The woman a former Rock Hill mayoral candidate is charged with raping feared for her life and the life of her infant son as she awoke with a knife at her throat and a hand covering her eyes, according to Florida court documents.
The victim told police she was asleep in her bedroom next to her 7-month-old son when she was awakened around 6:30 a.m. on Feb. 18, 1986, by a man who ordered her to be quiet and not get out of bed, an affidavit filed last week in a Florida court in support of an arrest warrant reads.
The woman complied, the affidavit reads, and the man pushed her back onto her bed, placed a pillow over her face and sexually assaulted her for two minutes, according to the document. The attacker then took the woman’s purse and fled in a black Camaro.
Miami police say DNA evidence has identified the attacker 26 years later as Baxter Tisdale, then 21, who ran for a seat on the Rock Hill City Council in 1999 and for mayor two years later.
Tisdale, 49, is charged with armed sexual battery, burglary and robbery, according to an arrest warrant obtained Thursday from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
The affidavit in support of that warrant was written and signed by a 30-year Miami-Dade police officer investigating cold cases in the department’s sexual crimes bureau.
York County drug agents and U.S. marshals arrested Tisdale at his Walnut Street home Tuesday and charged him as a fugitive from justice. He remained jailed Thursday night at the York County Detention Center.
On Thursday, Tisdale waived extradition to Florida and contested his arrest warrant. Officials would not say when Miami police are expected to pick him up.
After the February 1986 assault, the victim received treatment at Jackson Memorial Hospital Rape Treatment Center in Miami, where officials gathered forensic evidence.
“Several DNA swabs were collected,” the affidavit states, and were sent to the Miami-Dade police crime laboratory for analysis.
Data about that DNA was entered into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a database that allows federal, state and local crime labs to exchange and compare DNA profiles.
On July 25, the Miami crime lab notified detectives that the DNA collected in the assault matched Tisdale’s DNA, which was already on file, according to the affidavit. The document does not indicate why Tisdale’s DNA was already in the system, and Miami police could not be reached to explain that.
Detectives spoke with the woman, who recounted the assault, was shown a photograph of Tisdale and recalled knowing him “in the past from the neighborhood,” according to the affidavit.
She told police she and Tisdale never had a consensual sexual relationship and he was never her boyfriend.
Tisdale is a Miami native who moved to Rock Hill in 1993. His criminal history in York County includes convictions for several misdemeanors, including stealing electricity from the city of Rock Hill, driving under suspension and petty larceny, according to the State Law Enforcement Division.
Jonathan McFadden 803-329-4082
