RFK Jr. confesses he left a dead bear in Central Park 10 years ago : NPR

A decade after the surprising discovery of a bear cub carcass in Manhattan’s Central Park, the thriller of who dumped it there has lastly been solved.

And the person taking accountability is none aside from presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The conspiracy theorist-turned-third-party candidate’s marketing campaign has weathered a sequence of more and more improbable-sounding scandals in current months, from Kennedy’s admission {that a} worm ate a part of his mind to his denial of reviews that he as soon as ate barbecued canine (he stated it was a goat).

RFK unleashed this newest one himself, in a three-minute video posted to X (previously Twitter) on Sunday.

It reveals him sitting at a kitchen desk, telling an incredulous-looking Roseanne Barr (sure, the canceled comic) about how the lifeless bear ended up in his van upstate and, finally, on high of a bicycle beneath a bush in New York Metropolis’s largest city park.

Kennedy, an animal lover and former environmental lawyer, says he was driving upstate early one morning to take a gaggle of individuals falconing within the Hudson Valley when a driver in entrance of him fatally hit a bear cub.

“So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him at the back of my van, as a result of I used to be gonna pores and skin the bear,” he explains matter-of-factly. “It was in superb situation and I used to be gonna put the meat in my fridge.”

Kennedy added that it’s authorized in New York State to get a bear tag to take dwelling a roadkill bear. Such a tag have to be written up by a legislation enforcement officer.

The bear by no means made it again to his Westchester dwelling, nonetheless.

Kennedy says he bought waylaid by a busy day of falconry, after which needed to rush again to New York Metropolis for a dinner at Peter Luger Steak Home, which ran late.

“I needed to go to the airport, and the bear was in my automobile, and I didn’t wish to go away the bear within the automobile as a result of that will have been unhealthy,” Kennedy continues.

Then, as he put it, “the little little bit of the redneck in me” had an thought.

Kennedy simply occurred to have an previous bike in his automobile, which he stated somebody had requested him to eliminate. He recalled that the town “had simply put within the bike lanes” after quite a lot of critical accidents, and determined to stage the bear in Central Park as if it had been hit by a motorbike.

“I wasn’t ingesting, after all, however individuals had been ingesting with me who thought this was a good suggestion,” Kennedy stated. “So we went and did that and we thought it will be amusing for whoever discovered it, or one thing.”

The six-month-old, 44-pound cub made nationwide information after a canine walker stumbled upon it that fateful October morning, in a wide-open a part of the park proper close to the trail the place 1000’s of individuals run and bike every day.

Weirdly sufficient, one of many New York Instances reporters who lined the thriller was Kennedy’s personal niece, Tatiana Schlossberg. She instructed the paper this weekend that “like legislation enforcement, I had no thought who was liable for this after I wrote the story.”

Legislation enforcement took the bear to Albany for evaluation and decided that it had been hit by a automobile, possible exterior the park. Additionally they confiscated the bicycle to check for fingerprints.

“I used to be fearful as a result of my prints had been throughout that bike,” Kennedy says within the video, drawing laughs from the room.

However the thriller remained unsolved, and the story ultimately light away. Now, virtually 10 years later, Kennedy stated he was prompted to come back clear forward of an anticipated New Yorker exposé: “Wanting ahead to seeing the way you spin this one,” he captioned the video.

“They requested me, the actual fact checkers, and, , it’s gonna be a foul story,” he says with amusing.

The New Yorker piece, printed on-line Monday morning, situates the bear anecdote inside a bigger take a look at Kennedy’s famously checkered previous and motivations for operating.

It additionally features a picture of Kennedy, who was 60 on the time, posing along with his palms contained in the bear’s bloody mouth and an exaggerated grimace on his face.

“Possibly that’s the place I bought my mind worm,” he instructed the journal.

Kennedy additionally made headlines through the Republican Nationwide Conference in July after a leaked name with former President Donald Trump captured the Republican nominee criticizing vaccines (a stance for which Kennedy is known) and interesting to Kennedy with a obscure, “I might love so that you can do one thing.”

Kennedy apologized to the president and, looking for to quash hypothesis, vowed to remain within the race. However he has seen his assist dwindle — right down to single digits in a number of nationwide polls — within the weeks since President Biden introduced his withdrawal. His combat to get onto state ballots has reportedly been a monetary drain, and he’s canceled a number of marketing campaign appearances over the past month.