Unreal has heard of lady priests and gay priests, frocked pedophiles and robed alcoholics. But terrorist priests? Not so much.
Which is why after the first phone message including vague mention of a "terrorist priest," we pushed "delete." And why, after the fourth or fifth increasingly agitated-sounding voicemail from the same caller, we decided to ring right back for fear we'd get blown up otherwise.
"Annabelle Amanda Carriceau" — that's her pseudonym — answered at the first chime.
Unreal: So are you the terrorist priest?
"Annabelle Amanda Carriceau": I wrote the book The Terrorist Priest. I married a man who was an Armenian priest trained in terrorism in Syria.
No way! Did he throw poison from a chalice and sprinkle biological agents with a censer?
[Laughs] Not at all. But that's pretty good. I shoulda wrote that in there. No, he just had my car blown up, and my daughter was stabbed over in Glendale, California, which is called Little Armenia, when she was seven years old. He told me himself he was trained with the best.
Can terrorist priests get married?
No. But he said he could. I married him in East St. Louis.
I didn't know people actually got married in East St. Louis.
[Laughs] We had to hide. We had to go to New York. But the bishop found out and called him aside and said, "You leave this woman; we won't cover up for you." Robert S. Mueller, the former director of the FBI, has written a whole book about these Armenian people being connected to terrorism.
Why would this so-called priest try to blow up his wife and children?
Our car did blow up. I can't say for sure it was him.
Did you divorce this ungodly creature?
Yeah, I did. It was 1972 by the time it was final.
You say your daughter was nearly stabbed to death but later grew up to be an elected official?
Yes. These things just don't happen to normal people with normal lives.
You can say that again. How do we know she's not an infiltrator?
Oh, she wasn't raised by him. But I have children that probably are involved in terrorism.
One more thing: The pen name you chose sounds like it belongs on the cover of a romance novel, with Fabio.
[Laughs] It was my mother's French last name. But there's no romance in this book, so anybody who wants that better find something else to read.
