Edgar Smith, who abducted and killed a 15-year-old Ramsey High School cheerleader in 1957, has died. He was 83.

According to Evins Funeral Home in California, to which the bodies of prisoners often are taken, Smith died in a prison hospital in Vacaville, California. Before his imprisonment, he worked as a truck driver and served in the U.S. armed forces, the funeral home said.

The March 20 death of Smith had gone unnoticed. The Washington Post, which first reported his death, said Smith had been suffering from diabetes and heart disease for several years.

Sixty years ago, on March 4, the Hasbrouck Heights native abducted 15-year-old sophomore Victoria Zielinski on a remote road and dragged her to a Mahwah sandpit, where he crushed her skull with a boulder and baseball bat.

Smith, however, was not in prison for the death of Zielinski.

After Smith spent 14 years on death row, had four stays of execution and wrote a book from jail called “Brief Against Death,” a judge in 1971 threw out his original murder confession. Smith also gained the support of conservative talk-show host William F. Buckley.

ARCHIVE:No parole for contentious Edgar Smith

ARCHIVE:Imprisoned killer's former wife is haunted by fear he'll get out

In 1976, after moving to California, Smith was arrested on charges of kidnapping a woman in San Diego at knife-point.

In March 2007, Smith's parole hearing was cut short because he became argumentative with parole commissioners.

"I'll do anything I need to do to keep him in prison," Ron Calissi said in 2007. His father, Guy Calissi, was the Bergen County prosecutor who tried Smith for the murder of Zielinski.

In April 2009, just days before his parole hearing, Smith’s former wife told The Record she had received harassing messages from him.

“I’m not really living my life, because I’m hiding,” she told The Record then. “But I’m tired of hiding and I’ve decided to fight back.”

Before the hearing, then-Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli sent a letter to authorities in California, asking that he be kept in prison.

"The murder of Victoria Zielinski stands out in the history of Bergen County as one of the most shockingly brutal crimes our experienced homicide investigators have ever seen," Molinelli wrote. "Her murderer must never be set free, for he will surely find another vulnerable young victim to brutalize."

Smith was denied parole on April 23, 2009, at the age of 75.