Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says He Staged an Elaborate Bear-Cub Murder Scene in Central Park, but Only Because He’d Planned to Eat It Later

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s quixotic bid for the White House took yet another hit over the weekend, when the independent candidate admitted, in a video that grew exponentially more insane by the second, that he planted a dead bear cub—which he’d originally planned to eat—in Central Park and tried to make it look like the bear had been killed by a bike that had his prints “all over” it.

Speaking to Roseanne Barr (yes), Kennedy explained that in October 2014, he was en route to upstate New York for a day of falconing with friends, when a van in front of him struck 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 a roadkill bear.”

Unfortunately for Kennedy, who apparently has a taste for bear flesh, the falconing outing ran long and he had dinner plans at Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn. That also ran late and, Kennedy told Barr, he needed to head straight to the airport and would not have time to stop by his home in Westchester first. “The bear was in my car, and I didn’t want to leave the bear in the car ’cause that would have been bad,” he said. Which clearly left him with only one thing to do.

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Smiling, he told Barr that “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, people badly injured. Every day it was in the press.” As luck would have it, Kennedy, who was not 10 or 12 at the time, but 60, had “an old bike” in his car “that somebody asked me to get rid of,” and, well, if you have the judgment of a sociopathic frat boy, you can probably guess where this is going. “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 said, feeling the need to note that he “wasn’t drinking, of course, but people were drinking with me,” and that his drunk buddies thought the plan was “a good idea.” Kennedy, who should probably have his brain examined (again), added that—while completely sober—he thought the scene would be “amusing for whomever found it.”

In the light of morning, though, panic set in. “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,” Kennedy recounted. “And I was like, Oh my God, what did I do? And then 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. And I was worried because my prints were all over that bike.” (In a twist to the weirdest story of all time, Tatiana Schlossberg, one of John F. Kennedy’s granddaughters, wrote a story about the incident for The New York Times.)

Happily for Kennedy—who, we should take a moment to remind people, thinks he should be president—he was never caught. But fast-forward 10 years, and thanks to those busybody reporters at The New Yorker, he was forced to go public. “Luckily the story died after a while, and it stayed dead for a decade, and [then] The New Yorker somehow found out about it,” Kennedy told Barr, saying that fact-checkers at the magazine had called him to confirm the details of Beargate, for a story that was published today. At that point, he decided to get ahead of it, saying he knew it was “going to be a bad story,” which, if you’re keeping track, is the first time Kennedy has demonstrated any judgement whatsoever. (In a caption to the video in which he admits to the whole thing, Kennedy wrote, “Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker,” which, uh, hello? They don’t have to spin anything? You just admitted to putting a dead bear, which you initially planned to eat, in the park and trying to make it look like it had been hit by a cyclist, and then panicking about “prints” like a serial killer would?)

Anyway, The New Yorker’s story basically confirms what Kennedy himself said, adding: “In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face.” Asked about the incident, Kennedy told the magazine: “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.” Later, on X, he wrote: “The press is often called the ‘fourth estate,’ to emphasize its independence and high purpose. But these days it is in eerie, almost comical lockstep, amplifying trivial stories to damage disfavored political figures. Meanwhile, parents in our country can’t afford groceries. Brothers won’t speak to each other because of partisan loyalties. Small towns sink under addiction and depression. And the world careens toward WW3. Let’s hold our media to a higher standard!”

In fact, one could argue that this story is a pretty important piece of journalism, because it demonstrates that Kennedy (like Trump!) has horrible judgement and should not be allowed within a million feet of the White House, let alone the Central Park Zoo. (As did the ones about the worm, the emu, and animal carcass.)