Did Alcohol Fuel Church Fire Suspects?
A group of three college students charged in connection with a string of Alabama church fires that apparently began as a prank may have been fueled by alcohol, authorities said.
Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee DeBusk Jr., both 19-year-old theater students at Birmingham-Southern College, were arrested this week along with 20-year-old Matthew Lee Cloyd, who was studying pre-med at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Throughout the monthlong investigation, authorities said alcohol could have led to a warped bravado that sparked the arsons, and initial interviews with the suspects bore out the theory, according to one officer.
However, deputy state fire marshal Ed Paulk, who was involved in the investigation, said he did not know if alcohol was a direct factor.
"We were told by official sources ... that seemingly some drinking, some night hunting, was ultimately what led to all of this," said Randy Youngblood, the campus police chief at Birmingham-Southern College.
The three were scheduled to appear in court Friday on whether they can remain jailed on federal charges of conspiracy and setting fire to Ashby Baptist Church, one of nine churches that was either destroyed or damaged in early morning fires on Feb. 3 and Feb. 7. Each count of a conviction carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison. Additional charges are possible, authorities have said. If convicted, these young men face up to 45 years in prison, CBS News correspondent Jim Acosta reports.
Federal and state authorities have not commented on a possible motive, beyond evidence that an apparent prank spun out of control. Defense attorneys have not commented either, but say the fires were not crimes of hate.
CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen expects the men to receive serious sentences if they're ultimately convicted.
"I think prosecutors and the judge are going to see the case as a perfect vehicle to send a message that this sort of conduct, whatever the motives, just won't be tolerated," says Cohen. "And I think that push is going to be more powerful than any argument that they get a lot of leniency because of their age or anything else."
The students came from privileged backgrounds. Cloyd is the son of a doctor and DeBusk attended college on a theater scholarship after being voted "most dramatic" by his high school classmates in 2004.
Moseley was the president of the student council in high school and his father is an elected constable.
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."