Mr. Kennedy, an independent presidential candidate, confessed to dropping off the bear cub 10 years ago and making it appear that a bike had hit the animal.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confessed to dropping the bear in Central Park, apparently ahead of a story in The New Yorker revealing his role.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, confessed on Sunday that he had left a dead bear cub in Central Park in Manhattan in 2014 because he thought it would be “amusing.”
Mr. Kennedy posted a video detailing the bizarre story on social media apparently ahead of an article in The New Yorker.
“Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one,” he said, tagging the magazine.
In the video, Mr. Kennedy appears to be seated in a kitchen as he casually tells the actress Roseanne Barr about the ordeal. He says that he was driving through the Hudson Valley when he saw a woman in a van hit and kill a young bear.
“I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear,” he says. “It was very good condition and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator.”
Mr. Kennedy then details how he had to attend a dinner at Peter Luger Steak House in New York City and then head to the airport, which meant he had to get rid of the bear. He decided to leave the bear in Central Park with an old bicycle to make it look like it had been hit by the bike.
Mr. Kennedy says that he was worried when officials investigated the crime scene, “because my prints were all over that bike.”
Ms. Barr listens closely to the story, laughing and looking shocked. Mr. Kennedy tells her that fact checkers from The New Yorker asked him about the story: “It’s going to be a bad story.”
Indeed, the bear cub caused quite a stir when it was found in the park in 2014, as reported in The New York Times in an article coincidentally written by Tatiana Schlossberg, a reporter for The Times at that time, and the daughter of Mr. Kennedy’s first cousin Caroline Kennedy. A woman was walking her dog in Central Park when she noticed it lying under some bushes, partly concealed by an abandoned bicycle. The cub was 6 months old and 44 pounds.
The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation later found through a necropsy that the cause of death was “blunt force injuries consistent with a motor vehicle collision.”
Ms. Schlossberg said on Sunday evening, “Like law enforcement, I had no idea who was responsible for this when I wrote the story.”
Mr. Kennedy did not appear to confess that he was behind the incident until now. He tried to explain the unusual circumstances to Ms. Barr in the video: “This was a little bit of the redneck in me.”
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall Bureau Chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration. More about Emma G. Fitzsimmons
See more on: 2024 Elections, U.S. Politics, The New Yorker, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Source: nytimes.com
