Tom Phillips and his three children Jayda, 10, Maverick, eight, and Ember, seven, were reported missing from their home in Marokopa by family on January 18, 2022.

Adam Dudding reports on the Marokopa mystery, after a number of recent sightings.

Here are some of the things Inspector Will Loughrin was able to tell assembled reporters at a press conference at Hamilton Central Police Station a couple of Thursdays ago.

There had been some fresh sightings in Waikato of Tom Phillips. He was disguised. He was driving a stolen, bronze-coloured Toyota Hilux.

The ute had been spotted in Pokuru, near a Bunnings in Te Rapa and again in Kāwhia. The Kāwhia sighting involved an “altercation” where a police chopper was deployed from Auckland to help out.

Police didn’t know where the ute went, nor Phillips, nor his three children.

Loughrin called for the public to phone in with further sightings of Phillips, or of the ute (which would be found abandoned soon after). He also called on community members, who he believed knew the whereabouts of the entire family, to come forward.

“I am urging those people to get in contact with us. We want to bring the children home.”

Reporters peppered him with questions: Is Phillips dangerous? Who do you think is helping him? What was the “altercation”? Where do you think he is now? What did he buy at Bunnings?

Loughrin answered some questions but ducked many, with variations on a theme of “our investigation team are working through that at the moment”.

Some would be answered in dribs and drabs over the following days as police released new information and CCTV, and as reporters fanned out through Waikato in search of talkative locals.

This is why we know, for instance, what Phillips was wearing while at Bunnings. The vibe in the press conference had been that he’d become a master of disguise, but CCTV revealed he’d worn a face mask, beanie and pair of glasses.

We learnt, from another police-issued CCTV image, that while in the Bunnings car park, the stolen bronze-coloured ute was carrying a large, red fuel canister, four large water containers, six green Bunnings buckets (two upright with lids hiding unknowable, if any, contents, and another four stacked empty), plus two big rolls of what looked like plastic chicken wire.

Then, RNZ shed more light on the Kāwhia “altercation”. Locals were saying it had in fact been a car chase which started when someone recognised the stolen Hilux as it passed through Pirongia and gave chase.

Tom Phillips at Bunnings hiding behind glasses, a surgical mask and a beanie. Photo: NZ Police.

Newshub reported the same ute owner had discovered “a number of items of clothing” had disappeared from his home.

Police asked the public more questions. Did anyone remember seeing the ute? Have you seen this Honda 50cc motocross bike, or this 200cc black Suzuki Trojan, or this 200cc Honda XR or a Honda 2008 FourTrax quadbike? Are you one of the people who’ve been helping Tom?

But there was another important question hanging. A reporter asked it at the initial August 3 press conference.

Given the recent sightings of Phillips close to Marokopa: “Is it your understanding that he’s potentially been under your nose this entire time?”

Loughrin’s answer was, understandably, a variation on “that’s all part of the investigation”.

The Toyota Hilux that police said Phillips had stolen and taken to Bunnings. Photo: NZ Police.

The vanishings

Before the recent flurry of new clues, here’s what we knew about the strange disappearances of Tom Phillips, now 36, and his children.

When younger, Phillips worked as a fencer and spent several years in the South Island. He had three children with wife Catherine, but the couple have long since separated. The children are Jayda (who turned 10 last week), Maverick, 8 and Ember, 7.

After the separation Phillips became a full-time father and taught the children at home. He, too, had been home-schooled, apart from a stint at a private school in Hamilton.

In September 2021, the four were living in Ōtorohanga, 50km south of Hamilton. Then, a couple of days after they visited Phillips’ parents’ farm in coastal Marokopa (65km west of Ōtorohanga), they vanished, and Phillips’ Toyota Hilux was found below the tide-line at nearby Kiritehere beach.

A huge, expensive, search by police and locals was called off after 12 days, but five days later still, the family turned up back at the Marokopa family farm in good health. They had, evidently, been camping nearby.

Their older half-sister Jubilee Dawson (an adult daughter of Catherine) would later tell reporters that she and her sister Storm visited the three younger children at the Marokopa farm in late November 2021, taking them cupcakes and playdough.

Phillips was charged with wasting police resources, and was meant to appear in court in early 2022. But on December 9 the family vanished again. Phillips missed his January 12 court appearance and a warrant for his arrest was issued.

Since December 9 – some 612 days and counting – there’s been little news.

There was a report in March 2022, that the previous month Phillips had popped into the family farm alone, assured his parents the children were safe and well, and taken some supplies.

Inspector Will Loughrin in September 2021, days after the first disappearance of Phillips and his three children. Photo: Tom Lee/Stuff.

In May 2022, half-sister Jubilee Dawson launched a petition calling on authorities to do more, though Loughrin said police were actively on the case, and were staying in contact with Phillips’ family and the local community.

As recently as June, Dawson again spoke at length about her fears for her half-siblings, in an interview with 1News. That coverage included a plea from Phillips’ mother for him to come in from the cold, and quoted Loughrin as saying he believed the children were likely alive, and that the case “frequently occupied his mind”.

There has been an oddness at the heart of this case since the outset. Yes there’s an active investigation. Yes, Loughrin has said it’s frequently on his mind. Yes police are looking for Phillips and Jayda and Maverick and Ember. Yes, Loughrin will look down the barrel of a TV camera and say “Tom, we need you to come in and speak to us and resolve this […] The kids need to see their grandparents, their siblings, their mother – and we need to bring this to a close.”

Yet this messaging seems curiously relaxed, given that this is a father who is in breach of a family court order, who has a warrant out for his arrest and who, going by the past fortnight’s events, has also stolen a bronze-coloured ute and perhaps a white beanie, and damaged a farm gate.

Perhaps, as has been claimed, Phillips is a fine bushman. Perhaps he is being supplied and supported by other persons, as Loughrin believes. Perhaps there is adequate food and shelter and love in these children’s lives.

Yet there’s no getting away from the fact that these children are, to the best knowledge, are living outside the health system, outside the education system, outside their extended family networks and outside the sight of society.

Pākeha New Zealand has a deep, arguably bogus, nostalgia for the get-off-the-grid Kiwi bloke, whether it’s the self-constructed happy-go-lucky myth of Barry Crump or the darker version of Bruno Lawrence’s character in 1981’s Crash Palace (there’s a child in that story too, remember).

But you don’t have to follow every detail of a thrilling rural ute-chase, or read every interview with anxious family members, or watch every police press conference, or zoom in on that CCTV image of the bronze-coloured ute’s tray and try to guess what’s in the buckets, to know that something pretty troubling is going on here.

You have to presume, or maybe just hope, that Loughrin, with all his careful evasions of the tricky questions, knows a lot more than he’s revealing for now. You have to hope that the answer to that question he ducked, about whether Phillips was dangerous is “not very”.

You have to hope that the ending to this very long, and very strange, and very puzzling New Zealand story is a happy one.

-Adam Dudding/Stuff.