American environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of late president John F. Kennedy, has died from cancer at the age of 35, her family announced Tuesday.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the family wrote in a statement posted on the JFK Library Foundation’s Instagram account.
Schlossberg, a science and climate reporter for the New York Times, wrote movingly about her diagnosis with acute myeloid leukemia in an essay for The New Yorker published in November.
Here we take a look at one of the most bizarre incidents from her life involving a dead bear cub, and her close relative, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
RFK Jr and the dead bear cub
Schlossberg began working as a summer intern for The New York Times in 2014, and following her stint, she was hired by the publication to cover their Metro section.
In the story titled ‘Bear Found in Central Park Was Killed by a Car, Officials Say‘ published under Schlossberg’s name on October 7, 2014, she says that the cub, aged six months and weighing 44 pounds, died due to “blunt force injuries consistent with a motor vehicle collision,” as per New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
The dead bear cub was discovered by a woman who was walking her dog inside Central Park. After the discovery, NYPD’s Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad probed the matter.
“But 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?” Schlossberg said in her report.
Now comes the major twist in the tale.
Almost 10 years later, in early August 2024, Schlossberg’s relative and current US Health Secretary in the administration of Donald Trump, Robert F Kennedy Jr., revealed that he was the one who left the cub inside Central Park and made it look like an accident because he found the idea “amusing,” NYT reported.
Kennedy himself posted a video on X where he speaks about this incident to actress Roseanne Barr. He says that he was on a drive through Hudson Valley when he witnessed a woman killing the bear cub with her van.
“I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear,” he says. “It was very good condition and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator.”
Kennedy then goes on to say that he had to get rid of the bear later as he had to catch a flight, and this is when he decided to leave the carcass along with an old bicycle in Central Park.
Kennedy also tells Barr in the video that the New Yorker fact-checkers asked him about the story. “It’s going to be a bad story,” he said.
After this bizarre revelation, Schlossberg said, “Like law enforcement, I had no idea who was responsible for this when I wrote the story.”
