RFK Jr admits to dumping bear carcass in New York's Central Park

Evening Standard

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00:00I was taking a group of people, falconing, up in Goshen, New York, up in Hudson Valley.

00:06And I was supposed to meet them there at, like, maybe 8 or 9.

00:11I was driving up, maybe, you know, really early, like 7.

00:15And that woman in a van in front of me hit a bear and killed it.

00:20A young bear.

00:22So, I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van

00:28because I was going to skin the bear.

00:30And it was very good condition.

00:32And I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator.

00:36And you can do that in New York City.

00:38You can get a bear tag for a roadkill bear.

00:42And so then we went hawking, and I had the bear in my car.

00:47And then we had a really good day, and we went late.

00:51We were catching a lot of game, and the people really loved it.

00:54And so we stayed late, and instead of going back to my home in Westchester,

00:58I had to go right to the city because there was a dinner at Peter Lugar's Steakhouse.

01:04And at the end of the dinner, it went late, and I realized I couldn't go home.

01:08I had to go to the airport.

01:10And the bear was in my car, and I didn't want to leave the bear in the car

01:15because that would have been bad.

01:18So then I thought, you know, at that time, this was the little bit of the redneck in me.

01:27There had been a series of bicycle accidents in New York.

01:30They had just put in the bike lanes.

01:32And a couple of people had gotten killed, and it was every day,

01:36and people had gotten badly injured.

01:38Every day it was in the press.

01:41And so I thought, I wasn't drinking, of course,

01:45but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea.

01:50And I said, I had an old bike in my car that somebody had asked me to get rid of,

01:54and I said, let's go put the bear in Central Park,

01:56and we'll make it look like he got hit by a bike.

01:59It'll be fun and funny for people.

02:02So everybody thought, that's a great idea.

02:05So we went and did that, and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something.

02:11The next day, it was on every television station.

02:17It was the front page of every paper.

02:19And I turned on the TV, and there was a mile of yellow tape,

02:22and there were 20 cop cars.

02:25There were helicopters flying over it.

02:28And I was like, oh, my God, what did I do?

02:33And then there were some people on TV in tie faxes with gloves on lifting up the bike,

02:39and they were saying they were going to take this up to Albany to get a finger printed.

02:45And I was worried because my prints were all over that bike.

02:54Luckily, the story died down after a while, and it stayed dead for a decade.

03:03And then the New Yorker somehow found out about it,

03:07and they're going to do a big article on me, and that's one of the articles.

03:11So they asked me, the fact checker, to send it.

03:14You know, it's going to be a bad story.

03:17I think it's a great story.

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