Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park a decade ago, after deciding not to skin and eat it, reported the New York Post.
The 6-month-old female bear cub was found beneath an old bicycle in the park some 10 years ago. In a video posted on X, Kennedy tried explaining his involvement in the bizarre accident.
Kennedy said he was up early to go falconing when a woman driving in front of him hit and killed the bear.
"So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because 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," Kennedy said. "And you can do that in New York state. You can get a bear tag for roadkill bear."
Kennedy went on to explain his day went longer than anticipated and he had to go straight to dinner following falconing. After a late dinner at Peter Luger Steakhouse in the city and an early flight out the next morning, Kennedy said he realized there would be no time to go home to Westchester to dump the bear.
"And the bear was in my car, and I didn't want to leave the bear in the car because that would have been bad," he said. "So, then I thought you know at that time this was the little bit of the redneck me. There'd been a series of bicycle accidents in New York they had just put in the bike lanes and so a couple of people were getting killed and it was every day and people badly injured every day it was in the press."
Kennedy claims he wasn't drinking when he came up with the idea to dump the bear in Central Park, but those around him were.
"I said let's go put the bear in Central Park, and we'll make it look like it got hit by a bike," Kennedy recalled.
"The next day, it was like it was on every television station. It was the front page of every paper, and I turned on the TV and there was like a mile of yellow tape and there were 20 cop cars, there were helicopters flying over it. And I was like, 'Oh my God, what did I do?' And then they were, there was some people on TV and Tyvek suits with gloves on lifting up the bike and they're saying they're gonna take this up to Albany to get it fingerprinted," he said. "And I was worried because my prints were all over that bike."
The story had died down until the New Yorker recently contacted Kennedy asking him to verify whether it was true.
While that story has yet to be published, Kennedy said, "It's going to be a bad story."