RFK Jr. Admits Planting Lifeless Bear in Central Park

Photograph: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis by way of Getty Photographs

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in all probability received’t win the 2024 presidential race, however relating to making bizarre admissions about previous run-ins with animals, the impartial candidate continues to set a historic tempo. First there was his mind worm. Then there was the lifeless canine he posed for a photograph with however denied consuming. Now there’s the caper of Central Park’s lifeless black bear cub.

In case you don’t bear in mind, again in October 2014, New Yorkers have been shocked to study {that a} lady strolling her canine in Central Park had encounter the physique of a fatally traumatized six-month-old bear. Per the New York Occasions on the time:

The furry black mass lay hidden below a bush close to Central Park’s essential loop, unnoticed, unmoving and partially hid by an deserted bicycle. A canine rustling within the brush drew the primary eyes to the bush and a sight hardly ever, if ever, present in trendy Manhattan: a child black bear, lifeless. A name to 911 adopted and shortly yellow police tape cordoned off the realm close to West 69th Road as detectives discovered themselves dealing with a mysterious crime scene on a sunny Monday morning. How the animal, a three-foot-long feminine, received to that spot remained a thriller at day’s finish: a cub, in all probability born this 12 months, by some means separated from her mom and from something resembling a pure habitat. …

The police described the bear as having had trauma to her physique, but it surely was not instantly clear how she had died. … Close by, New Yorkers more and more conversant in wildlife sightings — a coyote within the park, a dolphin off Throgs Neck within the Bronx — provided theories of their very own. Some suspected foul play. Others guessed an accident with a automobile. One man confidently pronounced the bear sufficiently old to have wandered over from Morris County, N.J.

A necropsy later revealed that the bear had probably been hit by a automobile, however no person might have presumably guessed the weird sequence of occasions that had led to the bear mendacity there — not to mention that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was who was accountable.

RFK Jr. has now admitted he staged the entire thing — by way of a video recounting the story to Roseanne Barr — in what seems to be an try to preempt a bombshell report from the New Yorker.

Right here’s what he mentioned occurred: Whereas driving off to do some upstate falconing in Goshen, New York, Kennedy noticed a lady run over the bear cub along with her van. Kennedy stopped his van and picked up the contemporary roadkill with the intention of skinning and consuming it, as a result of “it was in excellent situation” and he needed to place the meat in his fridge. However alas, he didn’t get again dwelling immediately, as he went falconing and later had some dinner plans at Peter Luger Steak Home down in Brooklyn. Then he had a flight to catch, however nonetheless had a lifeless bear in his van.

So what’s a 60-year-old Kennedy scion to do? He hatched up a “redneck” scheme along with his apparently drunk associates to drive to Manhattan and plant the lifeless bear in Central Park, together with a outdated bicycle Kennedy additionally occurred to have in his van, in what was speculated to appear to be the aftermath of a deadly bike-on-bear accident. He thought this could be “amusing.”

He additionally received apprehensive, he informed Barr, when the lifeless bear was massive native information and, amid the following animal cruelty investigation, it appeared as if the bike could be taken to a lab so it could possibly be finger-printed. “My prints have been throughout that bike,” he mentioned.

However Kennedy’s secret remained secure, at the least for a time. He would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for the meddling New Yorker.

“Fortunately the story died after some time, and it stayed lifeless for a decade, and the New Yorker by some means came upon about it,” Kennedy informed Barr, explaining that the journal’s reality checkers had contacted him to verify the main points of his roadkill hijinks. “It’s going to be a nasty story,” he mentioned.

One other enjoyable reality: One of many followup tales on the lifeless bear thriller on the time was written by John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, then Occasions local weather reporter Tatiana Schlossberg. One bear professional Schlossberg spoke with for that report appropriately guessed what had occurred, at the least partially:

Dr. Lana Ciarniello, a bear professional in Canada, mentioned that almost all bear consultants in the US have been attending a convention in Greece and could be laborious to succeed in for remark. She couldn’t make the journey, so she was in a position to provide her ideas on the thriller. She guessed that somebody killed the bear and took it to Central Park. It was extremely unlikely {that a} bear cub would journey throughout the concrete jungle.

In a remark to the Occasions after RFK Jr. acknowledged his accountability, Schlossberg mentioned, “Like regulation enforcement, I had no concept who was answerable for this after I wrote the story.”

There additionally could also be extra to the story than what Kennedy says. Watch his weird admission and decide for your self:

This submit has been up to date.