On one fateful day in October 2014, a scion of the Kennedy political dynasty came across a dead bear cub in upstate New York.
Thinking the meat looked good, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stowed the bear carcass in the back of his car, he said. He spent the day hunting with hawks and got dinner with friends at a Peter Luger steakhouse.
Day turned to dusk. Kennedy needed to catch a flight. He realized he wouldn’t be able to skin the bear and put its flesh into his refrigerator in his Westchester home in time. So he stashed the bear cub carcass in Central Park, which he thought would be funny, he recounted years later.
At some point during that day, Kennedy — who is now an independent candidate for president of the United States — posed with the bear cub’s corpse in a photo that became instantly famous when the New Yorker published it earlier this month. He stuck his hand in the bear’s bloody mouth, looked down, and grimaced.
As it turns out, Kennedy may have been touching the bear’s brain matter.
Business Insider has obtained the state report detailing the necropsy the Department of Environmental Conservation performed on the bear cub.
The document reveals Kennedy had good instincts when it came to evaluating the bear’s flesh. The animal “is in good flesh with good fat reserves for its age and season,” Kevin Hynes, the wildlife biologist who performed the necropsy, wrote in his report for the department’s Wildlife Health Unit.
“The carcass is relatively fresh and the tissues are in good postmortem condition,” Hynes wrote in the report.
According to the report, the 7- or 8-month-old female bear was smashed in the head — which is consistent with Kennedy’s story that it was hit by a van.
The cranium was “destroyed,” Hynes wrote, and the brain tissue left there was “scrambled, liquefied, and hemorrhagic.” Much of the bear’s brain tissue leaked and exited through its mouth and nostrils, according to the report.
“The brain structures are unrecognizable (unsuitable for rabies testing),” the report says.
Reached by phone, Hynes referred questions to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, which declined to make him available for an interview.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Kennedy speculated that sticking his hand in the bear’s mouth may be how he got his brain worm.
But he testified about the parasite in his own cranium in a deposition two years before the bear was killed, according to The New York Times. In the deposition, Kennedy said a doctor told him the worm went “into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”
Representatives for Kennedy’s presidential campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment from Business Insider Friday.
The bear’s skin, carcass, and brain tissue sample were frozen and locked away in the state environmental department’s wildlife health unit. The frozen remains are no longer in the department’s possession, according to agency spokesperson Jeff Wernick, who said samples “generally get destroyed.”
RFK Jr. and the bear carcass may have something else in common
Kennedy first disclosed the bear story in a video posted to social media ahead of the publication of the New Yorker article.
“I said, ‘Let’s go put the bear in Central Park, and we’ll make it look like he got hit by a bike,'” Kennedy said in the video. “It’ll be fun, funny for people. So everybody thought, ‘That’s a great idea.’ So we went and did that, and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it.”
A woman walking her dog found the bear the next day, October 6, around 8:45 a.m. Law enforcement organizations moved the carcass from underneath a bicycle, which Kennedy or one of his friends apparently left on top of it, wrapped it in a tarp, and took it to the Wildlife Health Unit for the necropsy.
Hynes, examining the bear’s corpse, quickly concluded that the cub was likely killed by a vehicle. Until RFK publicly took credit for dumping the bear’s corpse, authorities had no idea who put it there. The DEC records indicate the case was closed by the end of 2014.
Kennedy’s revelation that he was involved in moving the bear’s corpse came too late for any law enforcement action over his possession or disposal of the corpse, said Wernick, of the environmental department.
“The statute of limitations for these offenses is one year; charges cannot be brought for incidents that occurred more than one year ago,” Wernick told BI.
Aside from the roadkill incident, the bear cub and Kennedy may have something else in common: Both may not be from New York.
On Monday, a New York judge found that Kennedy’s use of his Westchester County address was not a “bonafide and legitimate residence, but merely a ‘sham’ address that he assumed for the purpose of maintaining his voter registration.” Kennedy’s true home residence is in California, where he has lived with his wife, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor Cheryl Hines, the judge found.
A DNA test for the bear cub found it might be from New Jersey — not New York.
Lab technicians who analyzed the bear’s DNA found it was likely from the Sterling Forest region, which stretches across the New Jersey-New York border.
It was more similar to New Jersey bears — but the sample size was too small to be definitive, according to the necropsy report.
Kennedy is appealing the court decision over his residency. During the trial, he discussed the bear carcass with reporters.
“I’ve been picking up roadkill my whole life. I have a freezer full of it,” he told journalists at the courthouse.
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