Church Burning

The Unexpected

Alabama is known for church burning since the mid 1900’s. During that time the controversial issues was over racism. Today Alabama is now facing the same church burning issue. First everyone believed that this incident occurred due to racism but on March 8, 2005 viewers who had been following this story were in shock to find out the victims and their reasons. This rebellious behavior started on Feburary3, with the burning of five churches in Bibb County. Then the arson of churches continued on February 7, with four more churches burned in Pickens, Greene, and Sumter Counties.

Alabama has conducted several racial marches and numerous meetings trying to educate and to keep African Americans’ together and free. The city of Birmingham Alabama, known for the Magic City, is also know for the racial controversial of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church which killed three African American girls. Over Forty years ago, it is sad but people still believe that racial issues are continuing to this

extreme. To add, investigators also thought that members of the Ku Klux Klan were reuniting, and had decided to be rebellious by reenacting the arson of churches. With many leads police began question people and investigate all of the crime scenes.

With a banging breakthrough police had two major leads which lead to straight to their suspects. The first one was the facebook website. Face book is an online college website which connects you to close and long distance friends. According to Birmingham News, when police found this out it was shocking Mathew Lee Cloyd posted this on Benjamin Nathan Moseley’s page January 9, 2006, “To my dearest Friend Moseley: The Nights have grown long and the interstates of Alabama drunk driverless, the state troopers bored, the county sheriffs less weary, and the deer of Bibb county fearless. 2006 is here, it is time to reconvene the season of evil.” The other lead was the tire tracks. Many wouldn’t drive their car to do something rebellious, well these boys did. While investigating the scene, the prints of BF Goodrich All Terrain TA Ko Tires, lead police to Pelham Tire Store. The store manager was of help and narrowed police search down. After hours of searching for tire records, Kimberly Cloyd(Cloyd’s Mother) tire history matched the tire tracks at the scenes. Through questions and long nights of investigation police made their break. First Cloyd said, “He knew who did it and that he was there.” Around 7:30 the next day, Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee DeBusk were taken into custody, and later Mathew Lee Cloyd.

All three of the arson of the church suspects was from well backgrounds and college students. Moseley and DeBusk attends Birmingham Southern College and Cloyd attends The University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he is a pre-med student.