Three years in the wild: how a fugitive father has hidden his children for so long

It is a question that has gripped New Zealand for three years, and one that has become more urgent over the past week.

The country is desperate to know where fugitive father Tom Phillips is and why – after three winters spent hiding in rugged backcountry with his three young children – he hasn’t been caught.

Related: Fugitive father filmed with children in New Zealand wilderness three years after disappearing

The youngest of the three children, Ember, was five years old when she was last seen in civilisation with her two siblings in December 2021. Last week Ember, Maverick and Jayda – now aged 8, 9 and 11 – were spotted for the first time together since their father took them into dense bush and farmland in Marokopa , rural Waikato, where police believe he has been aided by other people in keeping them hidden.

Phillips does not have custody of the children. They have had no contact with society during this time – though Phillips took at least one child out of the bush in May 2023, when he allegedly committed an armed bank robbery in nearby Te Kūiti , and in November that year when he allegedly attempted to rob a small grocery store. While there were several other sightings in mid-2023 and a $80,000 reward was put up for information in June, the trail had gone cold.

The latest sighting has prompted questions over how Phillips can still be on the run and if police have been giving the case the attention it deserves. Nobody is sure how Phillips is surviving, and his purchases of camping items and seedlings suggest he is living off the land, whether in huts in the bush or other forms of makeshift shelter.

Surviving in the wilderness

Marokopa is a tiny, windswept settlement on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. It’s bordered by tens of thousands of hectares of dense native bush, cliffs, farmland and limestone caves.

Phillips is from a “well-respected” family with deep roots in farming in the Marokopa community, the news outlet Stuff has reported. His family own more than 500 hectares of Marokopa farmland which backs on to bush, about half a day’s walk from where Phillips and the children were spotted by teenage pig hunters last Thursday. There is no suggestion Phillips’ family is helping him. Phillips’ mother told the New Zealand Herald that she had not seen him since 2021, and urged him to bring the children home .

Those familiar with the New Zealand bush say he could live in it “almost indefinitely”, surviving on herbs, wild carrots, the pith of native trees and animal meat, especially if he can find supplies and make a shelter.

“He could have been planning this for years,” said Ash Budd, director of the New Zealand Survival Academy.

“The thing that will get you is the cold, your morale, and if there are any injuries.”

The children’s mother and her adult children have described Phillip’s actions as tantamount to child abuse , with the mother, Cat, telling the New Zealand Herald that Phillips was using the children as pawns.

“It should have been stopped a long time ago. I can’t believe that this has been allowed to happen. It’s like the system really doesn’t care,” she said. “Every step of the way nobody listened to me, I was just ignored, time and time again, minimised, gaslit and yet, look where we are.” She told Radio New Zealand she has faced online trolling for speaking out.

The child protection agency Oranga Tamariki (the Ministry for Children) would not comment, citing privacy, though Saunders previously told Newshub that social workers were on standby. The minister for children, Karen Chhour, also declined to comment.

Police began a three-day ground and aerial search of Marokopa 12 hours after the most recent sighting, and by then Phillips was gone. The police declined an interview, but Det Insp Andrew Saunders has said they are dedicated to the case. “While we cannot go into detail, we want to reassure the public that we have the resources in place to respond to any information or reports of sightings that come in.”

Some are calling for a military response, saying the family could be found in less than a fortnight. “You could get within 50 metres of them without them knowing, you could get him when he’s separated from the children going to get water, you could swarm them,” Barrie Rice, former special forces unit tracker, told the Guardian.

“The longer they’re out there, the more dangerous it gets.”

But others say approaching Phillips in the New Zealand bush at night would be ill-advised. Tony Wall, a reporter from Stuff, has followed the case since September 2021, when Phillips left his abandoned four-wheel drive in the surf and sparked a large-scale search amid fears he and the children were dead. He was charged with wasting police resources after walking from the bush with them 18 days later. Since taking them again in December he has racked up charges of aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding and unlawfully possessing a firearm.

Wall, who has written stories questioning the police response, said their caution made sense in this instance. “They’re in a hell of a position, because they can’t just go rushing in – it was right on dusk when they were seen,” he said.

Yet there is still some support for Phillips, online and in the community, with calls to “leave him alone” and claims he is giving his children a healthy upbringing. Marokopa locals have been circumspect, with Phillips variously being described as a “crack-up” and a “good bloke”.

But for those living this reality, it’s taking its toll. On the phone, the deputy mayor of nearby Ōtorohanga, Annette Williams, sounded weary.

Related: New Zealand’s two-year search in wilderness for fugitive father and three missing children

“It’s been going on for a long time, I’ve come across people who have views either way but really all anyone wants is a safe outcome for the children.”

For their mother, Cat, it’s even more simple.

“This is our life. This is the rest of my life, for my babies,” she told Radio New Zealand . “They are forever going to suffer from what’s happening right now.”