  A search for events containing isolated tau leptons and large missing
transverse momentum, not originating from the tau decay, has been performed
with the ZEUS detector at the electron-proton collider HERA, using 130 pb^-1 of
integrated luminosity. A search was made for isolated tracks coming from
hadronic tau decays. Observables based on the internal jet structure were
exploited to discriminate between tau decays and quark- or gluon-induced jets.
Three tau candidates were found, while 0.40 +0.12 -0.13 were expected from
Standard Model processes, such as charged current deep inelastic scattering and
single W-boson production. To search for heavy-particle decays, a more
restrictive selection was applied to isolate tau leptons produced together with
a hadronic final state with high transverse momentum. Two candidate events
survive, while 0.20 +-0.05 events are expected from Standard Model processes.
