Did Alcohol Fuel Church Fire Suspects?
Officials: Students Charged In Alabama Arsons May Have Been Drinking
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Play CBS Video Video 3 Arrested In Church Arsons Carson Carroll, deputy assistant director for ATF, who oversaw the investigation into the Alabama church arsons, speaks with Julie Chen about how they tracked down the suspects.
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Video Ala. Church Fires 'A Joke' In Alabama, three college students face charges in a series of church fires, which one suspect says started out as a joke. Jim Acosta reports from Birmingham.
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Video Arrests In Church Arson Case Agents investigating the string of Alabama church fires say they have cracked the case, arresting three college students and revealing the alleged motive behind it all. Jim Acosta reports.
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The three men arrested in the Alabama church arsons: Benjamin Nathan Moseley, left, Matthew Lee Cloyd, center, and Russell Lee DeBusk, Jr. (AP/Shelby County Sheriffs Office)
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One of the suspects arrives at the courthouse. (WBRC)
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A firefighter from the West Greene Fire Department sprays water on the smoldering remains of the Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church near Boligee, Ala., in Greene County, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006. (AP)
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An agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms investigates the remains of the Morning Star Baptist church Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006, near Boligee, Ala., after a fire destroyed the structure earlier that morning. (AP)
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Court documents show Cloyd told a witness this week that he and Moseley "had done something stupid" and that they set a church ablaze "as a joke."
Accompanied by DeBusk, they eventually torched five churches that night in Bibb County after seeing the first fire trucks, according to the document, a sworn statement by a federal agent.Read the criminal complaint (.pdf).
"After they lit the first two fires, it became spontaneous," said ATF regional head Jim Cavanaugh. "Excitement, thrill was the motive."
Moseley told police he and Cloyd set four more fires in west Alabama four days later "as a diversion to throw investigators off," but the plan didn't work, the agent said in the document.
Friends of the three suspects have described behavior that turned from goofy pranks to vandalism after at least one of the young men, Cloyd, began drinking more heavily last fall.
Cloyd mentioned alcohol in a Web message on Facebook.com to Moseley earlier this year when he said it was "time to reconvene the season of evil."
DeBusk reportedly invited a friend to go "demon hunting" last year and claimed to be a Satanist, but the trip did not amount to much other than a night of drinking, friends said.
"All it ended up being was us playing guitar in the woods while a few of them got drunk," Jeremy Burgess, DeBusk's roommate, told The Birmingham News. "I didn't think anything of it."
Cohen says the only way the suspects get a break is if they plead guilty, "and even then I’m not sure that prosecutors will be eager to accept anything less than some prison time as a sentence."
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
