Dumped in Central Park?: US candidate Kennedy irritates with bear story

The independent American presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is causing irritation with a bizarre story about a bear corpse that was dumped in New York’s Central Park. On his account on the X platform, the scion of the prominent US family published a video in which he tells a group of bystanders how he once loaded a dead bear cub into his car in the north of the metropolis and later left it in the famous park in Manhattan.

What sounds crazy actually seems to have happened: ten years ago, numerous US media outlets wrote about a young black bear found under mysterious circumstances in Central Park. Now the controversial presidential candidate Kennedy – nephew of former President John F. Kennedy – has admitted to the incident. In the video, he explains that he actually wanted to skin the bear and keep the meat in his refrigerator.

Dead bear in Central Park: “Great idea”?

But when he had finished dinner in a restaurant in the metropolis, he didn’t have enough time: “I had to go to the airport 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,” Kennedy explained in the video. Together with the people accompanying him, he decided to dump the animal in Central Park and make it look like it had killed a bicycle. “Everyone thought that was a great idea.” The 70-year-old admitted that the people around him were drunk – but he wasn’t.

Kennedy, who is not given a real chance in the election on November 5, was obviously reacting with the video to an investigation by the magazine “New Yorker”, which had contacted him about the bear story. Shortly afterwards, the “New Yorker” published an article describing the incident. It also published a photo in which Kennedy appears to be putting his hand in the dead bear’s mouth.

Not the first hair-raising story

Kennedy recently made headlines because, according to a newspaper report, he believes that a parasite in his brain was responsible for memory loss several years ago. A doctor told him that a dark spot in his brain was caused by a worm “that got into my brain, ate part of it and then died,” the New York Times quoted from a 2012 affidavit.

Kennedy was a Democrat for decades, but in recent years he increasingly distanced himself from the party and broke away from it entirely in October 2023 when he announced his presidential bid as an independent. In the recent past, the avowed anti-vaccination campaigner has been frequently criticized by Democrats and members of his family for spreading conspiracy myths and having contact with far-right politicians.

In light of Kennedy’s recent history, the New Yorker also described his reaction to the photo of him posing with the dead bear. “Maybe that’s how I got my brain worm,” he told the magazine.