After two decades, science caught up with William J. Trice, said Assistant State's Attorney Kathleen Rogers.

In opening statements to an Anne Arundel County jury, Rogers said that Trice "made a mistake" and left not only a fingerprint in a rape victim's bedroom in 1988, but his DNA. Investigators reopening the case in 2008 matched the print to Trice's in a database, and later, his DNA to genetic material from the crime scene, she said.

Trice, a 48-year-old tow-truck driver from Eagle Bridge, N.Y., is on trial in the first of two 1988 sexual assaults in the county, both cold cases involving DNA matches.

The victim, now 49, wept as she described being raped by a stranger as she got ready for bed early on Aug. 21, 1988, and as her mother slept in their home, in a gated community in Annapolis.

She was reading a novel by Stephen King about 3 a.m. when an anonymous caller correctly told her she was born in 1958. More calls followed, and soon she was grabbed in the dark, her jaw dislocated as she was choked and sexually assaulted, she testified. The attacker said he got her information from a driver's license renewal form, which she had left in her car.

In opening remarks, Trice's lawyer, Andrew Szekely, questioned the rape report, calling his client "factually innocent" and the police work inadequate.