Why missing dad Tom Phillips and his children could be found within weeks after they were spotted on a farm for the first time in three years since vanishing
A former New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) tracker has said elite soldiers could find a man on the run with his three children within two weeks.
Tom Phillips and his three young children, Jayda, 11, Maverick, 9, and Ember, 8, were photographed by local hunters while walking through the New Zealand wilderness last week.
The father and three children have been missing since December 2021 and were believed to have been living off the land since then as they stayed one step ahead of authorities.
All four family members were wearing camouflage clothing and large backpacks when they were spotted by local teenage hunters on October 3.
Phillips was about 30 feet in front of his children, who were walking in a line behind him.
Barrie βBazβ Rice, a former commander, told the NZ Herald that the police should have deployed specialized soldiers to find the missing family.
He said if the NZSAS were given “the time and support to find him, I don’t think it would take them long.”
Mr Rice said if NZSAS soldiers had been deployed after the four were sighted last week, Phillips would have already been taken into custody.
Tom Phillips (pictured) is on the run through New Zealand after an arrest warrant was issued for his arrest over an alleged bank robbery last year
He and his three children were spotted by teenage pig hunters last week, sparking fears for their physical and mental well-being after years of being separated from society
The ex-serviceman said the NZSAS was used by police in the 1990s for something “very similar” to trackers to locate gang members in bushland.
NZ Police have not confirmed whether they had yet requested assistance from the NZ Defense Forces (NZDF), despite a Royal New Zealand Air Force NH90 helicopter providing close air support last week.
A spokesperson for the NZDF said it is “ready to respond” to requests from any government agency and has a wide range of resources and expertise.
Mr Rice said that if deployed, SAS soldiers would be unlikely to make contact with Phillips or confront him, but would only follow him.
βThey would basically just find out where he was and get as close as they could without him even knowing,β he said.
“(They would) find the location to within about a few hundred yards and then the rest of the force would be used to cordon off the area so he wouldn’t have too many escape routes while the police go in and do their work do. function.’
There are said to be concerns about Phillips’ mental state while in possession of a firearm around three children and how far he would go to avoid being caught if authorities got too close to him.
Mr Rice said Phillips and his three children appeared to have good wilderness skills.
‘When I saw that video, they looked quite forest-conscious. They had no trouble at all with their backpacks, they were well spaced and they didn’t stop or ask for help, so the kids clearly don’t think they need it.β
But the children’s mother, Cat, doesn’t think that’s the case.
The 16-year-old hunters who captured footage of the family initially thought they were poachers and shouted at them from about 60 meters away, to which Jayda responded.
“I said, ‘This is private property,’ and she said, ‘Yeah… duh.’ Then I asked, ‘Does anyone know you’re here?’ and she said, ‘No, just you guys,'” one of the boys recalled to a local news outlet. Stuff.
The mother of the missing children now wonders if her daughter was trying to convey a message to the public.
‘Is that a cry for help? Is that: ‘Does anyone know we’re here? Is someone coming for us?” We can’t hear the tone of her voice, but I think that’s what I’m thinking,” she told Mata Reports in a lengthy television interview.
Cat said every day without her three children was a “waking nightmare.”
“It’s like she’s trying to say something without actually saying anything because her father is there, and she’s worried if she says the wrong thing and phrases it the wrong way, she’s worried about the consequences later.”
But Rice said this could be part of the children’s mental state after three years on the run with their father.
He said Phillips had likely been shooting wild animals for food at the time and may have been cooking outside, which would make it easier to track them.
“Signs of burning, smoke and signs of camp would be quite easy for the SAS unit to find if they were camping on the ground,” he said.
“If you give (the NZSAS) 10 days or a couple of weeks, if they really took their time they could get to zero quite quickly.”
The former Army man said he was impressed with Phillips’ “bush skills and his ability to stay evaded for three years … but I also believe he’s being helped somewhere along the line.”
“He could be useful to the military because of his skills and his ability to remain evaded for so long.”
The sighting was the first time Cat had seen images of her children in three years.
βIt was really good, they brought their own stuff, it’s the best news anyone could hope for,β she said.
The father and children first went missing on September 11, 2021.
Eighteen days later they returned to the family farm and said they had spent the time living in a tent in dense bushland.
Cat said her husband and three children had visibly lost a lot of weight even during that short absence, so they likely suffered hardship in recent years.
βI can’t imagine what they’ve been through in these three years, it’s just wrong on so many levels,β she said.
Cat believes the police response to her missing children has been inadequate, adding that she expected search parties with sniffer dogs to be immediately deployed to the scene where the children were seen.
The images were reported to police on Thursday, but Cat did not hear from investigators until the next day.
βThe system has failed my children miserably from the beginning,β she said.
‘They shouldn’t have to live like this, they deserve so much more. They deserve to have friends, they deserve to go to the park and eat McDonald’s.”
In her attempt to cope with the loss of her children, Cat says she is trying to pretend they are not still missing.
She has two other daughters, who are older than the three children with their father, but admits she feels ‘lost’.
‘I’ve been lost since they left. I’m not me. They were my world, they were my everything,β she said.
‘I feel like I didn’t fight hard enough and didn’t make enough noise. I feel like it’s my fault.’
Looking back on their relationship, Cat described how her husband had been extremely controlling.
Cat (pictured) is the mother of missing children, Jayda, 11, Maverick, 9, and Ember, 8, who are believed to be living off the land with their fugitive father Tom Phillips
She claims he didn’t like her going anywhere or doing anything alone, and didn’t want her to put their children in daycare.
Supporting Thomas is essentially supporting child abuse because that’s what it is,β Cat said.
βI just want my babies home. I still have some of their clothes and Christmas presents from the year they disappeared. I don’t even know what they look like now.’
Phillips is wanted for questioning over an alleged armed robbery of a bank in Te Kuiti near Marokopa in September 2023.
CCTV footage showed Phillips riding a motorcycle with another person, believed to be Jayda, on the back.
There have been several “unverified” sightings of Phillips since he disappeared, but police believe the most recent footage from the pig hunters is the most credible.
In June this year, an $80,000 reward was offered for information that could help locate the three children. However, this reward expired after eight weeks without results, despite more than forty observations considered important by officers.