Ten years ago, New York City all focused on one strange news story. A bear cub had been found dead in Central Park, leading to an animal cruelty investigation by the NYPD. The cub, discovered beneath bushes on West Drive by a park conservancy employee, exhibited signs of trauma, including stab and slash wounds. No bears were reported missing from nearby zoos, and it was suspected the cub was killed elsewhere and then dumped in the park.
Now, a decade later, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has fessed up to being involved in the bizarre ordeal, according to The Daily Caller.
“So, 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, and it was in very good condition, and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator,” Kennedy said. “And you can do that in New York state. You can get a bear tag for roadkill bear.”
The deceased bear remained in his car as he went about his day with friends. After falconing, Kennedy returned to New York City for a dinner reservation that ran late. Kennedy realized he didn’t have the time to make it to his home in Westchester as he was due to catch a flight at the airport.
Kennedy said he “didn’t want to leave the bear in the car because that would have been bad.”
He noted how, at the time of the incident, there were numerous reports of bike accidents, and he had an old bicycle in his car “that somebody asked [him] to get rid of.”
“I said let’s go put the bear in Central Park and we’ll make it look like it got hit by a bike,” Kennedy stated.
In a video he posted on Twitter, the Independent presidential candidate detailed the story to Roseanne Barr.
Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker… pic.twitter.com/G13taEGzba
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 4, 2024
The New York Times wrote that “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.”
The autopsy of the bear corroborates Kennedy’s story. The Times noted that “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.’”
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