Tagger Slaying Suspect Says Victim Tried to Rob Him

William A. Masters is a “do-gooder,” a “white knight” who likes long walks late at night and guns, friends say, a combination that proved deadly when he killed a graffiti painter he encountered on a late-night stroll in Sun Valley.

But it was not for painting graffiti that Masters shot Cesar Rene Arce, 18, of Arleta, one of Masters’ friends said Wednesday. Masters told him from jail that Arce threatened him while trying to rob him, the friend said.

Masters, 35, of Sun Valley, a sometime actor and would-be playwright who was arrested on suspicion of murder after the Tuesday morning shooting, was held in Van Nuys jail Wednesday while police tried to determine whether to declare the shooting self-defense or ask the district attorney’s office to prosecute him for murder or manslaughter.

Conflicting versions of the shooting under a Hollywood Freeway overpass made it a difficult decision, police said. Another tagger, who was wounded but survived, admitted he was carrying a screwdriver but denied that he had threatened Masters with it in a face-off that began when Masters wrote down the license plate on their car when he found them spray-painting graffiti.

Masters had no permit to carry the gun, police have said.

While the facts were still unclear to police and prosecutors, that did not prevent some anti-graffiti admirers from praising Masters’ actions.

Telephone calls supporting Masters poured into the district attorney’s office “all day long,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Cohen, who is reviewing the case.

“I think this man performed a profound service to the community,” said Tom Irwin, 26, of North Hollywood, who dropped by the jail Wednesday and tried unsuccessfully to visit Masters to congratulate him. Irwin said he hopes to take Masters out to dinner and will contribute to any legal defense fund needed.

“If you have three or four Bernard Goetzes (Goetze shot four alleged muggers in the New York City subway) or William Masters who do something like this, maybe the word’ll get around and it will save lives,” Irwin said.

“I can’t believe the only right a decent citizen has in this country is to be a good victim.”

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David Hillo, 20, the surviving tagger, denied that his friend Arce was trying to rob Masters and protested that the shooting was unwarranted.

Arce “got killed while he wasn’t doing anything bad,” said Hillo, who was released Tuesday after hospital treatment for bullet wounds in the buttocks. “Tagging is a misdemeanor. The most he would have gotten would have been a slap on the wrist.”

Arce’s cousin, Alexandra Parra, complained that Masters “had no right to create such suffering. Everybody is suffering, (Cesar’s) sisters, his mother . . . his life was just beginning.”

Hillo, of North Hollywood, has confirmed that he and Arce were painting graffiti on columns supporting the freeway at Arleta Avenue shortly after midnight Tuesday when Masters walked past on his usual late-night stroll and they noticed him writing down their license plate number.

Hillo said there was a confrontation in which Arce demanded that Masters give them the note, but that they made no actual threatening moves before Masters shot them. Hillo said he had turned to run when Masters opened fire, which is why he was struck in the buttocks.

Masters was sobbing when he called from the North Hollywood police station at 9 a.m. Tuesday, as police were booking him on suspicion of murder, said Leo Bertucelli, a 45-year-old screenwriter who has known Masters since he came to California five years ago.

Bertucelli said Masters told him that Arce had demanded he hand over his wallet. Bertucelli said Masters replied that he had only $3, at which Arce became incensed and stepped forward. It was then that Masters fired, Bertucelli said.

Bertucelli said Masters grew up on a Massachusetts farm with a father who enjoyed shooting, and shot at targets at a Van Nuys pistol range, but said he never heard of Masters hurting anyone. Although Masters is a former Marine and owned at least three guns, “you can smack him around, and he won’t even do anything. He’s that kind of a person,” said Bertucelli.

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“He’s one of those do-gooders,” he said. “I always said, ‘Bill, you’re a genteel gentleman in an age that has no further use for you.’ ”

“He was sort of a white-knight character, a good Samaritan type,” said a 25-year-old Granada Hills woman whose family Masters lived with for awhile. She recalled that Masters showed up at their house hours after the Northridge earthquake last year to help them put everything in order, although his own apartment had been wrecked.

Masters spent hours in the Cal State Northridge library researching labor law in preparation for a complaint he filed against the National Labor Relations Board, charging that the Screen Actors Guild slighted non-union actors, friends recall.