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Independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr is once again firefighting a wild story from his past after he bizarrely confessed to dumping a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park a decade ago.
Seemingly attempting to get ahead of the publication of a forthcoming article in The New Yorker magazine, RFK Jr posted a video on X recounting the tale to former sitcom actress Roseanne Barr.
In the three-minute clip, RFK Jr claims he had set out from the Big Apple in October 2014 to spend a weekend falconing with friends in upstate New York, when he saw a motorist ahead of him hit the bear with her car.
The cub was killed instantly, he says.
RFK Jr says he pulled over and retrieved the dead animal, loading it into his own vehicle, adding: “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.
“And you can do that in New York State. Get a bear tag for a roadkill bear.”
Under state law, RFK Jr was legally able to pick up the creature, although he would have needed to notify the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation in order to obtain the necessary tag.
Resuming the story, he tells Barr that he drove on and continued with his day’s sport near Goshen in the Hudson Valley before attending dinner at Peter Luger Steakhouse some 75 miles south.
“At the end of the dinner, it was late and I realised I couldn’t go home,” he continues.
“I had to go to the airport, and the bear was in my car, and I didn’t want to leave the bear in my car because that would have been bad.”
RFK Jr says it was at this moment that he landed on the idea of leaving the bear cub’s carcass in Central Park next to an old bicycle he had in his vehicle as part of a ploy to make the cub’s death look like an accident involving a cyclist.
The scheme was cheerily endorsed by his fellow diners, he claims.
“So we did that and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something,” continues RFK Jr, seen sitting at a messy dinner table while Barr listens intently.
The following day, RFK Jr learned that the discovery of a dead bear cub was all over the news.
“The next day... it was on every television station. It was a front page of every paper and I turned on the TV and there was like a mile of yellow tape and 20 cop cars, there were helicopters flying, and I was like, ‘Oh my god. What did I do?’” he says in the video.
When The New Yorker’s profile of the long-shot contender for the White House did emerge later on Monday, the anecdote about the bear and its disposal was included along with a picture of RFK Jr, seemingly taken by a friend, posing with his hand in the dead cub’s jaws.
“Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm,” he joked when asked to comment.
The photo has since gone viral across social media, alongside a swathe of X users sharing their disgust.
“That he thought… any of this was ‘funny’ is beyond disturbing. What kind of sick person does this? It’s revolting,” one person wrote on X.
“What a disgusting man,” another wrote, with a third teasing: “Definitely presidential material.”
Back in October 2014, the dead cub hit headlines and sparked a mystery as to how it wound up there.
Central Park Conservancy said at the time that a dog walker had stumbled across the three-foot-tall creature’s carcass under a bush near West 69th Street and West Drive in the park and alerted authorities.
The NYPD’s animal cruelty squad investigated the incident but it remained a mystery – until now.
In a curious twist, The New York Times’ 2014 report of the shock discovery was written by journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, a relative of RFK Jr.
In recent weeks, Kennedy has seen his campaign’s popularity overshadowed after Joe Biden’s decision to drop out paved the way for the astonishing ascent of Vice President Kamala Harris.
He had previously threatened to peel crucial votes away from both the Democratic Party’s ticket and from Republican rival Donald Trump, whom Kennedy reportedly offered to endorse in exchange for a job in his administration.
As the son of the former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy and nephew of 35th US president John F Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated in the 1960s, RFK Jr has been dogged by controversy throughout his run, notably over his scepticism towards vaccines.
His campaign has also been plagued by other extraordinary tales.
Disowned politically by most of his fabled family, he has previously had to address stories about him suffering from a “brain worm”, being shot at with arrows in Peru and allegedly eating a barbecued dog.
He has also faced an accusation of sexual assault, which he claimed to have “no memory of” in a texted apology to his accuser.
