The disappearance of a New Zealand father into the wilderness with his three children in tow is rife with mysteries, but there are two core questions at its heart: Where is the family hiding, and why haven’t police found them yet?
Tom Phillips and his kids Jayda, 11, Maverick, nine, and Ember, eight, have been living through through freezing nights, soaking days, and trudging through the muddy countryside since they disappeared in December 2021.
As far as authorities know, they’ve barely left his hometown of Marokopa – a tiny town on the North Island’s rugged west coast with no shops and about 20 permanent residents, including his parents, Neville and Julia, and his brother, Ben.
The father and kids were feared dead until October 3 when pig hunters spotted them marching single-file through the hills surrounding the town – which was only about 5km from where they were last seen three years ago.
Emergency services were called and the Phillips clan was effectively handed to police on a platter. Authorities suddenly knew where the missing family was, the direction they were heading, what they looked like, and what they were wearing.
Yet, somehow, cops failed to scrounge a search team together until the following morning – ten hours later – by which point Phillips, who would now have intimate knowledge of the landscape, was long-gone.
If you ask any local, the going theory is that Phillips has managed to evade authorities for so long because he’s getting help from supporters in the community – but the situation has been polarising.
Some say it’s a private family matter, others think he needs to be caught, and most believe the search has been half-hearted, questioning whether police actually want to find the Phillips clan at all.
Pictured: Ember, eight, Jayda, 11, and Maverick, nine – who vanished with their father in December 2021
Tom Phillips (pictured) disappeared into the New Zealand wilderness with his kids in 2021
During my own trip to Marokopa, it was made very clear to me that some locals had received threats for speaking their mind about the ordeal. No one wanted to be publicly identified, citing fears for their personal safety.
Painted by some locals as a conspiracy theorist who’s never held down a job, and by others as a loving dad who’s trying to protect his family, Phillips homeschooled the children himself after splitting with his wife, Cat, several years ago.
We know there was a Family Court dispute about custody issues because Phillips was later charged with ‘breach of a custody order’, but that’s where the background ends – in New Zealand, it’s a crime to publish information relating to the family law case.
Even Cat is banned from talking about what happened in court. Whatever the situation, Phillips clearly thought – rationally or otherwise – that the situation was dire enough to grab their kids and become a fugitive.
And the terrain where the family fled to is wild. It looks like something out of Jurassic Park – tall ferns, fronds, vines and vibrant jungle-like greenery creep up and around the rolling hills. The portions of land that aren’t tangled in forest have been transformed into farmland.
Livestock far outweigh the number of people in the Waikato region, several times over.
There was also about seven weeks of rain in the region prior to the October 3 sighting.
‘It doesn’t matter how good you are at bushcraft and survival,’ one local told me. ‘You can’t escape that kind of wet, especially with three kids.’
‘He must be getting help.’
Pictured: Marokopa, where Tom Phillips and his three children went missing in December 2021
The terrain around Marokopa, where the family went missing, is a mixture of farmland and thick forest (pictured)
Marokopa is an isolated town on the west cost of New Zealand’s North Island
There were yelling matches about the Phillips controversy in small pubs around the region, or so I was told, though I never saw anything like that myself.
But I, along with every Kiwi I talked to, had been wondering how a distinctive-looking man with three young kids managed to evade law enforcement for three years with relative ease – particularly when it looks like he’s barely left his hometown.
Locals said New Zealand Police were slow to act and bungled the search from the beginning, hampered further due to the legal restrictions in place over what they can and can’t do.
The police do not have the power to launch a full-scale search of the area for a considerable length of time.
The police commissioner has the power to request major search powers from the Prime Minister, but even that raises constitutional issues.
One military lawyer seemed to highlight the bulk of the issue when he told the New Zealand Herald it would be ‘pretty extreme where you’ve got the military looking for a fugitive’.
‘If you think about it, this is a bloke who is just on the run from the cops – he’s not a terrorist.’
Is it really too extreme, though? In the eyes of police, Phillips is a wanted criminal.
He kidnapped his own children, stripped them of stability, access to education, healthcare, social interactions outside the immediate family unit, and a relationship with their mother and older half-sisters.
Locals spend their free time fishing along beaches and estuaries (pictured)
‘Missing’ posters can be seen in some shop windows in the region (pictured)
Their story has captured international attention. Their faces have been plastered all over newspapers and websites around the world.
