Former state Rep. Dean Westlake’s son is charged with beating Westlake to death Saturday morning in Anchorage.
Tallon Westlake, 36, faces charges of manslaughter and evidence tampering in the death of his 62-year-old father, Dean, who was from Kiana and served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January to December 2017.
Early indications are that the father and son had fought over a rental dispute related to the South Anchorage apartment where Dean Westlake died.
According to a charging document, this is what Anchorage police and prosecutors say happened:
Tallon called 911 a little before 7 a.m. Saturday asking for an ambulance for his dad, who he said was not awake. Dispatchers asked Tallon to see if his father was breathing, and after first telling them he “did not want to be next to a dead body,” Tallon did check and told them Dean was not breathing and was cold and stiff, the charges say.
According to the charges, Tallon told detectives he did not want to talk to them. Examining the body, which was facedown in a hallway, it looked like Dean had been pummeled. They saw streaks of blood and blood spatter in the hallway. They could smell a heavy odor of bleach and saw wet floors that appeared to have just been mopped.
Tallon had an open warrant for a 2021 case in which he allegedly failed to stop at the direction of a police officer, so the detectives arrested him and brought him in for questioning.
Tallon still refused to talk, but detectives saw what looked like blood on his hands and that his right hand was swollen, the charges said.
The detectives soon learned that Dean’s girlfriend, who was out of town, owned the building. The charges said that she told them by phone from New York that Tallon had been living in the apartment but had not paid rent in four months and that Dean had planned to evict Tallon.
The detectives also talked to a neighbor who’d heard loud arguing sometime around 2 or 2:30 a.m. Saturday, the charges said.
“She heard a lot of ‘F you’s’ and ‘get the “F’ out,’” the charges said. “The other person then said, ‘Screw you. I’m not leaving.’”
Court records show Tallon Westlake was jailed in Anchorage on Monday, but an online court database did not list bail or attorney information as of Monday morning.
Dean Westlake was a Democrat who represented Alaska’s North Slope and Northwest Arctic in state House District 40. He resigned in December 2017 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment and, according to the Anchorage Daily News, reports that he had fathered a child with a 16-year-old when he was 28.
