RFK Jr accused of breaking wildlife laws after report he once sawed off a whale head

An Arizona environmental group is calling for an investigation into former 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over recently resurfaced claims he decapitated a dead whale on a Cape Cod beach and drove it to his home five hours away on the roof of his minivan.

In a letter to the director of NOAA’s Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund asked the office to look into whether the one-time environmental lawyer had potentially violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the Endangered Species Act in or around 1994.

“RFK Jr. cutting off the head of a dead whale was both bizarre and illegal, and any serious environmental attorney would know better,” said the fund’s national political director, Brett Hartl. “Kennedy may think that his name and privilege mean the rules don’t apply to him, but if he had a shred of integrity left he’d surrender this whale skull and any other illegally collected wildlife parts to the authorities.”

The organization cited a 2012 report from Town & Country magazine, in which RFK Jr’s daughter, Kick Kennedy, recalled the strange story. She said that, when she was 6 years old, her family discovered a dead whale that had washed up on Cape Cod’s Squaw Island, where former President John F. Kennedy once had a house.

RFK Jr allegedly ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head, and strapped it to the roof of the family’s minivan with a bungee cord — then drove it five hours to their Mount Kisco, New York, home.

“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick, now 36, said. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes