‘We’re not helping them’: Inside the town of New Zealand’s fugitive father

Marokopa, New Zealand: Neville Phillips, dressed in his Sunday best, isn’t happy to have journalists on his doorstep.

He’s too polite to ask us to leave, but you can tell from his body language we’re not welcome.

A steady stream of reporters have made their way to his door over the past three years, since his son, Tom, disappeared into the New Zealand bush with his three school-aged children – Jayda, Maverick and Ember.

Jayda, Maverick and Ember Phillips have been missing since being taken by their father, Tom Phillips, in December 2021.Credit: New Zealand Police

Interest in the story has gone global after teenage pig hunters filmed Phillips and the kids walking across steep farmland north of Marokopa in October – the first sighting of the family together since December 2021. Police have conducted several searches and made repeated appeals to find the family since then without success.

Tom Phillips.Credit: New Zealand Police

If Neville Phillips was like some of the more rough and ready people who call this corner of Waikato home, he’d drop a few f-bombs and chase us off.

Instead, he picks up a garden hose and starts watering his strawberries.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like being a parent with what’s coming out in the media and very little of it is the truth?” he asks.

Cryptically, he adds: “And if we were to tell you the truth, it’s putting somebody else down.

“We can’t afford to be the people saying something about somebody.

“There’s two sides to the story, and only one is coming out.”

Wouldn’t he like to see it brought to a conclusion?

“There’s one conclusion – just leave [Tom] alone, walk away.”

Neville’s wife, Julia, says she’d like to see Tom and the kids come home, but she was reassured that they appeared well in the pig hunters’ video.

She says people “guess” that she and Neville are helping Tom and their grandkids, but it’s not true.

“Do people think we’d put up with the police, the media, the lawyers and Oranga Tamariki [New Zealand’s Ministry for Children] if we knew where he was?

“You think we’d put up with all this hassle if we knew? So we don’t. And we’re not helping.”

Neville says: “Let them guess.

“The whole thing’s a rort right from the beginning, so we’ve just got to stop it somehow.

“A lot of stuff has been made up. The media ... and the police have allowed it to carry on.

Despite several sightings since going on the run, Tom Phillips has evaded police for almost three years.Credit: New Zealand Police

“Not only are the police liars, so are the media. Twisting the truth is not good.”

He’s also critical of reporting on matters that are before the Family Court. “That’s wrong.”

Attempts to speak to Tom’s brother, Ben, who lives a couple of kilometres away, are unsuccessful.

We’re driving along Marokopa Rd when a ute briefly crosses the centre line towards us, the driver yelling obscenities and telling us to “p--- off”, angry we’ve been filming the farm.

In the main street of Otorohanga, where Phillips and the children were living before they disappeared for the first time in late 2021, we approach a man who sources say is one of Phillips’ best mates.

Stuff.co.nz understands it was his ute that police allege Phillips took on a shopping expedition to Hamilton in August last year, visiting Bunnings wearing a disguise.

Last year when I knocked on this man’s door, he and a friend later forced me off the road in their vehicles and threatened me, furious I’d been going around asking questions.

He’s no more forthcoming today. “F--- off, c---,” he says, before jumping in his ute and roaring away.

We get a better reception at a property not far from where Phillips took the ute.

Large painted signs say “free to be me” and “I do not submit”, while a giant spider hangs from a tree near the gate.

The occupant, Rachael Membery, explains that her nickname is the Black Widow.

Rachael Membery, who lives near Otorohanga, says Phillips is giving his kids a good education.Credit: Stuff.co.nz

“It’s men being stupid. You come to town [Otorohanga] and they look at you like you’re fresh meat if you’re newly divorced or whatever. You might as well take [the name] and own it.”

Membery has degrees in law and philosophy, and describes herself as right-leaning politically and a “social justice warrior”.

As the signs on her property attest, she was fiercely opposed to the previous government’s vaccine mandates.

Perhaps not surprisingly, she sees Phillips as a fellow victim of state persecution.

