Yesterday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent candidate for president, said he staged a dead bear cub in Central Park to make it look like it was hit and killed by a New York biker in 2014.
The dead bear’s presence in Central Park was widely covered at the time and considered a mystery, as bears are not native to Manhattan.
Did RFK Jr hide a dead bear in New York City?
In a video posted on X in which he is recounting the story to comedian Roseanne Barr, Kennedy said he saw a woman hit a bear cub with her car and kill it. So, he decided he would skin it and freeze the animal’s meat, which he noted is legal in the state.
But because his plans ran long, he didn’t have time to bring the bear home and instead went down to a dinner in New York City. Then, he said, his dinner went long and he had to go straight to the airport. So, he set up the bear and an old bicycle to look like a biker hit the bear and killed it.
“We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it,” Kennedy said in the video. “The next day, it was on every television station… And I was like ‘oh my god, what did I do?’”
Kennedy said that he posted about the story because the New Yorker found out that he was responsible for the Central Park bear fiasco. In the video’s caption, Kennedy tweeted, “looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker…”
At the time, the “bear mystery” in Central Park got widespread news coverage. CBS News called the bear’s death “animal cruelty” and reported that the bear had been stabbed, slashed, and dumped.
“To think that somebody with criminal intents would do such a thing right here in our backyard is disturbing,” a Central Park biker told CBS in 2014.
Journalist Mark Sundstrom also tweeted at the time about the incident.
“WHO THE FUCK hits a bear cub with their car (prob by accident) and then brings it to drop it in Central park?” Sundstrom tweeted in October, 2014. Yesterday, he reposted his tweet with the message “well, it took nearly 10 years but I got my answer.”
As the story was blowing up online, the New Yorker dropped its piece on Kennedy.
In it, he joked that the bear was perhaps the source of his brainworm.
As reported by the New York Times, a brain-eating worm was found in Kennedy’s head in 2012. Kennedy now frequently jokes about the anomaly. Online commenters have also joked that Kennedy got his brainworm from potentially eating a dog in Korea.
While some seemed charmed by the bizarre story, others responded to Kennedy’s tweet and called out how weird the whole thing was.
“Holy shitballs the insanity of the story, the delivery, the inappropriate affect and Roseanne Barr there listening like this is in any way rational or funny????” an X user said. “This is like a fever dream.”
“Disgusting rich people with weird weird proclivities,” another person tweeted. “Gross story of disrespect, deceit & cruelty.”
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