I Have Some Questions About The Bear RFK Jr. Dumped In Central Park
This is not what you signed up for, except that it, unfortunately, very much is.
The central premise of this newsletter is that you, the reader, or at least those of you who have a paid subscription, serve as my assigning editor. You have given me my first assignment, which I’ve been publishing entries on over the last few weeks.
But part of having me as a writer involves me coming to you with some topic that has nothing to do with what I’m supposed to be working on, like a dog bringing you a dead bird you never asked for and expecting to be praised for the effort.
Today, I am that dog, and the dead bird is actually a bear, as explained below by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That story, elaborated upon in this longer profile by Clare Malone in the New Yorker, raises a number of questions for me, and I simply must share them with you because otherwise my wife and neighbors will give me too many weird looks. (Thank you for helping me maintain my neighborhood social standing.)
Before I get to those, I’d like to lay out three key assumptions.
1. RFK Jr. was driving the vehicle in question.
Relating the anecdote to Roseanne Barr, Kennedy refers to the vehicle as a van and a car. The photo of Kennedy posing with the bear carcass in Malone’s profile looks like it could be a minivan or an SUV; it is, in my opinion, neither a sedan or one of those big 12-passenger vans you take from a canoe rental shack to the river. The important thing is that, for any of this story to work, RFK Jr. has to be driving the van all day. If he has a driver ferrying him around, there’s no reason that person can’t bring this dead bear cub back to the house while he’s doing rich guy activities.
2. RFK Jr. didn’t need luggage, already had it with him at the start of the day, or had someone bring it to the airport for him.
Several stress points move this story along, but the airport trip after dinner feels like the moment when Kennedy simply must find an alternative disposal option for the bear, having missed all his windows to bring it back home. That falls apart if he’s leaving Peter Luger Steak House but still needs to get to Westchester to retrieve his baggage before departure. This leap does not strike me as all that tricky, as I assume rich people feel fine flying somewhere and just buying whatever they need on arrival.
3. Kennedy did not embellish, change or omit elements of the story.
The internet has already begun to speculate that Kennedy’s tale must be covering up key details; I have seen suggestions that Kennedy hit the bear himself and that Kennedy hit a cyclist and disposed of that person’s bike with this bear ruse to throw others off the scent. I offer no opinion on either hypothesis, and my questions will focus solely on the story as Kennedy himself told it.
Here are my inquiries, some of which I have found plausibly satisfactory answers to:
Why Central Park?
New York City’s best-known park lies about 6.5 miles from the Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn and nearly 17 miles from the Great Neck location. Many New York City Parks facilities are much closer, including 36-acre McCarren Park in Brooklyn, and the East River strikes me as a place one could dump a dead animal in a pinch.
But Kennedy mentions the inspiration for the bear/bike staging came from issues with new bike lanes in Central Park at the time, so the location was crucial to this … prank? Hoax? Plot? Let’s go with plot.
What was Kennedy wearing all day?
Passersby discovered the bear on a Monday, which places the events of Kennedy’s story on a Sunday. Again, the urgency of each transition suggests he never had time to go home, shower, and change clothes, and the same photo where Kennedy’s posing with the bear shows him in a casual button-down shirt and slacks which, well, appear to have a giant blood stain on one of the legs.
RFK Jr. then went falconing for most of the day. I know one needs a big leather glove for that activity, but I’m not clear on what other equipment is necessary, or if “showing up with animal blood all over you” would be distracting to the falcon. Maybe there’s some kind of falconry locker room where Kennedy keeps a fresh outfit?
That could give Kennedy an opportunity to not show up to dinner in the blood-stained pants, but then there’s the after-dinner problem of moving the bear out of the car into Central Park. It strikes me as challenging to do that without messing one’s clothes up, which puts Kennedy headed to the airport adorned with bear viscera.
Perhaps he flew on a private plane, where I presume that’s not an issue.
What happened to all the game captured during the falconry outing?
I’m Monday morning quarterbacking this, but if I toss a dead bear in my trunk for processing later and immediately head out to go hunt other wild animals for capture, I suspect I would ask whoever’s handling the falconry haul to deal with my bear as well? They didn’t end up in Kennedy’s trunk, and I doubt RFK Jr. avoided asking for this favor because it felt like an imposition. If you’re bold enough to dump a bear in Central Park for fun, you’re certainly up for asking your falconry guy to skin that bear while you’re out of town.
Why not stage things so the bear appeared to be riding the bike?
Now you’re just being silly; you’d need a bike helmet that fit the bear. It also wouldn’t line up with the real-life event Kennedy wanted to satirize (I’m being generous there), where a pedestrian was struck by a cyclist in Central Park and died a week later. The joke only works if the dead bear is taking the place of this real person.
When you spell it out that clearly, the story is somehow even darker than it first appeared!
What did Kennedy do with the van during dinner?
Recent TripAdvisor reviews of Peter Luger Steak House reveal three parking options for patrons: a dedicated lot where one can self-park, valet service at the restaurant that puts your car in the same lot, and street parking. I’m genuinely curious which one Kennedy picked; I imagine that muscle memory pushes you to valet when you are a member of a dynastic family.
Do you tell the valet “hey, there’s a dead bear in the back, but don’t worry about it?” Is this even the weirdest situation a Peter Luger valet has dealt with in their time with the restaurant?
Who did the bicycle belong to?
I promised to take Kennedy’s story at face value, but the bike aspect has me struggling. First of all, it’s not in the car in that photo the New Yorker included. Second, I cannot find the path where someone has a broken bicycle they’re ready to junk, can’t decide how to dispose of it, and lands on “call Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and see if he’ll deal with it for me,” and he agrees. One probably has to be pretty good friends with Kennedy to make this convenient plot device happen.
Of course, then Kennedy turns around and plants your bike as fake evidence at this staged bear death scene. He mentions to Roseanne feeling worried that forensics would find his prints on the bike. Wouldn’t they also find the prints of the bike’s previous owner? Did Kennedy give that person a heads up, or were they blissfully unaware that the NYPD could show up any moment with an arrest warrant for fleeing the scene of a crime and bearslaughter?
At the very least, I’d be hesitant to use Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a garbage courier after this.
We’ll be back to our usual assignment of the history of named places and objects in sports next week, assuming no other presidential candidate confesses to a confusing animal corpse prank before then.