BERKELEY — Modern DNA technology has allowed East Bay Regional Park District police investigating an unsolved 1990 rape-murder in Tilden Park to generate composite images of what a prime person of interest looked like then and now, officials said Thursday.

The images were released in connection with the Nov. 15, 1990 killing of Maria Jane Weidhofer, 32, who was raped and strangled along the Nimitz Trail in Tilden Park about a mile north of the Inspiration Point lookout.

Investigators determined the suspect laid in wait on a bench near the entrance to the trail. Witnesses had described a suspicious man, European in appearance, between 25 and 30 years old, with a slender build, broad shoulders, short dark, neatly groomed hair and a moustache.

Police collected DNA evidence at the scene but it has not yet resulted in a match of any possible suspects in state or federal databases.

Potential persons of interest have been eliminated by investigators over the years.

The new images show what the man looked like at age 25 and through a progression process to age 55.

According to a park district news release, the images were developed by Parabon NanoLabs (Parabon), a Virginia company specializing in DNA phenotyping, the process of predicting physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.

The company’s process has allowed law enforcement to narrow suspect lists and generate leads.

Using the DNA evidence from the case, the company produced predictions for the man’s ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling and face shape.

The composites are scientific approximations and are not likely to be exact replicas of appearance. Environmental factors such as smoking, drinking, diet, and other non-environmental factors such as facial hair, hairstyle and scars cannot be predicted by DNA analysis, according to police.

Park police are asking that anyone who may have information about the killing to contact their confidential tip line at 510-690-6549.

According to earlier media accounts, Weidhofer was a gentle, soft-spoken woman known as a free spirit.

She had moved from Southern California to Oakland two years earlier to pursue her art. She worked at a natural foods business in Oakland and painted, sketched and had hoped to follow in her painter father’s footsteps as an artist.

She jogged for exercise and often ran alone in Tilden Park.

In a 2005 Oakland Tribune story about the killing, her mother, Jane Weidhofer, said the family did not consider her death a “cold case because we have had to live with the loss of a daughter and a sister every days of our lives.”

A $10,000 reward has been offered by the park district and the Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundaton for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.