RFK Jr. admits dumping bear cub body in Central Park after pals called it 'amusing'

He said he planned to skin and eat the cub that had been killed on the road, but didn't get around to it

Loaded for bear
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he dumped a bear cub body in the middle of Manhattan 10 years ago when he didn't get around to skinning and eating it. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has confessed to dumping the body of a bear cub in Manhattan's Central Park 10 years ago after friends said it would be "amusing."

The body triggered an animal cruelty investigation in the city that was never solved after a dog walker in the park discovered the cub and called police.

Kennedy came clean about the incident in a video he posted Sunday on social media after the New Yorker called to question him about it for what he expected would be a story.

The New Yorker printed the story in an extensive profile of him Monday with a photo of Kennedy posing with the bloodied bear.

Kennedy explained in his video that he recovered the body from a road in Goshen, New York, after he saw the cub fatally struck by the car ahead of him. He planned to skin it and freeze the meat to eat later.

"I pulled over, I picked up the bear and put it in the back of my van," Kennedy told comedian Roseanne Barr in the video.

"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. You can do that in New York — you can get a bear tag for a roadkill bear."

The city probe later confirmed that the animal was killed by blunt force trauma consistent with a car accident.

But Kennedy's plans went awry when he spent much of the rest of the day with friends outdoors, then had to catch a flight and had no time to drop off the cub at his house.

He then came up with the crackpot idea of dumping the body in Central Park along with an old bicycle he had in his car to make it look like the animal had been hit by the bike, Kennedy recounted.

The weird plan appealed to a "little bit of the redneck in me," he explained.

His friends thought it was a "great idea" and "amusing," Kennedy claimed to Barr.

He apparently considered his confession a devious scoop-wrecking jump on the New Yorker story, crowing in his post on X: "Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one."

Tags
New York
Real Time Analytics