Trial begins for accused rapist

PALMER — Trial began Tuesday for a man accused of raping a woman he asked to go on a date with him in 2009.

Zebulon Whisler, 26, wore street clothes and sat next to his attorney as his accuser detailed her story for jurors Tuesday.

According to the woman, she met Whisler through a friend who’d met him on the social networking site Myspace. She, her friend and Whisler went to a bar together, after which Whisler asked her out. She said she hoped the date would help her get over a bad breakup she’d been through with an abusive partner.

“This was my way of getting away from my ex,” she told the jury.

She said Whisler was a gentleman.

“He opened doors and was just really polite,” she said. “He told me how stupid my ex was for leaving me and how pretty I was.”

So in February 2009, she went on a date with him, she said. Whisler picked her up at her parent’s house in his pickup and they went to a bar in Palmer.

“He seemed to know everyone in there,” the woman said.

At the bar, she said, she rebuffed a few mild advances from Whisler, saying she didn’t care for public displays of affection.

She was starting a new job and had to be up early so neither of them drank. He asked her if she wanted to drive up Lazy Mountain. Mistakenly believing the mountain to be in the Anchorage area, she protested that she couldn’t stay out late enough to get there.

Whisler told her it wasn’t that far away and they drove up to a parking lot there. That’s where things changed, the woman testified. Whisler started kissing her. She went with it. But then he started taking things further.

“I kept telling him that I’m not ready, that I don’t want to do this,” the woman testified. “He kept saying, ‘Yes you do. Shut up. Yes you do.’”

Assistant District Attorney Trina Sears asked the woman about Whisler’s demeanor at this point in the night.

The woman described him as “not angry, just stubborn. I don’t know how to explain it. He didn’t seem pissed off, just mean.”

After the rape, he drove her home, the woman said, and repeatedly asked what was wrong, why she seemed so upset.

After her allegations came to light in 2009, Alaska State Troopers hit Whisler with charges relating to rapes dating as far back as March of 2003 and referring to five additional women troopers allege Whisler also raped.

The woman’s mother also took the stand Tuesday, testifying that Whisler sent a text message to her daughter the next day asking when they could go out again. The mother said she took her daughter’s phone and wrote back, “never.”

She said she also agreed to help troopers with their investigation, calling Whisler so they could record the conversation.

“I remember him saying nothing happened between the two of them, he didn’t know why she got upset,” the mother testified. “I remember him saying he and his dad were coming to our house the next day to talk about the situation.”

Whisler’s trial is expected to last through next week.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.