Independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. has released a shocking video claiming he was after a mysterious dead bear found in Central Park ten years ago that he said he had originally picked up on the road and planned to skin.
Kennedy posted the video on social media of him telling the story to controversial actress and comedian Roseanne Barr and at least one other person off-camera in a kitchen on Sunday.
“I was taking a group of people to go falconry up to Goshen, New York, up to the Hudson Valley, and I was supposed to meet them there around eight or nine o’clock. I got there really early, like seven o’clock,” Kennedy begins.
“A woman in the pickup truck in front of me hit a bear and killed it, it was a young bear,” he recalls. “So I stopped, picked up the bear and put it in the back of my pickup truck because I was going to skin it, it was in pretty good condition, and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator.”
“In New York State, you can get a tag for a bear hit by a road kill,” he said.
But Kennedy’s story in the more than two-minute video was just beginning.
The 70-year-old presidential candidate said he then proceeded to go hunting with the dead bear in his car.
He said they were doing a lot of fishing and stayed up late, so instead of going back to his home in Westchester, New York, he had to go straight to New York City for dinner.
But dinner was also delayed and, according to Kennedy, he had to go to the airport instead of home.
“The bear was in my car and I didn’t want to leave it there because it would have been bad,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said he had…“I’m a bit of a hick,” he said, explaining that there had been a series of bicycle accidents in the city and that several people had been killed or seriously injured.
Kennedy recalled that he appeared in the press every day and that he also had an old bicycle in his car that someone asked him to get rid of.
“I said we should put the bear in Central Park and make it look like it got hit by a bicycle,” Kennedy said as he and Barr laughed. “Everyone thought it was a great idea.”
Kennedy said he had not been drinking when the decision was made, but others had.
In 2014, a dead bear was discovered in Central Park. An investigation determined that the six-month-old bear had been hit by a vehicle and abandoned in the park.
Kennedy claims in a video that he was behind the dead bear found in Central Park a decade ago. The presidential candidate said he picked it up off the road and was going to skin it and store the meat in his refrigerator.
Kennedy tells the story of the dead bear in the video to actress Roseanne Barr
Kennedy was apparently trying to tell the story now because he wants to get ahead of a New Yorker article. When he posted the video telling the story, he used the title that tagged the New Yorker: “I’m looking forward to seeing how you spin this out.
DailyMail.com has contacted the Kennedy campaign for comment.
In October 2014, a mysterious dead bear was discovered in Central Park. It was discovered by a dog walker who then notified a Central Park Conservancy worker who contacted police.
A Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) investigation concluded the six-month-old bear was hit and killed by a vehicle, but they were unable to figure out how it ended up in the park since black bears were not known to live or roam the park.
Kennedy said in his video that the day after he left the dead bear in the park, the video appeared on every television station and in every newspaper.
“I turned on the TV and there was like a mile of yellow tape and 20 police cars. There were helicopters hovering,” Kennedy said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God. What did I do?'”
Kennedy said he was concerned because his fingerprints were all over the bike. But Kennedy said the story died after a while and “stayed dead for a decade.”
He said that somehow the New Yorker found out and they were going to do a big article on him.
“It’s going to be a bad article,” Kennedy said.
At the time, the DEC was investigating possible violations of the law. If a person was caught, he or she could face charges including illegal possession and removal of a bear without a tag.