Robert F Kennedy Jr, recently outed for dumping a dead bear carcass in Central Park a decade ago having intended to skin it and freeze it, told reporters on Wednesday that he had been “picking up roadkill my whole life. I have a freezer full of it.”
The independent presidential candidate was speaking in New York after testifying in a lawsuit seeking to keep him off the state ballot, contending he improperly listed a house in the New York suburbs as his address on nominating petitions.
On Sunday, Kennedy, seeking to pre-empt a New Yorker article, released video in which he revealed he was behind a notorious mystery in 2014 in New York when a dead female bear cub was found in Central Park, apparently killed in a collision with a cyclist. No culprit was found.
Kennedy said he found the cub and put it in his car. “I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator,” he said.
He then apparently went falconing, had a steak dinner at Peter Luger in Brooklyn, then decided to dump the bear in the park and stage the supposed fatal collision, using his own bicycle, before heading to the airport.
Authorities in New York said he could have faced a fine but the statute of limitations had expired.
On Wednesday a spokesperson, Stephanie Spear, told the Associated Press that Kennedy, a longtime falconer who also trains ravens, used roadkill to feed his birds.
She also said Kennedy once had a 21-cubic-foot refrigerator, used for roadkill, at his New York home.
Kennedy is the son of the late US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy and nephew of the late John F Kennedy, the 35th US president.
In a remarkable coincidence, the New York Times reporter who covered the Central Park bear cub story in 2014, Tatiana Schlossberg, is Kennedy’s cousin.
Kennedy made his name as an environmental attorney before becoming widely known as a vaccine conspiracy theorist. His presidential campaign has stoked worries among both Republicans and Democrats who fear his impact in battleground states. On Wednesday a major survey from Marquette University showed Kennedy at 6% support.
