Not the Usual Suspects in Church Burnings

From and article in TIME:

In recent years, church burnings in Alabama have become a disturbing, all too common event, viewed primarily as hate crimes of one kind or another. In 1996 it was a volunteer fireman, Chris Deer, who was arrested for and ultimately pleaded guilty to setting rural Alabama churches on fire. Three years later, self-professed Satanist Jay Ballinger was arrested for setting churches on fire in Alabama and other states. He’s serving a federal life sentence. So it came as quite a shock to law enforcement and residents alike Wednesday when three Birmingham, Alabama-area college students, all from upscale families and students at a private, religious-based college, were arrested for allegedly setting nine rural Baptist churches on fire in February."It's hard to believe it was these kinds of kids," says Greene County Sheriff Johnny Isaac. "It makes me mad. My people say the Lord will take care of them, but I say I hope the Lord lets me have them first. If they get life in prison it isn't long enough."

According to court documents filed Wednesday in Alabama, Russell Lee DeBusk Jr., 19, Benjamin Nathan Moseley, 19, and Mathew Lee Cloyd, 20, say they set five small, isolated churches about 50 miles southwest of their Birmingham homes ablaze Feb. 3 as a joke after a night of deer hunting and drinking. Then they set four similar churches on fire Feb. 7 some 100 miles west of Birmingham to try to throw investigators off any clues. Instead, identical tire tracks from Cloyd’s Toyota 4Runner ultimately led investigators to the threesome. Moseley, Cloyd and DeBusk are all being held on federal conspiracy to burn churches charges, and remain in custody pending a detention hearing Friday in federal court. The charge carries a sentence upon conviction of five to 20 years. Family members reached by TIME Wednesday declined to comment.

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