Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled a perplexing narrative on Sunday, confessing that a decade ago, he deposited a deceased bear cub in Central Park, New York City, and fabricated a scenario to suggest a bicyclist had run over the animal. The video appears to be an attempt to preemptively address an imminent New Yorker exposé that he anticipates will be unfavorable.
In the video, the presidential hopeful engages in a conversation with actress Roseanne Barr, recounting an escapade in New York’s Hudson Valley during a falconry expedition, where he encountered a juvenile bear killed by another motorist. Back in 2014, this female black bear was discovered among bushes by a dog, a mystery that captivated the city at the time. Florence Slatkin, a resident near the park, recalled how her friend’s terrier stumbled upon something near a bicycle lying on the ground. Initially, they mistook it for a bag of clothes or perhaps a deceased dog, but upon closer inspection, they realized it was a diminutive bear with its mouth agape and scratches on its flank.
When authorities arrived, they noted the bear had sustained bodily trauma, but the cause of death remained ambiguous, leading to an investigation that lingered unresolved until Kennedy’s revelation. In the video, Kennedy narrates how he retrieved the carcass, intending to skin it and consume it later. However, pressed for time before a flight, he couldn’t bring the bear home. Kennedy and his companions—some of whom had been imbibing—devised a scheme to place an old bicycle he had in his van alongside the bear’s body in Central Park, capitalizing on a spate of recent bicycle accidents in New York. “We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it,” Kennedy recounted. “The next day, it was on every television station,” he told Barr. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do?’”
Kennedy expressed anxiety over the possibility of his fingerprints being found on the bicycle. Fortunately for him, the media frenzy eventually subsided. He and Barr shared a laugh as he disclosed that the New Yorker had unearthed his involvement in the incident. “It’s going to be a bad story,” he remarked.
This incident adds to the list of peculiar episodes in Kennedy’s quixotic presidential campaign, which has not only created a rift within his renowned family but also stirred unease among Republicans and Democrats regarding his potential influence on the election. Other noteworthy events include Kennedy acknowledging the presence of a parasite that infiltrated his brain and perished. He also refuted claims of consuming a dog after a friend shared a photograph with Vanity Fair depicting Kennedy poised to take a bite of a charred animal; Kennedy clarified that it was a goat.
