After 3 years on the run, New Zealand father confounds searchers

By Hilary Whiteman | CNN

(CNN) — The man wore camouflage gear, a long beard protruding below a mask. His features were hidden, but when New Zealand police saw the video showing three figures walking behind him, one name came instantly to mind.

Fugitive Thomas Callam Phillips has been evading police for three years since disappearing with his children Ember, Maverick and Jayda – now 8, 9 and 11 – into the rugged wilderness of the country’s North Island during a bitter family split in December 2021.

At first Phillips was wanted for failing to appear in court on charges of wasting police resources but, three years on, his charge sheet has grown longer and more serious, with allegations that he robbed a bank in May 2023 with an unnamed female accomplice.

Police have scrambled search teams, helicopters and planes to investigate sporadic sightings but have failed to find them.

Last week’s sighting is believed to be the first of all three children since 2021.

It was made by a teenager, who didn’t want to be named or interviewed for this story, but his grandfather John McOviney told CNN the boy had been hunting with a friend on the family’s 8,500-acre (3,439-hectare) property in Marokopa when they spotted four figures carrying backpacks who they assumed were poachers.

“The guy had a big, long beard, and the kids were all masked up, and they were carrying packs, and they weren’t very keen to talk to them at all,” McOviney said.

Instead, his grandson filmed them on his phone, providing the first proof of life of the missing Phillips children that their mother Cat has seen since they left.

The entire country wants to know where they are, and why it’s taking police so long to find them.

“This is not a big country we’re talking about,” said Lance Burdett, a former detective inspector and lead crisis negotiator for New Zealand Police. “It’s very surprising that they haven’t been found, particularly since the number of sightings are in a very similar area.”

Max Baxter, mayor of the Otorohanga district that includes Marokopa, a rural community home to fewer than 100 people, says authorities believe Phillips is receiving help.

“We absolutely believe that somebody, or some people, are helping them,” said Baxter. “Tom still has a number of supporters out there believing that he is doing the right thing for him and his children.”

A family missing in wild terrain

New Zealand’s North Island is home to the wild, awe-inspiring landscape that formed some of the backdrop to Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies.

Steep hills with sweeping views drop away into deep valleys, dotted with caves covered by a blanket of dense forest. Marokopa is the type of place where it’s easy to get lost – and even easier to hide.

“There’s a reason why people live at Marokopa,” said Baxter. “It’s because they love the isolation. They love the fact that they’re on the rugged west coast, that they can go fishing, they can hang out with like-minded people.”

Phillips was raised in the area and his parents still live there in the family home. In a statement provided to TVNZ last year, his mother denied any knowledge of her son’s whereabouts and said the family would “like nothing more” than for the four to return.

It’s not the first time Phillips has disappeared with Ember, Maverick and Jayda. In September 2021, his car was reported abandoned on a beach, prompting a large police search of land and sea.

For three weeks, a police helicopter and drones scoured the coastline, while rescue teams searched on land, but just as the operation was winding down – with fears the family was lost at sea – they suddenly reappeared.

Phillips reportedly told police he and the children had been camping in bushland. He was later charged with wasting police resources and given a date to appear in court.

But before that day came, he disappeared again with the three children. Some assumed he’d “gone bush” again, and would later emerge – but this time, they haven’t come home.

Three children isolated from society

Ember, Maverick and Jayda were just 5, 7 and 8, when they vanished. For more than two years, their mother kept a low profile, releasing written statements through police, appealing for help to find them.

But this June, she introduced herself in an emotional video posted to Facebook.

“Hello world,” she said. “My name is Cat … I’m standing here before you today, begging you for your help to bring my babies home.”

The eldest child, Jayda, had just turned 11. “She will be a young woman now, and she needs her mother,” said Cat, who has not publicly revealed her surname. “Ember is asthmatic as am I … she needs medical care that cannot be provided from the land.”

“I can only imagine how Maverick is coping,” she added.

