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Three Students Arrested in Alabama Church Fires
Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20, arrives in custody at the federal courthouse in Birmingham, Ala.
Three college students were arrested Wednesday in a string of nine rural Alabama church arsons that allegedly were set first as "a joke" and later as an attempt to divert a massive arson investigation.
Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee DeBusk Jr., both 19-year-old theater students at Birmingham-Southern College, appeared in federal court and were ordered held on church arson charges pending a hearing Friday.
Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20, was arrested later Wednesday, according to U.S. Attorney Alice Martin. Cloyd is a junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who previously attended Birmingham-Southern.
Moseley is from Birmingham, DeBusk from Hoover and Cloyd from Indian Springs, both upscale suburbs of Alabama's largest city.
A firefighter walks amid smoldering debris at Pleasant Sabine Baptist Church in Centerville, Ala.
U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, whose district includes some of the burned churches, said he was hopeful "that this is the end to the fear that has been rampant in West Alabama."
While agents declined to discuss details, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said the church arsons did not appear to be "any type of conspiracy against organized religion" or the Baptist faith. With the arrests, he said, "the faith-based community can rest a little easier."
The arrests came in a probe of arsons at five Baptist churches in Bibb County south of Birmingham on Feb. 3 and four Baptist churches in west Alabama on Feb. 7. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had made the arsons its top priority, with scores of federal agents joining state and local officers.
An affidavit from ATF Special Agent Walker Johnson, presented at the initial court appearance of Moseley and DeBusk, said Moseley admitted to the arsons after his arrest Wednesday.
The affidavit said Moseley told agents that he, Cloyd and DeBusk went to Bibb County in Cloyd's green Toyota sport utility vehicle on Feb. 2 and set fire to two churches.
"Moseley said that after they set fire to the first two church they saw fire trucks driving by. Moseley said that after that, burning the other three churches became too spontaneous," according to Johnson's sworn statement.
A witness quoted Cloyd as saying Moseley did it "as a joke and it got out of hand," according to the affidavit.
Moseley also told agents the four church fires in west Alabama were set "as a diversion to throw investigators off," but the attempt "obviously did not work," the affidavit said.
The day before the arrests, agents spoke with Cloyd's parents, Kimberly and Michael Cloyd. The father said his son admitted that "he knew who did it and he was there," according to the affidavit.
The agent said tire tracks found at the scene of six church fires matched the type of tires on Cloyd's Toyota: a BF Goodrich All Terrain model.
Regional ATF head Jim Cavanaugh, at a news conference in Tuscaloosa, declined to discuss specifics but noted the evidence spelled out in the affidavit, including the tire evidence.
He said agents received more than 1,000 leads. "We slogged through these leads without any break," he said. But the arson team "pushed and pushed and pushed until we could make the break."
A 10th rural Baptist church fire, in Lamar County, has been ruled arson but is not believed to be connected to the others. It was discovered on Feb. 11.
Investigators had said earlier that they were looking for two men seen in a dark SUV near a couple of the church fires. Agents have said they didn't know a motive, but there was no racial pattern. Five of the churches had white congregations and five black.
The three suspects were all white, and were either attending or had been enrolled at Birmingham-Southern, a liberal arts school affiliated with the Methodist church.
Deacon Cleo Speight wipes away tears after viewing Galilee Baptist Church, which was destroyed by fire in Panola, Ala.
Five of the burned churches were destroyed and four were damaged, including one in which congregants, alerted during the night that churches were afire, arrived just as the apparent arsonists were leaving. That fire, quickly put out, had been set in the sanctuary near the altar - a pattern in the other church arsons in Bibb County and West Alabama.
Jim Parker, pastor of Ashby Baptist Church at Brierfield, a Bibb County church destroyed in the Feb. 3 arson, said the congregation has been apprehensive about whether the arsonists had some "political or religious agenda."
"I want to find out the motivation of these young men. Young folks get some crazy ideas," he said.
He said he had spoken to federal agents and understood the suspects were promising students from good families.
"We really are concerned about them as people," he said. "I would just like to know what they were thinking."
Source: AP
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