WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Deep in dense New Zealand forest, a makeshift campsite was the final hiding place of a fugitive New Zealand man who vanished with his three children for several years.
On Tuesday, a day after Tom Phillips was shot dead by the police and his children — now aged 9, 10 and 12 — were recovered from the wilderness existence they had inhabited since December 2021, the story didn’t have a simple ending, officials said.
Law enforcement will now try to “put the puzzle together” of how the family lived, found food and avoided detection by searchers for so many years, New Zealand’s Police Commissioner Richard Chambers told reporters.
Photos supplied by the police of the family’s final campsite — where soda cans, tires and a metal container sat amid camouflaged belongings — gave few clues. The site was likely a temporary one, officials said, but it was in terrain that had been searched before.
“It’s highly likely that we’ve been very, very close,” Chambers said. “If not right there.”
A shoot-out before dawn ended the search
An early-morning shoot-out on Monday brought to a close of sorts a lengthy ordeal that has gripped New Zealanders and drawn global headlines. Phillips and one of his children were stopped by a police officer as they fled a robbery at a farming supplies store in Waitomo, a small town on New Zealand’s North Island.
The police officer was shot at close range and would require a series of surgeries, officials said. He was expected to survive.
More officers arrived and Phillips was fatally shot. The child with him was taken into custody and hours later, helped law enforcement to find the campsite where the other children waited.
The cache of belongings there included guns, officials said.
Police will seek to identify those who helped Phillips
Investigators always believed that since Phillips disappeared in December 2021, he and his children had never traveled far from the tiny rural settlement where they lived in the sprawling farming region of Waikato. But despite the offer of a sizeable reward, no one turned them in.
On Tuesday Chambers said officers would seek to uncover the identities of “anybody who may have been helping Mr. Phillips.”
The fugitive father was skilled in wilderness survival. But as law enforcement increased patrols in the area, the police were increasingly sure he had help remaining concealed.
The case divided New Zealand and Phillips found supporters online and among residents of the settlement of Marokopa, population 40, where he had lived. Some locals told visiting reporters that they endorsed his actions.
“I can tell you he is no hero,” Chambers said Tuesday. “No one who does this to children, no one who unleashes high-powered rifles on my staff, is a hero, simple as that.”
Family had a history of disappearance
December 2021 wasn’t the first time Phillips and his children had vanished. Three months earlier, he sparked a massive search operation when his truck was found on a beach near his home, with no trace of the family.
Officials feared they had been swept out to sea before Phillips and the children emerged from the forest after 17 days, saying they had been camping. Phillips was charged with wasting police resources but disappeared again with the children before he was due to appear in court.
Phillips didn’t have legal custody of his children at the time he vanished. He was later wanted for an armed bank robbery in 2023, during which he was accompanied by one of his children and apparently shot at a member of the public as he fled.
He was spotted on CCTV footage in the area committing other break-ins to steal supplies, most recently in August. Beyond those thefts, it wasn’t clear how the family had survived in rugged countryside at freezing winter temperatures for years.
Few details of children’s welfare divulged
Officials didn’t disclose Tuesday any details of the children’s whereabouts after their rescue. The child protective services agency was involved.
“There’s a careful plan with everyone becoming involved at the right time in terms of making sure that they’re put on a really strong and healthy pathway to recovery,” New Zealand’s Police Minister Mark Mitchell told reporters.
A High Court judge on Monday issued a temporary injunction that bars officials or news outlets from disclosing certain details of the case.
“They have seen and been exposed to things that children in our country should not be,” Mitchell said. “It’s very complicated and it’s very complex and it has been for quite some time.”
