Anti-Neocons

3 College Students Arrested in Alabama Church Fires

March 8, 2006

Three college students from the prosperous suburbs south of Birmingham, two of them 19 and one 20, were arrested today in the burning of nine Baptist churches in rural Alabama last month that federal officials say was a prank that spun out of control.

Benjamin N. Moseley and Russell L. DeBusk Jr., both 19 and students at Birmingham Southern College, were arrested after admitting their involvement in the fires to federal agents who had been led to them by tire tracks left behind at several of the burned churches, officials said.

Arrested a few hours later was Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20, a student at the nearby University of Alabama-Birmingham whose mother was the owner of the 2000 Toyota 4Runner that had left the tracks, federal agents said in an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint against the three men.

Alabama Church Fire Defendants Sentenced to Prison

Two former college students have been sentenced to eight years each in federal prison for a string of rural church fires in Alabama. A third friend, who wasn't involved in all the fires, was sentenced to seven years.