American environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, has died of cancer at the age of 35, her family announced Tuesday.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will be in our hearts forever,” 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 acute myeloid leukemia diagnosis in an essay for The New Yorker published in November.
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Here we take a look at one of the most bizarre incidents of her life involving a dead teddy bear and her close relative Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
RFK Jr and dead bears
Schlossberg began working as a summer intern for The New York Times in 2014, and after her tenure was hired by the publication to cover their Metro section.
In a story called ‘Bear found in Central Park was killed by car, officials say‘ posted under Schlossberg’s name on October 7, 2014, says the six-month-old, 44-pound cub died as a result of “blunt force trauma in a motor vehicle collision,” according to the New York Department of Environmental Protection.
The dead bear was discovered by a woman walking her dog in Central Park. After the discovery, the matter was investigated by the NYPD’s Animal Cruelty Investigation Unit.
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“But so many questions remain unanswered: How did the bear end up in Central Park? Was there foul play? Did it die in the park or was it dumped there?” Schlossberg stated in her report.
Now comes the major twist in the story.
Nearly 10 years later, in early August 2024, Schlossberg’s relative and the current U.S. Secretary of Health in the Donald Trump administration, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., revealed that he was the one who left the cub inside Central Park, making it look like an accident because he thought the idea was “funny,” the NYT reported.
Kennedy himself posted a video on X where he talks about the incident with actress Roseanne Barr. He says he was on a Hudson Valley drive when he witnessed a woman kill a bear with her van.
“I pulled over and picked up the bear and put it in the back of my van because I wanted to skin the bear,” he says. “It was very good and I wanted to put the meat in the fridge.
Kennedy then goes on to say that he had to get rid of the bear later because he had to catch a flight, and that’s when he decided to leave the carcass along with the old bicycle in Central Park.
Kennedy also tells Barr in the video that New York 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 when I wrote the story.
