A grisly photo has emerged of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with his hand in the mouth of the dead bear cub that he later left in New York’s Central Park.
The New Yorker shared the visual in a profile story on the independent presidential candidate on Monday – the latest twist coming out of an already bizarre presidential campaign.
Kennedy had tried to preempt the magazine’s coverage by releasing a video of him Sunday talking about the bear incident with comedian Roseanne Barr.
When discussing it with The New Yorker he joked, ‘Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm,’ the magazine revealed.
To make the tale even weirder, the first reporter to write about the dead bear found in Central Park for The New York Times was none other than Kennedy’s cousin, Tatiana Schlossberg.
She told The Times for the newspaper’s coverage Sunday that she had no idea a family member was at fault.
A grisly photo was released by The New Yorker Monday that showed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with his hand in the mouth of the dead bear cub he later left in New York’s Central Park
‘Like law enforcement, I had no idea who was responsible for this when I wrote the story,’ Schlossberg said.
The presidential candidate will not be charged for depositing the bear carcass in Central Park as the statute of limitations for such crimes is only a year.
Kennedy said in the video that he had taken a group of people falconing in the Hudson Valley when he came upon the dead bear.
‘A woman in the van in front of me hit a bear and killed it, a young bear,’ he recalled. ‘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.
‘You can do that in New York state. You can get a bear tag for roadkill bear,’ he said.
The 70-year-old presidential candidate said he then proceeded to go hawking with the dead bear in his car.
He said they were catching a lot of game and stayed late, so instead of heading home to Westchester, NY he had to go straight to New York City for a dinner.
But then the dinner also went late, and according to Kennedy, he needed to go to the airport instead of his home.
Kennedy (right) released a video Sunday of him telling the story about the dead bear cub to comedian Roseanne Barr (left)
Kennedy said he wasn’t drinking but others in his party were when they made the decision to ditch the dead bear cub in Central Park. His cousin was the original New York Times reporter on the story
‘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 said.
Kennedy said there was ‘a little bit of the redneck in me’ when he explained there had been a series of bicycle accidents in the city and multiple people had gotten killed or badly injured.
Kennedy recalled it was in the press every day and that he also had an old bike in his car someone asked him to get rid of.
‘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 as he and Barr laughed. ‘So everybody thought that’s a great idea.’
Kennedy said he had not been drinking when the decision was made but others had been.
The candidate said in his video that the next day after leaving the dead bear in the park, it was on every television station and in every paper.
‘I turned on the TV and it was like, mile of yellow tape, and there were 20 cop cars. There were helicopters flying over it,’ Kennedy said. ‘I was like “oh my god. What did I do?”‘
Kennedy said he was worried because his prints were all over the bike. But Kennedy said the story died after a while and ‘it stayed dead for a decade.’
He said the New Yorker somehow found out about it and were going to do a big article on him.
‘It’s going to be a bad article,’ Kennedy said.