WIRED has made this article free for all to read because it is primarily based on reporting from public records requests. The New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Parks Department referred WIRED to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Bonnie McGuire, then-deputy director at Urban Park Rangers, told two colleagues that UPR sergeant Eric Handy had recently called her about a “dead black bear” found in Central Park. Imagery of the bear has been public before—local news footage from October 2014 appears to show it from a distance. However, the documents WIRED obtained show previously unpublished images that investigators took of the bear on the scene, which Handy sent as attachments in emails to McGuire.