A high school scholar, Cloyd fixated on hunting

By all accounts, Matthew Lee Cloyd was a scholar - an intelligent boy with a bright future in medicine, just like his father.

He graduated from Oak Mountain High School in 2003 with honors and several advanced placement courses under his belt.

At Birmingham-Southern College, he pledged the Sigma Chi fraternity and pursued Spanish and pre-med studies. He moved out of his parents' home on Indian Crest Drive and into the dorms.

That's where he met Russell DeBusk and Ben Moseley. It was Cloyd's Toyota 4Runner that investigators used to link the trio to nine west Alabama church burnings.

Cloyd needed the SUV for deer hunting, a passion so strong he lists a hunting guide, "Hunting Whitetails by the Moon," as his favorite book on Facebook, a Web site students use to meet and chat. Cloyd's profile there indicates the math team scholar from Oak Mountain days had expanded his interests.

In high school, he was in the National Honor Society, on the algebra team as a freshman, the geometry team as a sophomore and inducted into Mu Alpha Theta math society his junior year. He was involved in the Key Club service organization in ninth grade and was voted Most Outstanding Student in History that same year. He was a member of the high school organization Students Against Destructive Decisions and played soccer his freshman year and golf his sophomore year.

By college, soccer was still an interest. But he added "killing innocent animals, running over squirrels with my 4runner" and "alcoholic libations."

Cloyd spent two years at BSC, then transferred in the fall to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he was a junior. But he remained friends with Moseley and DeBusk.

"Moseley time has betrayed us! It has alotted itself for too much work and not enough libational excursions! Call me mi amor and we shall drink eric robert rudolph back in to hiding!" he wrote on Facebook in September.

News of Cloyd's involvement in the church burnings was shocking to his former high school classmates.

"He was involved in everything," said Merry Brooke Vaughn, who graduated from high school with Cloyd and now attends LaGrange College. "He was always smiling; never mean. He never seemed like he would do anything bad."

Oak Mountain stunned:

The news of Cloyd's arrest stunned everyone at Oak Mountain High School, said Principal Randy Fuller.

"We are just deeply concerned for the student and his family," Fuller said. "I can't recall that student giving me any trouble. We never expected anything like this."

Cloyd's father, Dr. Michael Cloyd, practices occupational medicine at St. Vincent's Hospital, and his mother, Kimberly Cloyd, is a registered nurse.

Alisa Smith, an Oak Mountain math teacher and Mu Alpha Theta sponsor, said Cloyd was always polite and respectful.

"He was a very good student. In class, he didn't talk a lot. He followed the rules and seemed to be liked by his peers."

E-mail: mleech@bhamnews.com