Santa Cruz sheriff’s deputies have arrested Colin Sean Tisdale, 63, and charged him with the murder of a Soquel man 13 years ago. Authorities are including prior convictions of assault with a deadly weapon and robbery as relevant to the case and potential sentencing.
Tisdale was charged Friday with the murder of Jeffrey Stephenson Smith, 28, in the driveway of his home on Nicasio Way in Soquel in the early morning hours of Aug. 16, 2012. Tisdale is being held without bail in Santa Cruz County Jail, where he was already being held on unrelated charges.
According to various news reports at the time, Tisdale had been a prime suspect in the shooting of Smith from the beginning. His late wife, Amanda Fox Sloan, told KSBW-TV and the Santa Cruz Sentinel at the time that her husband had identified the killer as Tisdale with his dying words. But officials said there was not sufficient evidence to charge Tisdale — until now.
As reported by the Santa Cruz Sentinel, deputies stopped Tisdale on Highway 17 about eight hours after Smith, a 28-year-old father of a young girl, was shot.
Jacob Pruger, a sergeant with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed in a phone interview that Tisdale had been a prime suspect since the very beginning of the case.
Authorities declined to say what new evidence had emerged, how the evidence was obtained or why it took 13 years to bring charges.
In consultation with the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office, sheriff’s detectives recently obtained an arrest warrant and served it on Tisdale in jail last Friday.
In 2013, Tisdale was sentenced to nine years in prison on various drug charges, according to the Sentinel.
Almost a year after her husband’s death, Sloan was involved in a high-speed chase and opened fire on Capitola police in front of her Soquel home. She was wounded, according to KSBW, and later, awaiting trial, took her own life via hanging in the county jail.
Smith graduated from Soquel High School and worked as a self-employed automobile mechanic.
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