The best friend of a New Jersey man who admitted killing a teenager 23 years ago says his friend was overwhelmed by guilt and haunted by nighttime visions of the boy’s mother.

Steven Goff, of Ventnor, turned himself in to police Monday and admitted that he fatally stabbed 15-year-old Frederick Hart in Galloway in 1990. The cause of the boy’s death had been a mystery.

Goff’s best friend, Alan Rickel, says Goff could no longer deal with the guilt.

He says Goff told him after surrendering that he had nightmares in which the slain boy’s mother was staring at him.

Rickel says he got a call from Goff over the weekend. He says Goff told him he was fleeing to Canada but decided to return home and admit having done “something terrible.”