The black suit and white dress shirt Moshe Nudelamn planned to wear to his family's New Year's Eve party hangs on a closet door in his parents' Coney Island home.
The 34-year-old's father still stares at it - a solemn reminder that his son vanished without a trace just hours before the celebration.
NYPD cops checked hospitals and morgues in the days after he went missing. The department's harbor unit searched the waters near the Bergen Beach home of Nudelamn's ex-wife and helicopters scoured snow-covered blocks and wooded areas near her home.
No leads developed.
Desperate and frustrated, Nudelamn's family spent $7,000 on a private detective for help, but still nothing.
"He just completely disappeared," his younger brother, Peter Nudelamn, 31, told the Daily News.
The missing man's family is convinced his disappearance involves foul play.
Nudelamn was last seen leaving the home of his ex, Marina Shulkina, 32, on New Year's Eve. He arrived there shortly after noon to give presents to his 4-year-old twins, Benjamin and Arielle, and left 20 minutes later.
He was expected at his family's party, but he never showed. His blue Honda Odyssey minivan was found later in a no-parking zone around the corner from Shulkina's home.
"He had a plan to come back," said his father, Yakov Nudelamn, 63.
Moshe Nudelamn had his demons, his family said.
The computer programmer had moved into his parents' Coney Island apartment late last year as his marriage unraveled.
He also struggled with depression for the last four years - the illness sometimes forcing him to take long absences from his job.
In October, it led to being hospitalized.
"He was calling me, telling me that I should take care of the children; that he was dying; that he felt like he was on fire," Shulkina recalled.
But Nudelamn's family and ex-wife insist he wouldn't take his own life.
His family contacted police New Year's Day, but hired a private eye after they felt detectives from Brooklyn's 60th Precinct were sitting on the case.
The hired detective, Tom Werther of Manhattan-based Sector Mike Security and Investigations, said he and a team combed the area, interviewed dozens of neighbors, but came up empty.
"This is a really, really tough case," said Werther, a former NYPD detective. "My hunch is that there is foul play."
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said police "have done a great deal" of work on the case, but no evidence of foul play has emerged."
As weeks pass without a breakthrough, the pain grows for Nudelamn's family.
"We are stuck in this middle ground where we don't know what to do," Peter Nudelamn said
Your story is missing an update. His body was found, hanging, an apparent suicide, a few days ago.
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