Student's 1998 disappearance still baffles

Yim Yeung "Jimmy" Tsui's bedroom door was ajar 13 years ago Friday when one of his sisters went to check in on her kid brother.

Victoria Tsui, now 36 and from Brooklyn, saw nothing unusual and found the Stony Brook University student -- who was summering at his New Hyde Park home with family members -- sound asleep in his bed when she left for work that morning at 8:30.

The family hasn't seen him since. The 20-year-old vanished without a trace in a case that has tormented family members and baffled Nassau police detectives who have been working for years to find him.

In April, Suffolk homicide detectives hunting for a serial killer who had dumped bodies in the Gilgo and Oak beach communities revealed that one of the remains found along Ocean Parkway belonged to an Asian man resembling Yim Tsui's description.

Whether or not it was Yim Tsui, the family hoped the attention would bring fresh leads. Yim Tsui's name and photos were in national missing persons databases, but that hadn't yielded any results.

But there was fresh anguish too.

"All this time I am hoping that he was alive," said another sister, Virginia Tsui, 39, of California, explaining that her elderly parents have never left New Hyde Park in hopes their son will someday return. "That's why when this thing [Gilgo] broke out again on the TV, it reminded them that their son left."

For a long time, talk of Yim Tsui's disappearance among family members had been kept to a minimum, relatives said.

"We don't even mention his name at home," said Virginia Tsui, adding that her mother fell into a deep depression days after Yim Tsui went missing and the family reported his disappearance to Nassau police. "She would be crying and crying nonstop."

After the Gilgo find, the Tsui family waited impatiently for the results of genetic testing that would determine whether the body was Yim Tsui's. Nassau detectives had provided information and DNA samples from the family to Suffolk detectives.

But the family's hopes vanished when Suffolk forensic experts concluded a few weeks ago that the remains were not Yim Tsui's.

"That killed me," Virginia Tsui said.

Described as an introvert

Yim Yeung "Jimmy" Tsui disappeared Aug. 26, 1998.

He attended elementary school at Hillside Grade School and graduated from New Hyde Park Memorial High School. His siblings described him as an introvert who had few friends and -- as far as they knew -- no girlfriend.

He had some trouble adjusting to living in the United States after emigrating from south China with family in 1988, Victoria Tsui said. But he picked up the English language pretty quickly, she said. He was the type who didn't run away, always came back home to sleep and didn't get in trouble, relatives said.

When he disappeared, Yim Tsui was getting ready to enter his junior year at Stony Brook and had not yet declared a major.

The family would later receive a letter from the university informing them that Yim Tsui had been expelled for not maintaining adequate academic standing, yet university records show Yim Tsui was taking four credits that summer. He was to have finished Aug. 28, two days after he went missing.

Days turned into weeks, then into months and then years. Yim Tsui's family and the Nassau detectives kept in touch.

Still under investigation

Despite no new leads, detectives continue to work on the mystery.

Investigators have cases open from as far back as the 1960s because "cases don't get closed until the person is found," said Nassau County Police Department Det. Sgt. Robert Sputo, who is commanding officer of the Special Services Squad, which includes a missing persons unit.

Virginia Tsui said her family remains hopeful Yim Tsui will one day return.

She still has dreams about her brother, and whenever she sees panhandlers, she reaches into her purse and takes whatever change she has and hands it over to them.

"Every time I see them I try to give them money, I try to help," she said. "Because I'm helping people, I hope people help him."