Funerals Held for Three of Four Teen-Agers in N.J. Suicide Pact

Funerals were held Saturday for three of four teen-agers who died in a suicide pact, and a priest at one service told grieving friends and relatives that “Jesus is the way to peace, happiness and love. Suicide is not.”

The four had requested in a suicide note that they be buried together, but the families arranged separate services.

About 200 people crowded into a church in Oradell, N.J., to mourn Lisa and Cheryl Burress, ages 17 and 18, who were found dead Wednesday of carbon monoxide poisoning in an idling car in a garage. Thomas Olton and Thomas Rizzo, both 19, died with them.

Parents Watch Burial

After the service, Linda and David Burress watched as their daughters were buried at the Flower Hill Cemetery in nearby North Bergen.

A Mass also was held Saturday for Olton, and a service was planned Monday for Rizzo.

At the 1 1/2-hour Mass for Olton at the Church of Ascension in New Milford, mourners, many of them dressed in leather and denim jackets, stared blankly as they sat in the wooden pews.

One mourner collapsed while leaving the church. As the funeral procession left for the burial at George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, the woman was taken away by ambulance.

Search for Peace

During both services, priests discussed the search for peace and the value of forgiving.

“We sometimes choose drugs and alcohol because they seem to offer us a way out of the pain, the shyness or the meaninglessness we may feel in our lives,” Father Thomas Iwanowski said at the Burress service. “But in the end, they only make (our lives) worse.

“And sometimes in our search for peace and happiness in life, we choose the most destructive behavior of all; we choose suicide.”

To think suicide is the answer, he said, “is to believe in a lie.”