At the time the video was released, police had just offered a reward for 80,000 New Zealand dollars ($48,000) for information leading to finding the children. It flushed out reports of sightings, but no breakthrough.

The children’s older sister, Jubilee Dawson, made a separate appeal in an interview last year, sharing memories of her siblings.

“Jayda is the more outgoing one … she’s definitely the most confident of the three … loves talking to everybody,” Dawson told a Mata Reports documentary. “Maverick is more introverted, I’d say he’s more shy … Ember is the youngest, and more sweet and bubbly.”

Dawson fears the children may now be “traumatized and scared” and worries that they don’t know that their family is looking for them.

“We love them very much, and we are just waiting for them to come home,” she said.

CNN reached out to Cat and Dawson but did not receive a response.

An alleged bank robbery

Authorities are concerned that Phillips is not just hiding the children, but encouraging them to engage in criminal acts.

In May 2023, two masked people held up a branch of the ANZ bank, escaping on a motorbike with cash. New Zealand Police later named Phillips as the suspect, and said he was aided by a female accomplice. Both were said to be armed.

A witness told local media the accomplice was small, “even shorter than me.”

Phillips is now wanted for aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding and unlawfully possessing a firearm.

Burdett, the former detective inspector, said if Phillips carried out the bank robbery, it suggests the fugitive father was desperate for cash.

“They have to be surviving on something. You do need money. You can only live so much on the land, and particularly with three young kids,” Burdett said. “They’re going to be growing in three years.”

In November 2023, Phillips and an unnamed child are also alleged to have smashed the window of a shop at 2 a.m., before fleeing on a stolen quad bike. Phillips has also been seen on CCTV, with his face covered, buying supplies in a hardware store.

“We know Tom has been sighted at retail locations across the Waikato region disguised with various masks,” police said in a statement. 

Burdett said police need more resources to search the area and suggested a general call-out might help boost numbers on the ground.

“Let’s get in there and saturate the area. I’m sure if you asked a lot of locals – can you spend one or two days walking across these hills? – a lot of people would do it. Not just locals,” he said.

However, Mayor Baxter suggests venturing into the dense bushland around Marokopa is not a good idea for those unaccustomed to the terrain.

“For an inexperienced person out there, you could find yourself two meters off the track and may not find the track again,” he said. “We’re talking very, very deep bush and rugged countryside.”

Have they been living rough?

New Zealand Police declined CNN’s request for an interview, pointing to the dozens of news updates they’ve released over the years relating to the case.

Their most recent statement says the “credible” sighting of Phillips and the children on October 3 prompted a three-day search but “nothing further of significance was located.”

“Police continue to urge those in the Marokopa community to remain alert and report any suspicious activity, no matter how minor, to us,” the statement added.

Mayor Baxter said the search had divided opinion in the community between those who believe Phillips should give the children up and others who defend his rights as a father.

Many just want the entire police operation to go away, he said.

Baxter said he finds it hard to believe the children have been living rough for three years in an area frequently pelted by wind and rain, where winter temperatures dip below freezing. That’s why he believes Phillips and the children must be receiving help.

“We all know it, but it just gets very uncomfortable when it’s raining day after day after day,” he said.

“I think there has to be either a shearer’s quarters, another house somewhere, a woolshed where they’ve been holed up for extensive periods of time, and they’ve been given supplies,” he said.

McOviney, whose grandson took the recent footage, posited a similar theory, noting that woolsheds and houses are dotted across the remotely populated area, used by workers tending livestock that graze in the hills.

“I think they’ve got help. I don’t know that for sure, but to keep little kids like that isolated from the family and from everybody else, you’d think they’d need some help, wouldn’t you?”

In her video message, Cat hinted at resistance in the community to the search from people who don’t believe her children need saving.

“Many of you say that the children are fine, that they’re being well looked after. How do you know, have you seen them, or is it just bush talk?” she said.

“What Thomas is doing is not okay…  It is not okay to isolate and control. It is child neglect. It is child endangerment … None of this is okay.”