By Jane Prendergast
Enquirer staff writer

More than 49 years of fighting crime, and Cid Caesar doesn't really want to talk about it much. It's just a job he loves, he said, like lots of people.

But lots of people, particularly in police work, don't stick with it until they're 71. Decades after his first peers have retired, Caesar's still working 10-hour days with the Cincinnati Police Department and getting up in the middle of the night if somebody kills somebody.

He retired in 1985 after 30 years as a police officer, then came back as a civilian employee in criminalistics.

Name a big Cincinnati case in the past half century, and he likely knows something about it:

Posteal Laskey, the "Cincinnati Strangler" convicted of raping and murdering a woman in 1966, but suspected in six more deaths. Caesar escorted him to get his fingerprints taken, and "I still remember he had huge arms."

Alton Coleman, executed in 2002 for eight murders across the Midwest in 1984. Caesar collected evidence at the Norwood home of Marlene Walters, whom Coleman beat to death.

Caesar knew something was planned one recent morning to mark the start of his 50th year in law enforcement. But he wasn't expecting bagels, cake, a roomful of high-ranking colleagues and prosecutors, plus the chief. Holding a plaque and a piece of cake at his party, Caesar agreed to answer a few Enquirer questions:

Q: There's a legend about you and a snack bag. What's the story?

A: It was a potato chip bag. It was the case of the Dunlap Cafe (1986). This guy went into the bar, had a beer. Then he held 'em up and a guy got shot and killed. First, I just had the bottom half of the bag. There was a palm print on it. Then, outside, I found the top part of the bag, where he'd torn it. There was a thumbprint on it. It took awhile, but we matched it.

Q: What's the biggest change you've seen over the years? DNA?

A: No, AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System). We're still collecting DNA. But fingerprints - we've got so many of them on file, my God, and there's a state system and the federal system, too. The FBI's been doing fingerprints since 1924. We had a guy killed here a couple of years ago and burned. All we had was a piece of one finger. The FBI identified him.

Q: Some of your most interesting cases?

A: Well, we caught Debra Brown (Coleman's girlfriend and accomplice) with a fingerprint on a Michael Jackson button. And we found a shoeprint of Coleman's in a muddy basement. He had the same gym shoes on when he was arrested up in Chicago.

Q: What's different about homicides now?

A: Nowadays, what you have is all these drive-bys. All you get at a crime scene now is maybe a couple (cartridge) casings. And your witnesses don't want to say anything. And more are outside. It's a lot tougher to find evidence outside.

Q: How do you tolerate the gory things you see?

A: I've seen thousands of bodies. I think you kind of get hard core about this kind of stuff. My wife (Kay, they've been married since 1956) says I don't show emotion about some of the things I should. But you kind of have to get that way. ... But I hate to see children. I hate to go to autopsies when it's a baby.

Q: You're 71. You ever think about giving it up?

A: You know what I think about? I think about what the heck I would do if I didn't come to work. I know my wife would have things for me to do. But I still enjoy the job.

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E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com