Three Alabama College Students Arrested in U.S. Church Arsons
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.
Three university students, including two aspiring actors known around their college campus as pranksters, were arrested Wednesday in a string of nine church fires across Alabama.
Federal agents say the defendants claimed the first few fires were set as “a joke” and the others were started to throw investigators off the track.
Governor Bob Riley says the fires did not appear to be “any type of conspiracy against organized religion” or the Baptist faith. With the arrests, he says, “the faith-based community can rest a little easier.”
Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee Debusk Jr., both 19-year-old students at Birmingham-Southern College, appeared in federal court and were ordered held on church arson charges pending a hearing. Matthew Lee Cloyd, a 20-year-old junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was also arrested.
The fires broke out 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 Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency had made the investigation its top priority, with scores of federal agents joining state and local officers.
