A NYC cold case file has just been solved. And the culprit appears to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The third-party U.S. presidential candidate made headlines by admitting on his X account Sunday afternoon that he dumped a dead black bear cub in Central Park in 2014, a Big Apple mystery that has had New Yorkers scratching their heads for a decade.
Black bears, after all, are not found in Central Park. Bears who do live in New York state are found mostly in the Adirondack and Catskill regions, according to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.
In the wacky video, Kennedy describes to comedienne Roseanne Barr how he was on his way to the Hudson Valley when he pulled over after a van driving in front of him hit and killed the young bear.
“I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was gonna skin the bear and it was in very good condition and I was gonna put the meat in my refrigerator,” Kennedy graphically explained.
He then goes on to say “you can do that in New York state, you can get a bear tag for a roadkill bear.”
It is unclear right now what legal protocols Kennedy did or did not follow to pick up the bear.
The story continues with Kennedy concocting a bizarre plan to rid himself of the bear after realizing he could not go straight home after having a late dinner in NYC the same day.
“At the end of the dinner, it went late, and I realized I couldn’t go home, I had to go to the airport,” he said. “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 then brings up a “series of bicycle accidents” that happened in New York at that time.
“They had just put in the bike lanes and some people had gotten killed,” he said. “And it was everyday and people had been badly injured. Everyday it was in the press.”
Kennedy continues to tell Barr he was not drinking when this occurred.
“I had an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of,” he said. “I said, ‘Let’s go put the bear in Central Park, and we’ll make it look like he got hit by a bike.’”
Kennedy said he thought the incident would be “funny for people,” but it wound up sparking widespread media attention and very little laughs.
Although Kennedy did not say when the incident occurred — other than in 2014 — news clips from that year show a young black bear cub found dead in the Manhattan park.
According to news reports, including NBC New York, at that time, a woman who was walking her dog discovered the bear and immediately informed the Central Park Conservancy. The organization then alerted the police.
How the bear got there and how he died remained a mystery until now.
An article about Kennedy and the tragic bear incident ran Monday in the New Yorker.
amNewYork Metro reached out to both the New Yorker and Kennedy for comment but did not hear back.
