Independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr released a bizarre video on Sunday in which he admitted that, a decade ago, he dumped a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park and staged the scene to make it look like a bicyclist had run over the animal.
The video was apparently an effort to combat an upcoming New Yorker story that he predicted will be a “bad story”.
In the video, Kennedy is speaking to actor Roseanne Barr and recounts the story of travelling through New York’s Hudson Valley on a falconry expedition and coming across a young bear that had been hit and killed by another driver.
In 2014, the female black bear was found in some bushes by a dog in a mystery that consumed the city.
At the time, Florence Slatkin, who lives near the park, said that her friend’s terrier spotted something near a bicycle lying on the ground.
“At first, we thought it was a bag of clothes or maybe a dead dog,” she told the Associated Press.
But then, as they got closer, they realised it was a very small bear “with its mouth wide open and scratches on the side.”
When police arrived, they observed that the bear had trauma to its body but it was not clear how it died, prompting an investigation that was never solved – until Sunday.
In the video, Kennedy says he picked up the carcass and put it in his van, planning to skin it and eat it later. However, he ran out of time to take the bear home before having to catch a flight.
Kennedy said he and the group he was with – some of whom had been drinking – then came up with a plan to take an old bike he happened to have in his van and place the bear’s carcass in Central Park to make it look like the bear had been hit by a bike, taking advantage of a recent rash of bicycle crashes in New York.
“We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it,” Kennedy said.
“The next day it was on every television station,” Kennedy said to Barr. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, what did I do?’
“I was worried because my prints were all over that bike … Luckily, the story died down after awhile.”
He and Barr shared a laugh as he said that the New Yorker had found out about his role in the event. “It’s gonna be a bad story,” he said.
It’s the latest bizarre incident in Kennedy’s quixotic campaign that has divided his famous family and left Republicans and Democrats alike concerned about his potential impact on the presidential contest.
Some other notable events include Kennedy acknowledging a parasite that lodged in his brain and died. He also denied eating a dog after a friend shared a photo with Vanity Fair magazine showing Kennedy dramatically preparing to take a bite of a charred animal; Kennedy said it was a goat.
With Associated Press