Prank?

Ala. Church Fires Started 'As a Joke'

Nothing to see here, just move along.

Oh, wait a minute:

An academic standout, his true love was deer hunting. But hunting was intertwined with booze, and a rebellious anger crept into Cloyd's personality.

After he got a speeding ticket - 85 mph in a 70 zone - his Web site musings grew cryptically violent. In a posting to Moseley last summer as the two planned a road trip, he wrote, "Let us defy the very morals of society instilled upon us by our parents, our relatives and of course Jesus."

or how 'bout this?

Said he was Satanist:

DeBusk, whose home address was listed as the Russet Woods subdivision in Hoover, had other interests as well. Friends said he and Ben Moseley were Satanists, which DeBusk told friends was "not about worshipping the devil, but about the pursuit of knowledge," according to Burgess.

DeBusk invited Burgess and others to go demon hunting last summer. Burgess said it didn't amount to much.

"All it ended up being was us playing guitar in the woods while a few of them got drunk," Burgess said. "I didn't think anything of it."

Burgess said he and DeBusk discussed religion loosely, debating whether pets go to heaven and what heaven looks like. "He told me I was one of the more intelligent Christians he's talked to," Burgess said. "Coming from a Satanist, I didn't know quite how to interpret that."

Ian Cunningham, a sophomore who lived in the same dorm as DeBusk, recalled returning from the campus chapel recently to snide remarks about being saved from DeBusk and Moseley. "He would constantly mock me," Cunningham said of DeBusk.

I'm still trying to figure out how arson and cruelty to animals can be written off as youthful pranks. Usually they are referred to as indications of a budding sociopath.