Footage captured by two teenage hunters last week shows the first sighting of all members of a fugitive family who have been on the run since 2021, with theories circulating the family are being helped by others.
The youngsters were looking for wild pigs in Te Anga, on New Zealand’s North Island, when they came across a heavily bearded man in camouflage gear being followed by three smaller people in similar clothing. Little known to them, they had just spotted one of the country’s most famous families.
One of the teenagers called out to the family, which included an older man wearing a backpack and rifle, while filming them and said ‘this is private property,’ to which she replied: “Yeah… duh.” He followed up his question by asking: “Does anyone know you’re on here?” with the younger girl replying: “No, just you guys.”
This was one of the first time in years that fugitive dad Tom Phillips and his three children Jayda, 11, Maverick, nine, and Ember, eight, had been seen since they went missing three years ago. Since then, 38-year-old Phillips has played a game of cat and mouse with the increasingly embarrassed authorities.
It’s believed the family have done so well due to the fact Mr Phillips is an experienced hunter and outdoorsman. He himself has been captured several times on CCTV, including allegedly being part of an armed robbery at a bank in May last year. He and a smaller female were seen fleeing the location on a black motorbike at the time. As a result, a £37,000 reward was issued by police for anyone who may be able to locate the Phillips family down, but there has been no progress or any close sightings until now.
The teenager’s sighting of the family led to a three-day hunt which, again, was unsuccessful. It included scrambling a helicopter and heat-seeking cameras. But no trace of the foursome was found. The ongoing embarrassment for authorities has led to theories the Phillips are being helped by some sympathisers, while others have called for the Special Forces to be called in, MailOnline reports.
Private investigator Chris Budge, a former policeman who has visited the area on his own half a dozen times, said: “What I think has been happening is that Tom has a little bit of a network of people who think he’s Robin Hood. The girls are now heading into their teenage years and they are going to need stuff. I don’t believe that’s going to be all happening in the bush. I don’t think he’s just a kidnapper but I think he has taken his kids because he wants to keep hold of them and there’s probably a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, a bit of brainwashing, where he is telling them, ‘If we go back you’ll be taken away from me and I’ll never ever see you again’.”
Budge added that he thinks the situation will end one of three ways – either someone in trouble with the police will use knowledge of Phillips’s whereabouts as a bargaining chip, the family get accidentally seen, or one of the children gets sick and needs urgent medical help.”
The children’s mother Cat said this week that she has no faith in the authorities who have failed to her children, adding that she thinks the task is “out of their league”. She said: “It was like Christmas come early and I really thought they would be coming home this time. It’s a confirmed sighting and yet nothing has come of it.
Speaking about her daughter’s interaction with the pig hunters, she belives it could have been a cry for help. “Is that, ‘Does anybody know that we’re here? Is anyone coming for us?’,” she said. “We don’t get to hear the tone of her voice but to me, that’s what I think. It’s like she’s trying to say something without actually saying something because her father is right there and she’s worried if she says the wrong thing and words it the wrong way, there’s later repercussions.”
The distraught mother is adamant someone is helping the children’s father “one hundred percent” either in the form of supplying them with items or leaving them somewhere it is easy to find. She added: “Those people need to stop. They need to think seriously about it and they need to question themselves. Why do these children deserve any less than any other child in New Zealand?”
The extraordinary saga began three years ago when Phillips and the children first went missing in the most dramatic of circumstances. Separated from his wife for several years, he had reportedly been awarded custody of the children, whom he was home-schooling. Full details of the couple’s domestic arrangements have not been published because in New Zealand it is prohibited to report on family court proceedings. Much of their time was spent on the Phillips family farm at Marokopa, in a remote part of the country’s Waikato region.
One Sunday in September 2021, Phillips took the children and abandoned his 4×4 truck on the shoreline. It was reported to police and a huge search operation was underway to find the missing family members, including photos of the children, who were then just aged eight, six and five, and their father.
At the time, Phillips’ sister Rozzi Pethybridge said she believed a rogue wave had caught one of the kids and her brother had gone into save them. After nearly two weeks the search was eventually stood down. However, five days after that the father returned to the family’s farm. All were safe and he told people he had spent the time “clearing his head” while camping in bushland ten miles from where his vehicle was found.
At the time, sis family issued a statement saying: “Tom is remorseful, he is humbled, he is gaining an understanding of the horrific ordeal he has put us through.” Phillips was later charged with wasting police time and resources.
A month before his court date, in December 2021, he left the family farm with his children for a second time and it wasn’t until he missed his hearing that police issued an arrest warrant. Approached at home, his mother Julia was unforthcoming and when asked if she knew where her son was, answered with a shrug and a smile.
Phillips reportedly returned to the public eye last May when he and a female accomplice allegedly held a bank at gunpoint. It was witnessed by a local who said she had seen two people rushing out of the ANZ bank in a rush, dropping cash along the way. The witness said: “There were heaps of $50 notes falling on the ground. Thinking they had dropped the money by mistake she stopped one of them – the smaller female – and offered to help pick it up.”
The robbery happened on May 16, but police only revealed in September that they believed Phillips was responsible and that they had charged him with aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding and unlawfully possessing a firearm. They reiterated their view that Phillips had been receiving help to stay hidden and urged people to rethink their support for him in light of the new warrant for his arrest. Police did not identify the female involved in the robbery.
The children’s mother has admitted that when trying to cope with the loss of her children, she pretends they aren’t missing. She has two other daughters who are older than the three who are with Phillips. She explained: “Since they’ve been gone, I’ve lost my way. I’m not me. They were my world, they were my everything. I feel like I didn’t fight hard enough, I didn’t make enough noise. I feel like it’s my fault.”
