Bear witness: RFK Jr. cops to staging bear’s death in Central Park

As if Robert Kennedy Jr.’s polling wasn’t falling fast enough, now he’s admitted to staging the death of a black bear cub in New York’s Central Park.

The independent presidential candidate admitted in a video, recorded in an attempt to get ahead of an unflattering New Yorker article, that he picked up a roadkill carcass of a bear cub in October 2014 and ended up staging a crime scene in the park to make it look like a cyclist killed the bruin.

Initially, Mr. Kennedy told actress Roseanne Barr in the video posted on social media that he put the bear carcass in his vehicle, intending to take it home.

“I pulled over, I picked up the bear and put it in the back of my van,” he said. “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.”

But Mr. Kennedy said he was on his way to dinner at a steakhouse in New York City, and the event went on longer than he expected. All the while, the bear carcass was still in his van.

By the end of the evening, he said, he and his friends hit upon another plan for the dead bear cub.

“I had an old bike in my car that somebody had asked me to get rid of, and I said, ’Let’s go put the bear in Central Park and we’ll make it look like he got hit by a bike,’” Mr. Kennedy recalled. “Everybody thought, ’That’s a great idea,’ so we did that. And we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something.”

The bear was discovered the following morning by a woman walking in Central Park. The carcass was on top of an overturned bicycle.

The New York Police Department investigated and sent the bear carcass to a lab in Albany, which found the cause of death was “blunt force injuries consistent with a motor vehicle collision,” according to The New York Times. The story received widespread media coverage at the time.

Now, amid the presidential campaign, the bizarre tale is receiving national attention.

“I don’t want to rush to judgment, but is RFK Jr a looney?” actor and comedian Steve Martin posted on X. “There is an old saying, ’Sometimes the bear gets you, sometimes you find a roadkill bear, throw it in your van planning to eat it later that night but run out of time so you throw it in Central Park, put your own bike on the dead bear to make it appear to be a crime scene causing an expensive police investigation the next day.”

The Democratic National Committee said the New Yorker story has accurately portrayed Mr. Kennedy as a “deeply troubled, reckless, and dangerous man.”

“He doesn’t think the rules apply to him and he refuses to consider the consequences of his actions,” DNC spokesman Matt Corridoni said. “That is why he is willing to play the role of spoiler for Donald Trump in this election and why he has floated endorsing Trump in exchange for a job in a Trump administration.”

Democrats are concerned about a report that Mr. Kennedy’s campaign manager is quoted in the New Yorker article saying that the post of health and human services secretary in a second Trump administration would be “incredibly interesting” to him.

There have been concerns among the camps of former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, and the Democrats that Mr. Kennedy would play a spoiler in the race.

Before President Biden dropped out of the race, Mr. Kennedy was polling around 15% nationally. But since Mr. Biden bowed out on July 21 and Vice President Kamala Harris took over at the top of the Democratic ticket, Mr. Kennedy’s polling has fallen to about 6%.  

That was before the dead bear cub story. The lengthy New Yorker article, which also covers Mr. Kennedy’s drug addiction and sex scandals, includes a photo of him seated on the back bumper of his van with the bear carcass, his right hand in the bear’s jaws as he mugs for the camera.

When presented with the photograph, Mr. Kennedy told the magazine: “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”