Reporter related to RFK Jr initially covered bear cub story for NY Times, 'had no idea' he was involved

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RFK Jr. admits to dumping remains of bear cub in Central Park

Fox News Eric Shawn on details of the bizarre story involving presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A relative of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says she "had no idea who was responsible" for leaving a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park when she covered the story for The New York Times a decade ago.

It turns out the culprit was RFK Jr., who is running for president as an independent. 

He stunned the public on Sunday when he admitted to dumping the dead bear cub in the park during a bizarre video on social media, insisting he wanted to get ahead of a story the New Yorker was working on. 

In a strange twist, it was quickly noticed that when the bear cub was found in 2014, it was covered in the Times by Tatiana Schlossberg, who is the daughter of RFK’s first cousin, Caroline Kennedy. 

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RFK Jr. says he thought dumping the bear in Central Park would amuse people.  (X/@RobertKennedyJr)

Schlossberg’s decade-old report headlined, "Bear Found in Central Park Was Killed by a Car, Officials Say," noted that the bear cub was likely hit by a car. Schlossberg reported that "so many questions remain unanswered: How did the bear end up in Central Park? Was there foul play involved? Did she die in the park, or was she dumped there?"

A decade later, her own relative answered those questions, and Schlossberg said she was completely in the dark. 

"Like law enforcement, I had no idea who was responsible for this when I wrote the story," Schlossberg told the Times after Kennedy's admission. 

Schlossberg, who was a young Times reporter in 2014, has since moved on to author "Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have," and write a newsletter on climate change and environmental issues. 

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Some joked that it was appropriate that she covered the initial Central Park bear story because she was at the time a "cub reporter," a slang term for a journalist with little experience.

As for RFK, he said he was taking a group of people falconing in Goshen, New York, about a two-hour drive north of New York City, when a woman in a van in front of him hit a young bear and killed it. 

"So, I pulled over and picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear… and put the meat in my refrigerator," Robert Kennedy Jr. said, noting that the practice is legal in New York state under certain conditions. 

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Independent Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stunned the public on Sunday when he admitted to dumping the dead bear cub in a bizarre video on X. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

Kennedy said he continued falconing with his group of acquaintances and ended up staying late and had to rush to a dinner obligation in New York City. He then admitted, without elaborating, that he had to go to the airport after dinner and couldn’t go home. 

"I didn’t want to leave the bear in my car because that would have been bad," he said, recounting how there had been "a series of bicycle accidents," some of which resulted in the deaths of several people at the time. 

He came up with the idea to put the bear in Central Park and "make it look like he got hit by a bike."

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Fox News' Bradford Betz contributed to this report.