IN EARLY 1990, Singapore-born Lee Kui Yin wrote a letter to her father to say she would be arriving at Changi Airport on April 7. She had already booked her air ticket from the United States to Singapore booked, and was looking forward to her first homecoming since she moved to America in 1985.

With her would be her Polish husband Kazimierz Turzynski and their little daughter Colleen.

But two weeks before her trip, Kui Yin, then 39, her 35-year-old husband and his 61-year-old father were brutally murdered in their four-room apartment in Clifton, New Jersey.

When the police discovered their bodies a week later, they also found 17-month-old Colleen. She had survived in the apartment by drinking from the toilet and eating whatever she could find.

Colleen, who was deaf like her parents, was briefly hospitalised for dehydration and second-degree ammonia burns from her filthy diaper, according to American media reports at the time.

Kui Yin’s family in Singapore fought to get custody of Colleen, but lost to her father’s Polish relatives.

Colleen posing with her stuffed toys when she was a baby.

For 24 years, the family in Singapore has been wondering what had become of the little girl.

On the morning of April 7, 2014 – 24 years to the day of the homecoming that never happened – Kui Yin’s sister, Say Moi, now 66, got a phone call while she was still in bed.

It was a family member telling her to read The Straits Times because there was a story about her long-lost niece, Colleen.

“I screamed and jumped out of bed. I told my son to buy the newspaper. When I saw Colleen’s picture, I couldn’t control my tears,” she said in Mandarin.

Word quickly spread through the extended family, three of whom wrote in separately to The Straits Times upon seeing the story.

Say Moi, along with three brothers – Tak Nyen, 70, Pheng Nyen, 72, and Thor Yen, 60 – met The Straits Times two days after the story was published.

They showed newspaper clippings, birth and death certificates of their late sister, as well as photographs of baby Colleen that her mother had sent them. They became teary-eyed at times, fondly remembering their sister, the seventh of eight children, even as they often could not recall specific details or dates.

Colleen’s aunt and uncles explaining to The Straits Times their fruitless search for their niece Colleen over the years. They provided photographs of her parents and her as a child, as well as newspaper clippings, as evidence of their tireless search.

Say Moi, who had kept the folder all these years, said: “We’ve never once given up hope.”

For several decades spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s, the Lee family had struggled to make ends meet. Their father, Lee Chit Yong, was a hawker peddling wares at pasar malam (night markets). With many mouths to feed, the children had to start working from a young age.

In 1955, Kui Yin, who was then five, fell ill with a high fever. It robbed her of her ability to speak and hear, Say Moi said.

The family communicated with her either through gestures or by writing.

Kui Yin enrolled in a deaf school and was determined to overcome her disability. “She picked up sign language, and started working at a clothes factory when she was a teenager,” said Say Moi.

Say Moi, who is sixth in the family and a hairdresser then, said she and Kui Yin were close. “She was a very talented seamstress, and I would recommend her to my clients.”

Kui Yin did not let her handicap affect her zest for life.

Old photographs of Colleen’s mum, Lee Kui Yin.

“She was very sociable and intelligent,” said Say Moi. “Somehow she managed to memorise all the bus numbers and their respective routes. She was also the most well-travelled in the family.”

It was on one of her travels abroad that she would meet her husband.

Kui Yin, who had been to Malaysia, Hong Kong and other countries in the region, was 29 when she travelled with friends to the then-communist Poland for a holiday in 1980.

There, she met and fell in love with Kazimierz, who was also deaf and a mime artist acting with his parents in a troupe.

They kept up a long-distance relationship before he visited Singapore in 1983 to meet her family. They liked him instantly.

An old photograph of Lee Kui Yin (centre) with her Polish husband, Kazimierz Turzynski (second from right), her brother-in-law Andrzej Turzynski and Kui Yin’s Singaporean friends, who are also hearing-impaired.

Lee Kui Yin with her Polish husband, Kazimierz Turzynski, at Changi Airport.

The Turzynskis with their Singaporean friends in a coffee shop in Singapore.

Say Moi said: “He struck me as very charming, very upright. We could tell they were very much in love. The family was very happy for her.”

His visit lasted one week, and an application to stay longer in Singapore was rejected.

Shortly after, he migrated to New Jersey in the US, where he began work as a press operator at a rubber company. Kui Yin joined him there in 1985, and they were married in a simple ceremony which the Singapore family could not afford to attend.

But the happy news of Colleen’s birth in 1988 was soon followed by the tragedy of the triple murders.

Kui Yin’s body was cremated, and the Singapore family spent US$2,000 to have her ashes brought back to Singapore.

The family also wanted to care for Colleen in Singapore. Say Moi said: “We pooled our savings to engage a lawyer through the Singapore embassy. My mother really wanted to give her a good home here.”

But custody of the toddler went to the Polish family instead. The judge ruled that Colleen would do better with her paternal relatives who all use sign language.

Another factor in the Turzynskis’ favour was that the paternal grandmother had already forged a relationship with Colleen.

The Lee family’s efforts to track her down after that by getting her address in Poland through the Singapore embassy also came to nought. Thus began a 24-year wait.

Kui Yin’s parents had also yearned to meet Colleen but they died in the 1990s.

Tak Nyen said efforts by their Internet-savvy children to look for Colleen through social media were also unsuccessful. He added: “We think about Colleen every time we gather for Chinese New Year. We had just been talking about her during the last festival.”