Tays Say They’re Still Numb at Loss of Son : Grief: In first interview since Orange youth’s murder, they question whether their nightmare will ever end.

Nine days after their honor-student son was found slain and buried in a Buena Park back yard, Alfred and Linda Tay made their first public comments Wednesday, explaining the numbness that accompanies the nightmare they have lived since 17-year-old Stuart disappeared on New Year’s Eve.

“I feel anxious . . . I feel all tied up . . . I feel a physical pain in my heart,” Linda Tay said as she sat by her husband’s side in the high-ceilinged, immaculate living room of their gated house in the exclusive Orange Hills neighborhood. “I don’t know if I will ever feel better again. I don’t know if time is going to heal this pain.”

With their family lawyer seated nearby and Alfred Tay--an obstetrician--having just returned from delivering a baby girl, the couple recounted the fear that began building within them when Stuart--a college-bound computer whiz and senior at Foothill High Schools--disappeared. He had told his sister on the afternoon of Dec. 31 that he was running a brief errand and would return in time for dinner.

The parents’ agony heightened when their son’s car was found stripped and abandoned in Compton. But nothing prepared them for the discovery that Stuart had been bludgeoned with baseball bats and a sledgehammer, then buried in a shallow grave, allegedly by five teen-age boys he may have known.

“I keep asking myself: What could we have done to prevent this?” Linda Tay said. “But how do you prepare yourself for something like this? In your wildest dreams nobody could expect something like this.”

The Tays, Singapore natives who have been married more than 20 years and lived in Orange County since 1976, agreed that they could not have predicted Stuart’s fate.

“I don’t think I would do anything different in the way we brought him up,” said Alfred Tay, whose only son looked much like him and planned to follow in his path and become a doctor. “We did a pretty good job.”

During an hourlong interview, the Tays described Stuart as a well-rounded, talkative young man who was extremely close with his family, and open about his opinions and his activities. At times they spoke of their son, who hoped to attend Princeton University next year, in the present tense, though they had buried his ashes in Los Angeles’ Forest Lawn Cemetery hours before.

“He talks a lot, he runs around a lot, he’s always bouncing up the stairs,” Linda Tay said, looking around the living room as though Stuart might appear. “Physically, verbally, you were always aware of him.”

The Tays would not speculate on the motive behind the murder--not even to deny the police theory that Stuart Tay and the suspects were planning to rob an Anaheim computer dealer and that the five suspects killed Tay because they feared he would snitch. While Stuart had mentioned the name of Robert Chan, the accused ringleader of the group, he did not know the other four youths who have been arrested in the crime, the Tays said. Three of the juveniles have pleaded innocent while another is scheduled to be arraigned today. Chan, 18 and possibly facing the death penalty, is set to be arraigned Jan. 22.

“Most of his friends that he knows well he always brings home so I can know what kind of people he hangs around with,” Linda Tay said. She said she and her husband never met Chan. “Stuart has always been very proud of his friends.”

The five suspects arrested in Tay’s killing--all students at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton--have told police that they grew suspicious of Stuart because he originally told them his name was Martin Gore. That is the name of the keyboard player in Tay’s favorite musical group, Depeche Mode. But his parents say Stuart often used the alias Martin Gore as a joke--he signed the guest register at a ski lodge with the fake name on a family vacation last year--because he loved the singer so much.

Walking over to the piano in the family living room, Linda Tay thumbed through her son’s sheet music, with songs arranged by Martin Gore, still laid out and ready to be played. Upstairs, both parents sat on the youth’s bed, glancing at the posters of alternative rock groups--Depeche Mode, The Cure and Erasure--that cover the walls and ceiling.

“It’s my mess and I love it,” says the sign on the door to Stuart Tay’s room, which remains untouched since the police and a private investigator searched through his things for clues. Inside, a Foothill High yearbook, Cliff’s Notes to a literary classic and a paperback copy of The Te of Piglet are stacked on the night table. An exercise machine sits idle in the middle of the room; there is one computer on Stuart’s desk, another stacked in the corner.

“I will miss having him here all the time,” Linda Tay said as she closed the door to Stuart’s room. “I can’t believe that he’s never going to be home again.”

In the days since Stuart’s death was discovered, Linda Tay has remained in her home except to attend memorial services for her son. Alfred Tay returned to work this week, and their 13-year-old daughter, Candice, went back to school Monday, although she skipped classes again Wednesday to attend her brother’s interment.

The family has avoided watching television and reading newspapers, and has not yet contacted the Orange County district attorney’s office to learn more about the investigation into the slaying.

Friends of Stuart’s have streamed through the house offering condolences; a trail of potted flowers and two baskets full of cards symbolize the support from the community.

“The only time I feel better really is when his friends come over and tell me about the good times they had with him,” Linda Tay said, thanking the students who spoke at Saturday’s memorial service for Stuart. “Other than that I feel bad. I know I cannot just keep on crying. You cannot just continually weep, you know.”

Part of their grief is reserved for the parents of the suspects, four of whom are also children of Asian immigrants, solid students from well-to-do families in Fullerton.

“I think our tragedy is essentially ended, although I don’t think it will ever stop,” said Alfred Tay, who believes he once met the physician father of suspect Kirn Kim, as the two doctors do work at the same hospital. “But for the parents of those kids it is just beginning.”

Looking ahead, the Tays said, is the most difficult.

“You can’t think of the future because he’s not there,” Stuart’s mother said.

“I don’t think we could ever have a vacation without him being there--it’s not complete,” his father added.

Among their chief worries is for Candice, whom Alfred Tay has seen crying alone in her room each night before bedtime.

“We always told the kids, ‘You have to take care of each other and be very close,’ ” Linda Tay said as her daughter watched television upstairs. “Now Candice will never have a brother, she’ll be alone.”

Asked whether they see, in retrospect, any recent signs of trouble in their son’s life, the Tays agreed that Stuart had been happier in recent months than ever before.

One of their fondest memories of him will be the day they gave him his birthday gift, the cherry-red Nissan 300ZX that police believe the killers drove to Compton to distract investigators.

“He looked at the car, he put his hands all over the car, he sat in the driver’s seat and I sat in the passenger’s seat. It took him a few minutes to decide whether to drive because he loved it so much,” Alfred Tay said, struggling to maintain his strong, stoic demeanor. “He was speechless. The next few days he would be polishing it, driving it around, picking up all his friends.”

As Wednesday night’s rain smacked against the window behind her, Linda Tay struggled to hold back tears.

“It’s been raining and raining and raining for days. It’s like the heavens are crying for us,” she said. “It sounds so trite, I know, but have you ever seen so much rain?”