Although a grand jury indicted Tallon Westlake for first degree, second degree, manslaughter, and evidence tampering in the death of his father, former Rep. Dean Westlake, an Anchorage jury acquitted him Monday on the first degree murder charge. The jury was hung on the other charges, however.
The death of Dean Westlake, who briefly represented District 40 out of Kotzebue, occurred Aug. 20, 2022, in what has been reported as a dispute over Tallon’s refusal to leave an apartment owned by Dean’s girlfriend on Rovenna St. in Anchorage.
Tallon was reportedly behind in rent and was being evicted by his father on behalf of his father’s girlfriend. Just before 7 a.m., Anchorage police received a call and arrived at the apartment with medics, who found Dean dead.
Officers said when they arrived, there were blood marks on hallway walls, kitchen cabinets, on Dean Westlake’s hands and feet, and on Tallon Westlake’s clothes. There was also a strong smell of bleach and evidence, including a mop, of an apparent attempt to clean the floor of blood. A bloody towel was found in the car outside, which belonged to Tallon.
Dean Westlake, age 62 at the time of his death, was elected in 2016 and resigned from the Legislature in 2017, after women in the Capitol accused him of sexual harassment; it was at the height of the #metoo movement, a time during which women were making lots of public accusations against men. It later became public that he had fathered a child with a 16-year-old girl in 1988, when he was 28 years old, which would have been indications of a sexual crime.
Dean was the Democrats’ pick to replace Barrow’s Rep. Ben Nageak, who chose to caucus with Republicans; at the time Republicans were in the majority and the Anchorage campaign team at Ship Creek Group was working to flip the House to Democrat control. Dean Westlake was one of the group’s first clients.
Tallon, now 38, faces the other charges, and the state may open a new trial, but won’t be able to retry him on first-degree murder. He is still in custody but his attorneys may ask for him to be released on bail and the state may ask for a retrial on the second-degree, manslaughter, and evidence-tampering charges.
