New Docs Detail RFK Jr.'s Role in Central Park Bear Dump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s long-ago Central Park bear stunt has resurfaced, thanks to city records that show how baffled officials were by the mystery cub he dumped under a bush near West 69th Street. Documents obtained by Wired from New York City's Parks & Rec Department, including previously unpublished photos and internal emails, detail the 2014 response after a juvenile black bear was found dead in the park. Urban Park Rangers were initially told to treat the spot as a potential crime scene, and officials traded messages calling it a "strange day" and "definitely a first" for Central Park, all while lamenting the "poor little guy." The New York Department of Environmental Conservation ultimately took the carcass, not the Bronx Zoo, as first planned.

A necropsy by NYDEC wildlife biologist Kevin Hynes concluded the bear—a healthy female cub about 7 to 8 months old—died from massive blunt-force trauma consistent with being hit by a vehicle, likely along the New York State Thruway near the New York-New Jersey border. All four legs and the spine were broken, and skull fractures were so severe that much of the brain tissue was expelled and later found in the mouth, trachea, and upper airway. State investigators closed the case later in 2014, saying there wasn't enough evidence to determine whether New York's laws against untagged bear possession and improper disposal had been violated. The statute of limitations on those offenses is one year.

Kennedy, now US health secretary, publicly claimed in an August 2024 video that he'd picked up the roadkill bear near Goshen, planned to skin it and keep the meat, then ran out of time before a dinner and flight. Instead, he says, he and others decided to stage the cub's body in Central Park beside an old bicycle to make it look like a cyclist had hit it. The new records don't resolve the many logistical questions raised by Kennedy's account—such as why he drove into Manhattan to dump the animal rather than contact authorities or leave it closer to where it was struck. A representative for Kennedy didn't respond to a Wired request for comment. (Per the Daily Beast, journalist Olivia Nuzzi reportedly helped Kennedy "do damage control" before news of his bear dump went public.)