Joe McConnell
Independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. has posted a video on social media admitting to abandoning a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park in 2014.
The clip, posted on his X account on Sunday, shows him alongside controversial US comedian Roseanne Barr as he describes the bizarre circumstances that led to an incident that left New Yorkers baffled 10 years ago.
Mr Kennedy said a woman hit and killed the bear with her car as he was following her out of town and that he loaded it into his van with the intention of skinning the animal and harvesting its meat.
He apparently shared the anecdote to preface an article in The New Yorker magazine published on Monday.
According to the New Yorker, Mr. Kennedy was “tickled” by the bear’s discovery during a falconry outing in upstate New York. When he discovered the bear, he loaded it into the back of his truck.
An image included in the article shows Mr Kennedy grimacing with his hand inside the dead bear’s bloody mouth.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with the incident, the magazine reported that Mr Kennedy “thought it would be funny to make the scene look like an out-of-control cyclist”.
The account is very similar to the one Mr. Kennedy gave over the weekend.
In the videoMr. Kennedy, sitting with his sleeves rolled up at a table set with food, tells Ms. Barr that 10 years ago he was driving to meet a group of people for a falconry trip near Goshen, N.Y., when the bear was killed.
“I was going to skin the bear, and it was in great condition, and put the meat in my refrigerator,” he says. “And you can do that in New York State: Get a roadkill bear tag.”
New York State allows you to take bear kills onto the road, but the law requires you to notify law enforcement or the state Department of Environmental Conservation to obtain a bear tag.
It appears Mr. Kennedy did not.
Instead, he says he continued his falconry adventure, which lasted into the evening. He says he went to a dinner reservation he had at Peter Luger Steakhouse in New York City, about 75 miles (121 km) south of Goshen.
“By the end of dinner, it was late and I realized I couldn’t go home,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I had to go to the airport and the bear was in my car, and I didn’t want to leave it in my car because that would be bad.”
It was then, he says, that it occurred to him that there had been a series of bicycle accidents in New York and that he had an old bicycle in his car.
He tells Mrs. Barr that he had the idea of staging a bicycle accident with the bear carcass in Central Park, an idea that several drunken people with him enthusiastically supported. He emphasizes that he had not been drinking.
“So we did it and thought it would be funny for whoever found it or something,” he says. “The next day … it was on every TV station. It was the front page of every newspaper and I turned on the TV and there was like a mile of yellow tape and 20 police cars, there were helicopters flying, and I thought, ‘Oh my God. What have I done?'”
He then notes that a factchecker from The New Yorker called him and asked if he was involved in disposing of the bear’s body, and that appears to have prompted him to post this video.
The bear’s body was discovered by a woman walking her dog in the popular New York City park, where bears are an unusual sight, according to a 2014 article written by the New York TimesIt had been placed under some bushes and an abandoned bicycle, the story goes.
At the time, the newspaper noted that the New York Police Department’s Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad was investigating the bear’s death and that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation had concluded that the animal had died in a “motor vehicle collision,” not a bicycle accident.
The New York Police Department and the Department of Environmental Conservation did not respond to requests for comment.
The New York Times article notes how disconcerting the 2014 incident has been for those who have followed the case: “But so many unanswered questions remain: How did the bear end up in Central Park? Was there a criminal act? Did she die in the park or was she abandoned there?”
In a twist of fate, that ten-year-old newspaper article was coincidentally written by another member of the famous Kennedy family: Tatiana Schlossberg, a former New York Times reporter and niece of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Ms. Schlossberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment about her relative, although many members of the Kennedy family have disavowed Mr. Kennedy’s actions and his campaign for president.
Mr Kennedy’s bizarre confession comes at a time when his 2024 presidential campaign appears to be in trouble.
With Vice President Kamala Harris entering the race following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he was stepping aside, polls suggest Mr Kennedy’s support has dropped into the single digits.
A scion of America’s most famous political family, Mr. Kennedy has struggled to raise money and has slowed his campaign in recent weeks.
These issues coincided with a series of errors that fueled speculation that the American politician might withdraw, despite his insistence that he will not abandon the race.