If they are found and reintegrated back into society, they’ll find it difficult to escape what happened. They’ll be forever known as the missing Marokopa Children – you would think the state had a duty of care.
Along with the family law matters, he is also wanted for allegedly stealing a quad bike and a bank robbery. Police have told locals he’s ‘armed and dangerous’.
Whatever restrictions police face, it’s difficult to understand how they were unable to mobilise a search team within a couple of hours of receiving an emergency call on October 3 to say the family had been spotted on private property.
Those living in the town and around Coutts Road, where the family was recently spotted, say that accusations toward them from investigating police came thick and fast. Everyone was suspected of harbouring a fugitive.
An elderly couple claimed police approached them during the search asking: ‘You sure he’s not here?’
The woman told me: ‘I said, ‘yeah I’m sure, but go on, have a look, he’s not here’.’
‘I don’t know what they thought they’d find, but they didn’t find Tom.’
Others who had their properties searched said police were accusatory, but never actually asked if they knew anything.
Marokopa is on the coast, close to a series of beaches – lined with black volcanic sand (pictured)
On October 3, the Phillips family were seen walking along a property near Coutts Road
One man said police found quad bike tracks on part of his property during the search efforts, concluding that Phillips must have got a lift from someone at the top of the hill.
Like something from a film…
The Phillips’ situation has been likened to the Kiwi adventure film, Hunt For The Wilderpeople – set in New Zealand and starring Sam Neill.
Like the Phillips children, Hec (Neill) and his foster son Ricky (Julian Dennison) run away from civilisation and spend months surviving in the wilderness, living off the land with only each other for company.
Law enforcement is seen as the enemy because they have misinterpreted the situation, believing Hec has kidnapped Ricky.
There are ‘wanted’ posters in shop windows, they get help along the way from friendly strangers, and they’re unable to access basic healthcare and educational facilities.
It’s easy to see the comparison between the film and the Phillips story.
Pictured: Sam Neil and Julian Dennison in Hunt For The Wilderpeople
‘I’d been up there a day earlier,’ he told me. ‘They were my tracks, but police didn’t ask me if they were mine, they just decided the tracks were part of the scene and told me not to go up there.’
‘That’s the thing, Tom is always two steps ahead – it’s a game of cat and mouse.’
He claimed ‘strange things’ had happened after the family disappeared.
People who had known Phillips were suddenly carrying abnormally large trolleys of food in the supermarket, making bee-lines for adjacent isles when spotted by anyone who might ask questions.
He also talked about the first time Phillips first disappeared with his children in September 2021. A widespread search was initiated, until they emerged from the wilderness 19 days later telling authorities they’d been camping.
Phillips was charged for wasting police time and was required to appear in court months later, but he never showed up. The family then disappeared altogether.
Referring to the September disappearance, the man told me that he recalled someone suggesting to police that they check to see if Phillips’ camping gear was still packed away at his parents’ house.
‘Because if his camping gear wasn’t there, they’ve gone camping,’ he said.
‘Police hadn’t checked, and when they did, they realised his camping gear was gone.’
Another Marokopa resident said she was ‘pretty sure’ they just went camping on the first occasion.
The children’s mother Cat and her older daughters, Jubilee and Storm, do not think it was a camping expedition.
They wanted police to provide a financial incentive to come forward with information about the whereabouts of their youngest family members in early 2022, but according to Jubilee, they declined.
Jubilee previously told local media that police were concerned an official financial reward would lead to more kidnappings.
The children’s mother, Cat (pictured), made a desperate plea for the return of her children
The Phillips children are pictured on Jayda’s seventh birthday. She is now 11
Following the latest sighting, police did put forward an $80,000 reward, but it expired.
The search was called off after a few days and it was back to business as usual.
When approached for comment, New Zealand Police directed Daily Mail Australia to previous press releases – the last of which was published on October 8.
Probed further, the response was: ‘We have nothing further to add.’
The situation continues.
As concerned as locals are for the children’s welfare, and for Phillips’ mental health, some have difficulty separating fact from fiction – speculating on a fiery finale to the drama which has been playing out on their doorstep for three years.
In many ways, running from your ex into the wilderness with your three children, teaching them bushcraft and living off the land for three years, does sound like the plot of a heartwarming adventure movie.
‘It is very exciting, isn’t it,’ one woman told me, enthusiastically. ‘I feel sorry for the kids and I just hope it doesn’t end in a shoot-out.’
Her friend replied, exasperated: ‘A shoot-out? Yeah, me too. That would be terrible.’
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk