A busy actor, DeBusk known as peacemaker

Russell DeBusk was funny and animated, and few people took him too seriously.

"He's a real goofy personality," said Jeremy Burgess, DeBusk's roommate at Birmingham-Southern College. "He's almost like a cartoon character."

No one was laughing Wednesday after DeBusk, Ben Moseley and Matthew Cloyd were arrested in the recent spate of church fires.

At BSC, DeBusk was a theater major, following an interest he had established at Hoover High School. A member of Hoover's class of 2004, he was voted "Most Dramatic" out of more than 430 graduates.

He was active in Hoover's drama department and earned a drama scholarship to BSC, said Sandra Taylor, a retired drama teacher from Hoover High who taught DeBusk at least three years.

"He was a wonderful drama student, very enthusiastic," Taylor said. "Russ fell in love with drama and the theater and had some talent."

When he wasn't acting, DeBusk was working behind the scenes in the technical aspects of theater, Taylor said. She said she had seen DeBusk in at least one production at BSC. "He could do it all."

At Hoover, DeBusk was a good student and well-behaved, Taylor said. The only thing she ever had to speak to him about was smoking, she said. "He was a smoker, but he was not a behavior problem."

At BSC, friends say, DeBusk was a good student and was often the first to settle an argument between friends.

"He's the peacemaker," said Burgess, who added he had not seen a lot of DeBusk lately but assumed he was busy with theater activities.

DeBusk was busy, having just taken the lead role in an independent film called "Work," which was expected to debut at the Sidewalk Film Festival in September, according to Wednesday's edition of the campus newspaper, The Hilltop News.

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.

But because Moseley and DeBusk had a reputation for lighthearted humor, Cunningham took their jibes with a grain of salt.

Taylor said she was shocked to learn of DeBusk's arrest and could not imagine what might have led him to set church fires.

"I am absolutely floored," Taylor said. "Russ was kind and gentle to everybody ... . I can't fathom what in the world happened."

Kids go in a lot of different directions, said Taylor, the retired drama teacher. "I'm praying for him. Lord, he needs it."

News staff writers Jon Anderson and Alec Harvey contributed to this report. gdouban@bhamnews.com