A gruesome photograph has emerged of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with his hand in the mouth of the dead bear cub he later abandoned in New York’s Central Park.
The New Yorker shared The image in a profile story about the independent presidential candidate on Monday: the latest twist to emerge from a already strange presidential campaign.
Kennedy had attempted to preempt the magazine’s coverage by posting a video on Sunday of himself discussing the bear incident with comedian Roseanne Barr.
Commenting on the matter to The New Yorker, he joked: “Maybe that’s where my brain worm came from,” the magazine revealed.
To make the story even stranger, the first journalist 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 Sunday newspaper coverage who had no idea that a family member was to blame.
The New Yorker on Monday published a chilling photograph showing 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.
Kennedy said in the video that he had accompanied a group of people on a falconry hunt in the Hudson Valley when he came across the dead bear.
“A woman in the pickup truck in front of me hit a bear and killed it, a young bear,” he recalled. “So I stopped and picked up the bear and put it in the back of my pickup truck because I was going to skin it, and it was in pretty good condition, and I was going to put the meat in my cooler.
“In New York State, you can get a tag for a bear hit by a road kill,” he said.
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.
Kennedy (right) posted a video on Sunday telling the story of the dead bear cub to comedian Roseanne Barr (left).
Kennedy said he wasn’t drinking, but others in his group were when they made the decision to dispose of the dead bear cub in Central Park. His cousin was the original New York Times reporter who took on the story.
“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 there was “a bit of a country bumpkin in me” as he explained that there had been a series of bicycle accidents in the city and 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.
The candidate said in his video that the day after he left the dead bear in the park, the message appeared on all television channels and in all newspapers.
“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.