A guilt-ridden New Jersey man who confessed on April Fool's Day to having killed a teenager 23 years ago has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Forty-one-year-old Steven Goff will have to serve at least half that sentence before being eligible for parole for his conviction on a charge of aggravated manslaughter.
The 41-year-old Ventnor, N.J., man had turned up at a police station in April to confess to the crime. He said he could no longer live with the guilt of having killed 15-year-old Frederick Hart and leaving him to die behind their homes in Galloway Township in May 1990.
Golf told the judge last month that he was "in a rage."
"I lost control over my emotions that day for multiple reasons," Goff said at the time of his confession. "I think it might have been because I was whacked out on steroids."
In court Friday, The Press of Atlantic City reports that Goff told the victim's family: “I wanted to give you your justice. You deserve to see me suffer.”
"There is not enough paper to explain how much I miss my brother," older sister Robin Douglas wrote in a letter read in court by victim-witness Tricia Hayek. "How much I think, 'What if.'"
