Police are conducting fresh enquiries after a reported sighting of Tom Phillips and his children near Marokopa.
“Police are conducting enquiries in the wider Marokopa area today after a reported sighting of Tom Phillips and his three children Ember, Maverick, and Jayda Phillips,” Acting Detective Inspector Andrew Saunders said yesterday.
“A visible police presence will be in the area while this is ongoing.”
A private investigator looking into the disappearance of a Marokopa family said it was a group of pig hunters who thought they spotted them on Thursday.
Chris Budge said his local contact told him the tip off came from a group of pig hunters but he didn’t state their age, or where they were from.
“He’d heard through the local, I’ll call it the rumour network, that Tom had been seen by some pig hunters on Thursday and the police were dealing with it on Friday.”
Budge said that if true, it is heartening the children have been sighted.
He said the possible sighting of all four is significant.
Last November CCTV footage allegedly showed Phillips, along with a child, smashing the glass of a Piopio store.
The owner of a local cafe on the road into Marokopa said she saw at least two police station wagons driving towards the settlement on Friday.
The cafe owner said she saw police cars drive past in the opposite direction on Friday night, heading back towards Marokopa on Saturday morning.
Tom Phillips and his three children Jayda, now 11, Maverick, nine, and Ember, eight, have not been seen since 12 December 2021.
In June, police announced an $80,000 reward, along with potential immunity from prosecution for anyone who may have previously assisted Phillips, who now provided information that led to the safe return of the children.
It expired at midnight on 25 June with no sign of the fugitive father or his kids.
On Jayda’s 11th birthday in June, the children’s mother Cat made an emotional plea for their return in a video posted online by police.
She begged for the public’s help to bring her “babies home”, saying they were innocent children who did not deserve the situation they were in.
“They do not deserve the life that is being provided to them right now,” she said.
“What Thomas is doing is not okay. It is not okay to divide and conquer. It is not okay to isolate and control.”
She called Phillips’ actions tantamount to child abuse, neglect, abandonment and endangerment.
“My babies deserve better. I’m just a mother standing here in front of the world begging you all to help me bring my babies home.”
Cat, who has never shown her face publicly over the situation before, was criticised on social media for the video.
The next night, on 19 June, she posted an unsigned and undated hand-written letter purportedly from Phillips to her apologising for hurtful past actions.
It’s understood Phillips had custody of the children when they first disappeared in September 2021, sparking a 17-day search in dense bush surrounding Marokopa.
Police charged Phillips with wasteful deployment of police resources, but he failed to show at Te Kūiti District Court on 12 January 2022.
A Marokopa resident, who did not want to be named, knew Phillips in passing and described him as “very religious” and “different”.
rnz.co.nz
