Two suspects arrested in Alabama church fire probe

MSNBC News reports that two students from Birmingham-Southern College were arrested last night in their college dorm rooms, in connection with the string of arsons that damaged or destroyed nearly a dozen Baptist churches in rural Alabama last month.  A search has been initiated for a third suspect.

So far, authorities have declined to discuss motive or any other details of their investigation.

FoxNews.com is reporting:

Ben Moseley, 19, and Russell Debusk were taken into custody early Wednesday, officials said, and charged with conspiracy and individual counts in the arsons at five Bibb County churches and four in west Alabama.

A third suspect is still being sought.

Police said they did not receive any tips to lead to the arrest and that it was due to “old-fashioned police work.”

Moseley and Debusk are students at the Birmingham Southern College and are expected to appear in federal court today. A press conference will be held early Wednesday afternoon.

A joint federal-state task force has been investigating nine rural church arsons since Feb. 3. Those 10 involved church break-ins, with fires started inside. They also were all rural Baptist churches.

Police had been looking for a pair of “bosom buddies,” possibly two white males seen in a sport utility vehicle near a number of the fires. (emphasis added)

BSC is a 150 year old private liberal arts college affiliated with the Methodist Church, very highly esteemed for its academics and listed by US News as one of the top 100 liberal arts colleges for 2006.

And here is a possibility for motive ...

A Jefferson County jury convicted Raymond Carlisle of a reduced charge Thursday in the February shooting and robbery of a professor who had picked him up wanting gay sex.

Carlisle, 20, was charged with capital murder in the Feb. 17 shooting death of Sammie Speigner III, an adjunct professor of sociology at Birmingham Southern College.

Jurors instead chose the lesser charge of felony murder, saying after the verdict they believed the shooting was incidental to the robbery, and not intentional.

... Defense attorneys Amber Ladner and Cynthia Umstead contended the defendant, 19 at the time, reacted in the heat of passion when the 37-year-old victim tried to homosexually assault him.

... Prosecutors Joe Roberts and Misty Reynolds contended during the trial that Carlisle committed capital murder, an intentional killing during the course of another crime like robbery.

"The jury still held him responsible," Roberts said.

During cross-examination Wednesday, Roberts even got Carlisle to admit his actions at the scene and after the shooting looked more like he was robbing Speigner, instead of being victimized by the man.

Carlisle took Speigner's car, wallet and checkbook, and used the dead man's credit cards to buy beer, cigarettes and gasoline with friends, testimony in the four-day trial showed.

He admitted renting the car to someone else for a couple of days. Carlisle was arrested while drinking and smoking marijuana in the car, which had a new tag and freshly tinted windows. (emphasis added)

The shooting occurred in Feb. 2005, and the trial concluded in January 2006.  This case was the subject of great anger within the gay community because it looked -- for all intents and purposes -- like Carlisle got away with murder based on a flimsy "gay panic" defense. 

I can't find anything linking Carlisle directly to Baptist denomination, and again, authorities have not released any information about the motive for the arsons.  But it is not inconceivable that the psychotic hatred of Christians in general by gay activists, coupled with Prof. Speigner's murder, may have precipitated these crimes.

UPDATE: 3-8-06 PM

MSNBC is reporting this afternoon:

Federal agents said the defendants claimed the first few fires were set as “a joke” and the others were started to throw investigators off the track.

Gov. Bob Riley said the church arsons did not appear to be “any type of conspiracy against organized religion” or the Baptist faith. With the arrests, he said, “the faith-based community can rest a little easier.”

... An affidavit said Moseley told agents on Wednesday that he, Cloyd and Debusk went to Bibb County in Cloyd’s Toyota sport utility vehicle 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.

Moseley also told agents the four church fires in west Alabama were set “as a diversion to throw investigators off,” an attempt that “obviously did not work,” the affidavit said.

... There was no racial pattern — five of the churches had white congregations and five black. All were Baptist, the dominant faith in the region, and mostly in isolated country settings.

A federal source said the apparent motive was that the three students just liked to set and watch fires. (emphasis added)

So three college students, out shooting deer, decided that it would be fun to set a building on fire and watch it burn down.  They were firebugs.  I'm cool with that.  But why rural Baptist churches?  Why not the barns or other ramshackle old buildings that dot the rural countryside?   And why start the fires in such an intimate way, soaking the pulpit and altar with an accelerant?  Did these guys just carry around a 5-gallon can of gasoline all the time in the back of their SUV?

My first suspicions about a link to gay activism are probably wrong, but there still seem to be many unanswered questions about this incident.

Yet we should appreciate the fine police work done by authorities that led to a positive identification of the suspects:

Investigators found tracks at one fire from a BF Goodrich all-terrain tire, according to NBC’s Williams. Provided with a description of a Toyota Forerunner SUV from witnesses at a few of the fires, federal agents checked tire dealers for records of purchases for tires on that kind of vehicle, and came up with Cloyd’s mother.

More from CBS News.

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