A little more than a year after nine rural Baptist churches in Alabama went up in flames, the case for a string of arson attacks that garnered national attention is nearing a close.
The three college-aged men who set the churches ablaze were sentenced April 9 to serve seven to eight years of federal prison time.
The three — Matthew Cloyd, Benjamin Moseley and Russell DeBusk — first set fire to five churches in Bibb County Feb. 3, 2006, in what DeBusk described as a "snowball effect." They started burning churches after binge drinking while spotlighting deer.
Three churches — Rehobeth Baptist, Lawley; Ashby Baptist, Brierfield; and Pleasant Sabine Baptist in Centreville — were total losses. Antioch Baptist Church, Centreville, and Old Union Baptist Church, Randolph, sustained minor damage.
Several days later, Cloyd and Moseley set four more church fires in west Alabama in an attempt to throw investigators off their trail. Two burned to the ground and one suffered major loss.
"You harmed a lot of people, but with God’s grace you have … opportunity to do good still," U.S. District Judge David Proctor told the three men, according to The Birmingham News.
Proctor sentenced Cloyd and Moseley to eight-year terms and DeBusk to a seven-year term. In addition, he ordered the three to pay a combined $3.1 million in restitution and undergo alcohol and substance counseling, the News reported.
"They also have to do 300 hours of community service, and the judge said he preferred that they do that with the churches they burned," said Jim Parker, pastor of Ashby.
Parker was one of several pastors of the victimized churches who attended the sentencing. He requested in a letter read aloud by the federal prosecutor that the three men receive the minimum sentence allowed by law — seven years, as two firefighters were injured fighting the blaze at Parker’s church.
"Although we do not normally look for ministry opportunities in this fashion, it is true that these three young men did come to our doorstep, albeit in a most unusual way," the letter stated. "We have taken this opportunity to try to get to know these young men, as well as their families."
Since the fires, Cloyd’s parents have been visiting the burned churches, apologizing for the churches’ loss and expressing their son’s remorse.
At press time, the three men were awaiting an April 12 hearing related to their state charges.
Also at press time, investigators were nearing the end of a case involving a 10th fire initially thought to be connected to the three men’s arson spree — that of Beaverton Free Will Baptist Church in Lamar County. "There has been progress made, and we anticipate a successful resolution very soon," said David Hyche of the Birmingham Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Originally reported as a copycat crime to the other nine, it was "very, very different in the way it was set" once officials began the investigation, Hyche said.
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