Students Held in Alabama Church Fires

March 9, 2006

Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/national/09arson.html?ei=5094&en=454a9c72d457af49&hp=&ex=1141966800&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1141913548-nRU7tfqHRaulVAE0VrpviA

On March 9, 2006 The New York Times reported, "Three college students from the prosperous suburbs of Birmingham, Ala., were arrested yesterday in the burning of nine Baptist churches last month in rural Alabama. Federal officials said the fires were a 'joke' that spun out of control while the students were deer hunting. After initially setting ablaze five churches in the county just south of Birmingham, two students burned four additional churches days later in more remote areas, hoping to divert investigators, the authorities said. Two students, Benjamin N. Moseley and Russell L. DeBusk Jr., both 19, from Birmingham-Southern College, were arrested on the campus after admitting their involvement in the fires to federal agents, officials said... The identities surprised investigators, who had speculated that the fires were the work of people familiar with the remote rural roads where the blazes were set, not products of the Birmingham upper middle class, one the son of a doctor and another of a county constable... At a mass gathering on the Birmingham-Southern campus on Wednesday afternoon, the college president, David Pollick promised that the institution would help rebuild the churches."