BERLIN, N.H. (AP) – Former Mayor Richard Bosa, a candidate for president and governor, nemesis of the judicial system and former mental hospital patient, has died at Hospice House in Concord, a Berlin funeral home said Wednesday.

The Berlin native was 62 years old. The cause of his death on Tuesday was not disclosed.

Bosa began challenging the judicial system after he and his wife separated in Montgomery County, Pa., in 1987 and divorced in 1991. He founded the New Hampshire chapter of VOCALS, Victims of a Corrupt American Legal System, and became its spokesman.

After his marriage broke up, Bosa recalled in 1997, he paid $275 weekly support for his three children, but stopped the year after the divorce after a confrontation with his wife and children in Berlin that led to Bosa’s brief commitment to the New Hampshire state mental hospital. At one point, he was arrested and spent a night in a Pennsylvania jail.

He kept challenging the Montgomery County court to enforce its child support order because he said that would provide him a forum for his anti-judicial views, but Pennsylvania officials showed no interest in retrieving him.

As spokesman for VOCALS, he flooded news organizations with a steady stream of letters and releases accusing the legal system of being based on greed and corruption and studiously and secretly protecting its own.

Bosa was elected mayor of the city of 11,000 by a 30-vote margin in 1995 in a three-way race. He lost in 1997 and again in a special election in 1998.

He blamed The Berlin Daily Sun, accusing it of publicizing his child support problems and labeling him a “deadbeat dad” to discredit his criticisms of the legal system. In response the newspaper said he was “a self-appointed victim.”

Mayor of Berlin is mostly a ceremonial job, with a city manager running things, but the mayor can appoint people to boards and commissions, with City Council approval. As part of his struggle against the judicial system, he butted heads with the state attorney general over Berlin’s taxes.

A Republican, he was a fringe candidate for president in 1992, 1996 and 2004 and for governor in 1996.

When elected mayor, he acknowledged being “some people’s worst nightmare come true.”

“I work hard at being a nightmare. I don’t take it personally,” he said.

Visiting hours will be on March 4 at the Fleury-Patry Funeral Home. A funeral Mass will be said on March 5 in St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church.