Associated Press

TRENTON - Richard Kuklinski, a notorious Mafia hit man who claimed to have killed more than 100 people and was known as "The Iceman," died Sunday at St. Francis Hospital in Trenton, the state Department of Corrections announced yesterday.

Department spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkenheuer did not disclose the cause of death, but said it was not suspicious.

Kuklinski, 70, was serving life sentences at New Jersey State Prison for two murders.

He was the subject of several books and two cable-TV documentaries. Just five years ago, he confessed to two murders on HBO's The Iceman Confesses: Secrets of a Mafia Hit Man.

In one of those cases, the 1980 killing of New York City Police Detective Peter Calabro, Kuklinski implicated another well-known mob hit man, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. Gravano was charged in 2003 with murdering Calabro in Saddle River after Kuklinski told authorities that he had shot the detective on Gravano's orders.

Kuklinski, who preferred to kill by using a cyanide solution administered from a nasal spray bottle, earned his nickname because he kept some victims' bodies in a North Bergen freezer.