A mystery that has puzzled New Yorkers for a decade has finally been resolved. On Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a third-party presidential candidate, revealed in a surprising confession that he was behind the strange incident involving a dead bear cub found in Central Park.
In a video posted on social media, Kennedy, who was chatting with actress Roseanne Barr, admitted that he was the one who placed the dead bear cub in Central Park in 2014. The bizarre prank had initially been staged to look like the bear had been run over by a bicyclist.
Kennedy explained that the incident occurred while he was driving to go falconing in the Hudson Valley. During his trip, a van in front of him struck and killed a bear cub. Kennedy decided to take the bear with him, intending to skin it and store its meat in his refrigerator. However, after a late dinner in New York City, he needed to travel to the airport and did not have time to deal with the bear.
That’s when Kennedy, along with a group of people he was dining with, came up with the idea to place the bear in Central Park and make it appear as if it had been hit by a bicycle. In the video, Kennedy referred to the plan as “a little bit of redneck in me,” and he joked about the amusement it might bring to whoever found it. He was surprised when the next day, the story was everywhere – on every television station and the front page of every newspaper.
At the time, the police had considered taking a bicycle found near the scene to Albany, New York, to fingerprint it, which could have linked the incident back to Kennedy. Fortunately, the story eventually faded from the headlines, remaining a mystery for a decade.
Kennedy's confession was timed to preempt a story by the New Yorker, which Kennedy suggested had discovered details about the incident. He captioned the video on X (formerly known as Twitter), “Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one,” tagging the publication directly.
In an unexpected twist, it was revealed that Tatiana Schlossberg, who first reported on the bear incident for the New York Times, is Kennedy’s second cousin and the daughter of Caroline Kennedy. Schlossberg had reported that the bear’s necropsy showed it had died from “blunt force injuries consistent with a motor vehicle collision.”
After the confession made headlines, Schlossberg told the New York Times, “Like law enforcement, I had no idea who was responsible for this when I wrote the story.”
