Painstaking forensic work and what Hamilton County prosecutor Mike Allen called “a superb investigation by Cincinnati police” led to the indictment of three men Monday in the death 21 months ago of a man whose body was found burning in a trash bin in Walnut Hills.

        The victim, Roberto Villa Valadez, 42, of San Antonio, Texas, was believed to have been slain and his body dumped and burned after he botched a large drug deal in suburban Cincinnati, Mr. Allen said.

        “Officers essentially had a badly burned, unidentified body and virtually no motive or any other information to go on,” Mr. Allen said. “From that little information, Cincinnati police doggedly worked the case backwards and, as the grand jury indictments suggest, solved an otherwise insoluble crime.”

        The three men indicted are a suspected San Antonio drug dealer who was an associate of Mr. Valadez, a Kenwood bar owner and a Price Hill man who was a doorman at the bar, Mr. Allen said.

        Indicted were:

        Edward O'Connor, 46, of San Antonio, on charges of aggravated murder, murder and illegal possession of a firearm. He faces two life sentences.

        Jerry Derizas, 44, of Kenwood, and Willie Barfield, 28, of Price Hill, both on charges of tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse. They are accused of dumping the body in a trash bin in the 800 block of Buena Vista Place at Kerper Avenue in November 2000. They face up to six years in prison.

        Because the man's body was so badly burned, detectives weren't sure they could use his fingerprints to help identify him.

        But with help from two local forensic specialists and the FBI, they determined the man's identity. The man's girlfriend reported him missing in San Antonio, but not until five weeks after he had been found dead here.

        The identification process started with a deputy coroner, Dr. Gary Utz, rehydrating three fingers from Mr. Valadez's right hand. Rehydration is a process used to restore liquid and elasticity so technicians can roll the fingers and lift the prints.

        But it didn't work. Officials then tried taking pictures of the fingers to see the prints. That didn't work either. Criminalist Mike Trimpe ultimately treated the fingers as he would a shoe print, he said, dusting them repeatedly until enough of the fine lines showed up.

        The FBI then ran the prints and came up with Mr. Valadez's name.

        From there, police traced what Mr. Allen called “scant leads.”

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