Flames of Hate End Life of Gay Man, Show Biz Dream

A stack of glossy promotional photos showing a smiling Clint Scott Risetter sits atop a large pile of ashes inside his fire-gutted apartment.

Originally from rural South Dakota, Risetter had moved west more than a decade ago with hopes of making it big in films. He never realized his dream.

The 37-year-old man was killed last week, the victim of an arsonist who poured gasoline over him and set him on fire, partly because Risetter was gay, the suspect later told police.

Police say Martin Thomas Hartman is a mentally troubled 38-year-old Santa Barbara resident who had been a suspect in numerous arson fires in the city. But they never had enough evidence to charge him.

Hartman told police that he met Risetter about six months ago and learned recently that Risetter was homosexual.

“[Hartman] first said he did it because the victim was unhappy and depressed so he didn’t need to be around in the world,” said police Sgt. Mike McGrew, the lead investigator on the case.

“He also said he killed him because he was gay, and he has a lot of hatred toward gay people.”

Hartman has been charged with murder, arson and a hate crime in connection with Risetter’s death Feb. 24. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

“It’s such a horrendous crime. It’s so shocking when something this gruesome occurs for such an evil, hateful reason,” said Terry Leftgoff, president of the Gay and Lesbian Business Assn. in Santa Barbara.

Former City Councilman Tom Roberts, who is gay, also condemned the attack.

“I think any human being who is set on fire is about as heinous an act as possible. But this was done as a hate crime, which makes it much more profoundly sad,” Roberts said.

On Sunday at Trinity Episcopal Church, which has a large and active gay and lesbian membership, Rector Mark Asman asked his congregation not to “let what happened drag us into a place of revenge or hatred, but instead find a way to turn it into good.”

He asked the congregation to “keep the families of Martin Hartman and Clint Risetter in our prayers.”

In a telephone interview from her home in South Dakota, Risetter’s mother, Blanche Risetter, choked back tears.

“I can’t believe this has happened. His father just died, and now Clint,” she said. “If this man is guilty of this crime, there needs to be justice.”

She said she does not believe her son was gay.

Until Tuesday, when he calmly walked into the police station and confessed, Hartman lived with his mother in a well-maintained two-story house in one of the city’s older neighborhoods.

He has a history of mental illness and had been a suspect in at least 10 arsons over the past decade, police said.

In 1997, Hartman was the prime suspect in an arson at his mother’s property, police said.

The bed of a tenant named Jimmy Walker, who was living in a rental house, was torched. Walker was not injured, and detectives were unable to find enough physical evidence to make an arrest.

“We’ve been chasing him around for 10 years,” McGrew said. “I think this time around, though, the fact that he killed somebody put him over the edge. It was something more than he could handle.”

Speaking on the front porch of her Garden Street home Sunday, the suspect’s mother, Waltraudt Hartman, acknowledged that her son had been upset lately but insisted he did not kill Risetter.

“He was always a good son, and he never hurt me,” she said. “He didn’t drink or smoke or take drugs. He was depressed lately, but he was not on medication.

“I don’t believe anything that I have read or heard.”

He Moved West, Hoping to Be Actor, Model

The son of a farmer and stay-at-home mom, Clint Risetter grew up in Wolsey, S.D., a prairie town of about 600 east of the Black Hills.

His mother said he played trumpet in his high school band and got his first taste of travel when the group performed throughout Europe, including a concert at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

After graduating from the University of South Dakota in 1986, Risetter worked around Wolsey for a couple of years before moving to California with the hope of making it as an actor or model.

But things didn’t go as planned. He lived with a cousin in Palmdale for a short time before moving to Ventura, where he managed a Pizza Hut for five years, his mother said.

During this time, Risetter modeled part time, mostly men’s clothing, and landed bit parts in various movies, including the 1991 Michael J. Fox comedy “Doc Hollywood,” she said.

In the movie, Risetter performs a dance scene with several other actors.

“He liked movies and show business and really wanted to be part of that,” his mother said.

By the mid-1990s, Risetter had moved to his apartment on Micheltorena Street in Santa Barbara.

He continued to model and act part time but started selling real estate to pay the bills, his mother said.

By March 2000, he dropped out of the business after his boss died and the office closed.

Risetter never gave up his dream of working as an entertainer. He occasionally rented a room at a house in Hollywood, where he would go for auditions.

Although he never brought around his dates, several of his Santa Barbara neighbors said Risetter never tried to hide his sexual orientation.

