A strange event that occurred ten years ago has affected the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, the third party in contention in the 2024 presidential election in the United States. The independent candidate was forced to admit this weekend that he abandoned the body of a dead bear cub ten years ago in Central Park, in New York, because he thought it was “funny.” The incident became a mystery in the city, whose inhabitants turned to social networks in search of information about the alleged cyclist who ran over and left the body in the popular park.
The bizarre confession came this Sunday in a video published by Kennedy himself, an environmental lawyer, son of former prosecutor Bobby Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy. RFK Jr., as the libertarian candidate is known, told the anecdote to Roseanne Barr, the Trump comedian who suffered cancellation from ABC after writing a racist tweet.
According to the story, Kennedy was in Goshen, upstate New York, with some falconry enthusiasts. That morning, around 7:00 a.m., he was driving in the Hudson Valley. “A woman in the truck in front of me hit a bear and killed it, a very young bear,” said the candidate sitting in a kitchen. Barr listened to him with a cup of coffee.
Kennedy continued, “I picked up the bear and put it in the back of my truck because I was going to skin it and it was in very good condition. And he was going to put his meat in the refrigerator, something that is legal in the State.” After a day of hawk hunting, he had dinner in New York, realizing he still had the dead animal in the trunk.
Kennedy narrated, “At that time, and I think that was the redneck in me (...) there had been several bicycle incidents in New York, which had just opened bike lanes. A couple of people had even died (...) I hadn't drunk, but there were people with me who did and they thought it was a great idea.” He ended up placing the bear in Central Park, making it look like it had been hit by a bicycle.
The revelation was a campaign strategy to anticipate a publication this Monday in The New Yorker magazine. The journalist Clare Malone recounts this episode in the middle of a long text about the peculiar adventure that the heir to one of the most famous families in American politics undertook on his way to the White House. An effort that, by the way, is not accompanied by the rest of the Kennedy clan, who have called to vote for the Democratic Party.
Kennedy's admission, seen by 13 million people on X alone, became a viral event for New Yorkers in 2014, when a woman walking her dogs came across the dead body. A decade later, the city's residents have finally found the missing piece of the puzzle. The local New York press has said that a district attorney is investigating the events and does not rule out that charges may be filed.
This episode has become a new obstacle for Kennedy's campaign, which has developed from controversy to controversy. This seeks to become the third way ahead of the elections with a message that aims to unite the divisions left by the polarization between Democrats and Republicans.
