Hicks’ DNA is in the mix but that Garner’s DNA was so prevalent.