Diane Mackenzie, a friend who lived in an adjacent apartment complex, described Risetter as a “soft-spoken, benevolent guy ... the type of person who would go out of his way to say hello to you.”

She said she had known Risetter for two years and that the two would often sit on the front lawn and talk about movies and Risetter’s desire to be an actor.

“I always got the sense, though, that he was troubled,” Mackenzie said.

The death of his father and also that of a close friend two years ago apparently caused Risetter to drink excessively, others said.

Several neighbors said homeless people often hung out at Risetter’s apartment, sometimes drinking with him or sleeping on his couch.

They said Risetter kept cases of canned vegetables and other nonperishables to hand out to transients.

Officers were called to Risetter’s apartment on several occasions for noise and drinking disturbances, said Sgt. Jim Pfleging.

One time, officers arrived and found Risetter passed out on his porch, he said.

John Shaver, a neighbor and friend, said Risetter had struggled with alcohol for years.

He said Risetter, who had been out of work in recent months and was receiving Social Security for a disability, had joined a 12-step program and sobered up, but then lapsed a few weeks ago and began drinking again.

“He disappeared and wasn’t coming home for about a month,” Shaver said.

“I saw him hanging out downtown a few times with some really tough people.”

Police Didn’t Consider ‘Marty’ a High Risk

Hartman has lived for years with his mother at their home on Garden Street, a few blocks from the victim’s apartment.

He had been arrested in the past for indecent exposure and public intoxication, police said.

Hartman, known by officers on the street as Marty, spent much of his time shuffling up and down the narrow streets and alleys near downtown. He wasn’t homeless but knew people who were, said Sgt. Ed Olsen.

Sometimes Hartman would vanish from the streets for months, Olsen said.

But then he would return, offering up theories to police about how a certain building must have been burned or how a particular crime was committed.

“He’d come into the lobby [of the police station] a lot, saying he had information,” Olsen said.

Olsen said Hartman wasn’t considered by police to be a high risk but wasn’t thought of as harmless, either.

According to police, a mutual friend introduced Risetter to Hartman’s mother a few months ago, and that is how the two men became acquainted.

Recently, the friend told Hartman’s mother that Risetter was gay. She then told her son, McGrew said.

On the afternoon of Feb. 24, Hartman walked to Risetter’s apartment with a can of gasoline, doused the victim while he slept on a mattress and set him on fire, police said. Risetter awoke engulfed in flames and ran onto his patio, where he was found dead by firefighters.

On Tuesday, Hartman’s mother read a newspaper article about the fire. Although the victim had not been identified, she told her son she thought it was probably Risetter, police said.

He immediately “came to the police station,” McGrew said. “He talked about everything that had happened that day and walked us through it step by step.”

Hartman told detectives that he had become upset when his mother told him Risetter was gay, police said. Hartman said his anger toward gay men stemmed in part from being hit on once by a man.

To help confirm Hartman’s account, police brought in a bloodhound to assist in gathering evidence. Using the scent from one of Hartman’s shoes, the dog led officers into the apartment exactly as Hartman had claimed he had entered it. The dog then went directly to the victim’s bed and out onto the patio, McGrew said.

‘United We Stand. Never Be Forgotten.’

Over the weekend, a makeshift memorial of flowers and candles remained under an oak tree at the end of a driveway leading to Risetter’s apartment. Tacked to the tree was a note that read: “United We Stand. Never be forgotten. Always to be loved. A symbol of silence that needs to be broken.”

Roberts, the former city councilman, said he hopes people will see Risetter’s death as a wake-up call to shed misconceived fears about gays and lesbians and to end the violence against them, citing the case of Matthew Shepherd, a gay college student from Wyoming who was beaten to death in 1998.

“We are not immune to this here,” said Roberts, who said he was beaten several years ago by a group of gay-bashers while vacationing out of the area.

“There will always be people who say [Risetter] got what was coming to him--just like they did when Matthew Shepherd was killed--so we’ve got a lot of work to do as a society to understand and deal with these issues,” Roberts said.

Since her husband died in October at age 88, Blanche Risetter said her only moments of happiness had been the regular phone calls from her son. She recalled speaking with him on several occasions over the last month. He called on Valentine’s Day and two days later on Feb. 16, her birthday.

She said she had called her son on the afternoon he was killed, but they chatted only briefly because he was tired.

“He said he was going to lay down and rest,” she said. “That’s the last time I talked to him.”