“Of course, people should root for the underdog because one day, any of us could be that underdog, any of us could be persecuted by the state.”

She says an “awful lot of people” have sympathy for Phillips.

”I think he’s a father that loves his children. I’m sure he believes he’s doing it for them.”

Phillips is wanted by police on charges including aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding and unlawful possession of a gun, among other alleged crimes, but Membery says those are just allegations.

If Phillips and the children were to show up at her place, she’d “probably” help them and she “probably” would not call police, Membery says.

A youth rides a horse through the quiet streets of Marokopa.Credit: Stuff.co.nz

Overall, she questions what Phillips has done wrong.

“There’s lots of people who bring their children up alternatively, education-wise.

“I don’t know that what the children are being taught in schools these days is necessarily beneficial to them ... certainly not more beneficial than learning self-survival in the bush.”

In Te Kuiti, a 15-minute drive further south, people are still talking about a dramatic bank robbery of an ANZ bank in May last year, when two offenders escaped with bundles of cash and shot at a neighbouring supermarket worker.

A witness said one of the offenders was a girl, and both she and the man had guns.

Police accuse Phillips of robbing the bank and they have a warrant for his arrest.

But plenty of locals reckon it wasn’t him. One business owner is adamant Phillips wasn’t involved. Asked how she knows, she says, “I just know”.

Sue Hilton agrees. “Locals reckon they know who did it, and they were young people. Where’s the proof that [Phillips] did it?”

Hilton, a vaccine sceptic who used to run a cafe in Te Kuiti until the government vaccine mandates were introduced, says people need to stop “judging” Phillips and “leave him alone”.

“They’re his kids. He knows what he’s doing – he’s a good parent. He’s teaching the kids some really great life skills.”

She has a solution for ending the saga. “The police need to offer him immunity [from prosecution], and then maybe he’ll bring the kids out.

“I see so much judgment and it’s not right. As far as the kids not going to school – so what?

“The life skills they’re learning at the moment are just as important. We’re living out in the country, so kids out here learn different stuff than they do in the city.”

Ross Dempsey, another Te Kuiti local, doesn’t agree with what Phillips is doing, but he says he can understand it.

“I’ve actually been a solo father myself, and I know how men are treated in the court system,” he says. “I do understand why he’s done a runner, but I don’t agree with keeping the kids out of school.”

Dempsey also doubts Phillips was behind the ANZ robbery.

“I think the police are using that as a decoy for the public to try and rein him in.

“I respect the police are trying to do their job, but I think they’ve got a little bit of egg on their faces.

“He’s been on the run for quite a while now and he’ll continue to be on the run as long as the public and people of Marokopa are supporting him.”

Anaru Moerua believes Tom Phillips needs to bring the kids home.Credit: Stuff.co.nz

We come across a figure dressed in red walking on the highway north of Te Kuiti.

Anaru Moerua, an unemployed shearer, is walking to town because he’s got a flat tyre.

Moerua doesn’t share the view that Phillips should be left alone. On the contrary, the kids’ll be traumatised by the experience, he believes. “It’s so wrong.”

Others we spoke to shared this view, but generally, support for Phillips remains strong.

Dickie Green is sunbathing on the verandah of his house near Waitomo Caves.

Green saw the video of the Phillips family and reckons they look fine.

“They seemed pretty happy, eh? They had food.”

Green says it’s a peaceful place to live until there’s a sighting and dozens of police cars descend.

Dickie Green says he’d help Tom Phillips if he showed up at his place.Credit: Stuff.co.nz

“The kids will probably be loving it out there, eh? Doing what they wanna do, shooting guns, why not?

“It’s better than going to school, eh brother, learning how to live and how to supply your own food and that.

“I try to live off the food I catch, saves going to the shop where it’s all been processed, eh.”

If Phillips and the kids came to his place, would he help them?

“Bloody oath I would – give him a hand, give him some food if he needed it, a blanket.

“Why call the cops on him if his kids are happy – there’s no need to.”

Stuff.co.nz