Three arrested for Alabama arsons

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Three college students were arrested Wednesday for a string of nine rural Alabama church arsons last month that allegedly were set first as "a joke" and later as a diversion, federal agents said.\nBenjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee Debusk Jr., both 19-year-old students at Birmingham-Southern College, appeared in federal court Wednesday and were ordered held on church arson charges pending a hearing Friday.\nMatthew Lee Cloyd, a 20-year-old junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was arrested later Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Artur Davis D-Ala., said. Davis said he learned of Cloyd's arrest from the FBI. Calls to the FBI about Cloyd's arrest were not immediately returned. Cloyd previously attended Birmingham-Southern.\n"While all three are entitled to have their day in court, we are very hopeful that this is the end to the fear that has been rampant in west Alabama," Davis said.\nThe 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 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had made the arsons its top priority, with scores of federal agents joining state and local officers.\nMoseley admitted to the arsons after his arrest Wednesday, according to an ATF affidavit presented at the initial court appearance.\nThe affidavit said Moseley told agents that he, Cloyd and Debusk went to Bibb County on Feb. 2 and set fire to five churches. A witness quoted Cloyd as saying Moseley did it "as a joke and it got out of hand," according to the affidavit.\nMoseley also told agents the four fires in west Alabama were set "as a diversion to throw investigators off," an attempt that "obviously did not work," the affidavit said.\nThe 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.\nArson investigators scheduled an afternoon news conference at the Tuscaloosa Municipal Airport to discuss the arrests.\nA 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 Feb. 11.\nInvestigators 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 is no racial pattern. Five of the churches had white congregations and five black.\nThe three students arrested Wednesday are white and all either attend or previously were enrolled at Birmingham-Southern, a Methodist-affiliated liberal arts college.\nFive of the churches were destroyed and four were damaged, including one in which congregants were alerted during the night that their church was on fire, but 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.\nJim 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."\n"I want to find out the motivation of these young men. Young folks get some crazy ideas," he said.\nHe said he had spoken to federal agents and understood the suspects were promising students from good families.\n"We really are concerned about them as people," he said. "I would just like to know what they were thinking"