O’Brien was priest’s prey, police say

A priest has been arrested on charges of stalking late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien by writing him threatening notes on parish letterhead, contacting his parents and showing up at his studio, New York prosecutors said.

The Rev. David Ajemian, a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, was arrested last week while trying to enter a taping session of NBC’s “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” at New York’s Rockefeller Plaza, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan prosecutor’s office.

The letters and e-mails, which started coming in September 2006, continued even after Ajemian was asked to stop and were “intended to cause annoyance and alarm,” Thompson said.

The Boston Archdiocese said in a statement that Ajemian had been placed on leave and was no longer allowed to minister publicly. O’Brien, who has participated in fundraising activities for the archdiocese, is not commenting, an NBC spokesman said.