Audrey Chin's disappearance in Nassau County in 1981 draws renewed attention from investigators

On July 7, 1981, Audrey Chin, 20, went to a veterinary practice near her family home on Ross Lane in East Norwich to pick up Joy, the family tabby cat who had just been sterilized.

Chin, who was driving her mother's Chevrolet Nova, returned with the animal and then left again, apparently to go shopping for her mother. She was never seen again.

About three weeks later, police found the mud-spattered Chevrolet about 10 miles from the Chin home, in the parking lot of the now-closed Plainview Diner at Manetto Hill and Old Country roads. The car doors were locked, but inside the vehicle police found Chin's purse, wallet and a few other items.

Cigarette ash was found on the floor (Chin did not smoke) and two of the tires were flat. But there are no leads as to the whereabouts of the young woman who was studying to become a nurse.

In recent weeks, Nassau County police have shown renewed interest in the case, which a police source said was a new effort by the department to focus on cold cases.

In March, Chin's two older sisters — Patsy Sant'Angelo, 66, of New Jersey, and Frances Creed, 64, of Port Jefferson — said they went to Mineola police headquarters at the request of investigators to provide reference DNA samples. The sisters were told that their genetic material would be analyzed in the national CODIS database, the system overseen by the FBI and that law enforcement uses to identify unknown human remains or crime suspects.

Chin's case is one of Nassau County's longest-running missing persons cases. Over the years – apart from a few news reports – there has been virtually no publicity about it.

It took until February 8 of this year, nearly 44 years after his disappearance, for Chin's case to become an official entry in the database known as NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System , launched in 2007 by the US Department of the Interior. Justice. It's unclear why Chin's case took so long to be listed.

There are 17 sets of unidentified human remains in the Nassau CODIS and approximately 100 sets of unidentified human remains in Suffolk, officials said.

In a statement to Newsday, Nassau police spokesman Detective Lt. Richard LeBrun said the inclusion of Chin's case in NamUs would hopefully help solve the case. The department's missing persons unit monitors NamUs cases and cross-references them with other databases, LeBrun said.

However, it can take time to get results. According to Emanuel Katranakis, retired NYPD chief of forensic investigations, the process of developing family DNA profiles could take months, depending on the urgency and public safety implications of previous requests in the DNA lineup. waiting for research.

Katranakis estimates that CODIS searches in the Chin case will last “two to four months.”

Analyzing results by parentage could also lengthen the timeline since it is a “labor-intensive process,” Katranakis added.

Kinship analysis would solidify family relationships between the unidentified remains and the Chin sisters. The three women would also have the same mitochondrial DNA, transmitted to the children from the maternal side.

There is no guarantee that submitted DNA samples will match known profiles in the CODIS system. But interest from Nassau police gave Chin's two sisters hope that after years of not hearing from authorities, the mystery might be solved.

“I think they're really trying to help,” Sant'Angelo said of the Nassau Police Department's missing persons investigation.

“The department continues to stay in contact with the Chin family and is always looking for new leads,” LeBrun said, adding that the department has brought in detectives from various units and used “updated technology” in the research.

Since Chin's disappearance, his sisters and parents have been going through his old belongings, letters and other documents and made a shocking discovery. The sisters said some of the letters discovered indicated Chin was hiding a secret: She was having an affair with an older married man.

Chin, an introspective and artistic woman, was never known during her time as a student at Oyster Bay Secondary School for dating or having a boyfriend. The evidence of such an affair stunned her sisters.

“I was shocked, totally surprised… shocked that my sister had a relationship with a married man,” Sant’Angelo said.

What was also distressing was that the man in question – who died more than a decade ago – had been considered a friend and might have known what happened to Chin, Sant'Angelo speculated. The sisters said investigators told them not to approach the deceased's family because of the investigation.

Sant'Angelo and Creed said the bulk of the letters were turned over to Nassau police and the sisters tried unsuccessfully to recover some copies of the correspondence. For Sant'Angelo and Creed, the letters are the only tangible things left of their sister.

Creed told Newsday that she suspected Chin of having a secret relationship when she heard her sobbing on the phone the day she disappeared. But even under her sister's gentle questions, Chin didn't want to talk about what was bothering her.

“She was visibly upset on the phone, and before I left the house I said something to the effect that I'll talk to you later,” Creed said of the last conversation she had with Chin.

To revive interest in Chin and pursue possible leads, the sisters, with the help of their respective spouses, Russell Sant'Angelo and Bob Creed, maintained a Facebook page titled “Audrey Chin Never Forget, Never Give Up Never “. The couples are also searching for Chin's former friends and anyone else who may have information.

The sisters are aware of the discovery of two unidentified bodies a few miles from the family's former home in East Norwich. The cases are described in the NamUs inventory for Nassau and, according to normal procedures, should be matched in the final DNA search. One set of remains was that of a woman whose estimated height was between 4 feet 9 inches and 5 feet – chin measured 4 feet 9 inches. The remains were discovered in 2003 by scouts hiking in the Muttontown Reserve, an area famous for containing the ruins of the former domain of King Zog of Albania. The location is approximately 1 mile from the old Chin family home.

Another set of remains, known by some as the “Lattingtown Jane Doe”, was discovered at the end of Sheep Lane in Lattingtown, near Long Island Sound in January 2013 and just over 4 miles from the Chin home . The Lattingtown skeleton was found in a trash bag with indications that it had been at the site for a long time.

If the mystery of Audrey Chin is solved, it will come too late for her parents, who both immigrated from China during the tumultuous period surrounding World War II and made a living for years with their laundry business in East Norwich . The couple worked hard to make the business a success and provide for their daughters, relatives said.

Audrey's mother, Helen Chin, whose Chinese name was Wai Ping Chin, had a small shrine in the house to commemorate her lost daughter, accompanied by photographs and incense. She spoke with a fortune teller in Hong Kong who told her that Chin was dead but at peace. But she never talked much about her missing child with her two other daughters. Helen Chin died in 2017.

The girls' late father, John Chin, whose Chinese name was Guey Shing Chin, also kept his anguish secret, never speaking about Audrey's disappearance, the girls said.

The sisters do not believe that Audrey Chin fled, since her bank accounts were not affected. Chin, who had graduated from high school in 1979, had many plans, including attending Patsy's wedding in September 1981, and was taking classes to prepare for nursing school. They think it's more likely that Chin was the victim of foul play, but they know that without the discovery of remains, the question of what happened may never be answered.

“The person I think was involved in her disappearance is no longer alive today,” Sant’Angelo said. “Can we get more information?” You know, I don't have much hope.

The sisters' sense of loss is reinforced by the fact that Chin was never able to have a full life, as they did, to flourish and experience the simple pleasures of being an adult.

“She should have been able to get married and have children,” Sant’Angelo said, his voice breaking again with emotion. “She didn’t have the opportunity to grow, to change, to have a life.”