Pair Attempt Suicide Where 4 Killed Selves

A 20-year-old woman and her 17-year-old boyfriend tried to kill themselves Tuesday in the same garage where an acquaintance and three other teen-agers carried out a suicide pact last week, police said.

A policeman who noticed a broken padlock before dawn found the two in the same model car that the four teen-agers used to produce the deadly fumes.

Authorities said there were no specific references to last week’s deaths in the rambling suicide notes found in the car Tuesday.

Puts on Handcuffs

The woman, Lisa L. Klaeger, had attempted suicide several times and on Tuesday handcuffed her wrists to the steering wheel in what she later told authorities was an effort to make a rescue more difficult, said Louis Goetting, the borough administrator.

Tuesday’s attempts and last week’s suicides follow the deaths of four other Bergenfield teen-agers--many of them friends--since last summer. Authorities disagree with friends and relatives about which of those deaths were suicides and which were drug- and alcohol-related accidents.

The garage was padlocked and extra patrols of the Foster Village Apartments complex were instituted after last week’s deaths. The officer, James Madara, saw the lock intact Tuesday when he passed by about an hour before discovering the youths.

Pair Still Conscious

“They were groggy, but they weren’t unconscious,” police Chief Willard Buckart said.

Klaeger and the 17-year-old, who was not identified because of his age, were taken to the police station for questioning and later committed under a judge’s orders to Bergen Pines County Hospital’s psychiatric division.

Klaeger, who lives in neighboring Waldwick, and the teen-ager, a Dumont resident, told police they knew Thomas Rizzo, one of the four teen-agers who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage.