The independent presidential candidate, conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist made the disclosure in a three-minute video posted Sunday on social media as he apparently tried to get out ahead of a New Yorker magazine story that mentions the weird tale of roadkill and stealth from a decade ago.
In the video shot at what looked like a post-meal chat with people including sitcom actress Roseanne Barr, Kennedy recounts the saga:
He and friends were on a falconing excursion in New York state in 2014, Kennedy says, when a van ahead of him hit and killed a six-month-old black bear.
The scion of America's most prominent political family, eager to salvage the corpse for the meat, put it in the back of his own vehicle.
"And you can do that in New York state. You can get a bear tag for roadkill bear," Kennedy, 70, says in a gravelly voice.
But the falconing field trip ran late, so he could not get the remains back to his home in Westchester County.
So did a dinner he attended that evening in the Big Apple, and Kennedy realized he would have to go straight to the airport for a flight he was due to take.
"The bear was in my car, and I didn't want to leave the bear in the car because that would have been bad," he says.
After Kennedy and company brainstormed, they took the carcass to iconic Central Park and left it under an old bicycle Kennedy had in his car.
Kennedy said the plan was to make it look like a cyclist had killed the animal, an admission that drew laughter from people in the video.
"I wasn't drinking, of course, but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea," he says.
"Then I thought, you know, at that time this was the little bit of the redneck in me," the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy adds.
When the animal's body was eventually found it became a huge news story.
"And I was like, 'Oh my God, what did I do?'" Kennedy says, adding: "I was worried because my prints were all over that bike."
He said the story remained dormant for a decade until a fact-checker from The New Yorker called to verify it for a feature on Kennedy. The piece has yet to be published.
"It's going to be a bad story," Kennedy forecasts with a laugh.
dw/mlm
