For the past three years 1News reporter Simon Mercep has made regular trips to Marokopa to report on the fugitive Tom Phillips and his three kidnapped children. This week, following the tragic confrontation that saw a police officer shot and critically injured, Phillips fatally shot, and the subsequent rescue of the Phillips children, Mercep was again immersed in this small, troubled community. On his last night in the region he talked to Emily Simpson about his experience of covering this story and why it’s one he won’t forget.
You’ve spent most of this week in Marokopa. Are you finding that the locals are very divided?
Well, I've been visiting the district to report on this story for two or three years now and there’s always been a division of opinion. Over time, I think the voices of those concerned about the welfare of the children grew stronger. More people said: ‘Look, we're concerned about, not just their physical welfare, their medical care, but also about what all this time out of society will mean for their social development.’
However, right from the start, and even in recent weeks, I've found people who’ve taken a different view. People who’ve said: ‘This is really about a custody dispute. He is the father. They are his children.’ Before this week, some were saying: ‘He's not harming them. He's giving them this amazing experience in outdoor life and bush skills. It's the sort of thing they'd never get anywhere else, and we should all just let him get on with it.’
Even two weeks ago, when I was in the district reporting on Phillips’ alleged burglary of the Piopio superette, I was hearing people tell me that.
I think crucial to that is the custody issue which can’t be reported on, but clearly some of the locals close to the family chose to support Tom Phillips, and many of them maintained that position right up until the end of his life.
Also, Tom Phillips’ family has been in this in this small, rural community for generations. They're well known and established, and there’s a sense of loyalty to them.
Have you met his family?
No. Right from the outset, the Phillips family has always tried to avoid the media. I have, on three occasions, gone up to the parents’ house and called out and knocked on the door and no one's ever come out to speak to me. I once was able to approach his brother, but he didn't say anything other than ‘Get off my property’. They're a farming family used to living and working in their own little community, and dealing with the media probably wasn't a very welcome thing for them.
The children’s mother, Cat, and her older daughters (the half-sisters of Tom Phillips’ children) have generally been very wary of media, too – although the eldest did give an interview and the mother put out a video in 2023 where she appealed for the children to be returned.
I think their desire for privacy is completely understandable – it is a story about family and there’s a custody battle at its centre, which nobody wants to air publicly.
Have you learned anything from locals about Tom Phillips as a person, prior to the past four years?
When he went missing the first time (for three weeks in September 2021, before his final disappearance in December that year) there were land search and rescue operations, a lot of people got involved and we were told that Tom was really expert in the bush, had good survival skills, and would handle himself really, really well. And I was told by a few that he had homeschooled the children before, and would be quite adept at looking after them.
Early on the police said that they understood he was a man who didn't want to live in the mainstream, that he was quite happy to be off the grid. He didn't want to associate with things like, you know, banks, and maybe he was distrustful of authority.
So there's been just a few little snippets and insights into the bloke he was.
How do you think this family survived in the bush for four years?
Police have long believed that he wasn't acting alone, that there were members of the community who were helping him, we don't know how many. And while we have seen these photographs of two campsites and some of the equipment there – a sleeping area, a gas bottle, a cooker and storage containers – one farmer pointed out that there would be many unused farmers’ buildings available around the district where he could have found a roof to sleep under. And maybe one of his supporters was also providing him with proper accommodation from time to time.
A few locals have suggested to me that Tom Phillips’ first disappearance with the kids was a bit of a trial run, see how it would go, see what sort of equipment he'd need.
Regarding food, clothing, where they slept – that information could only now come from his supporters, who are unlikely to surrender themselves to police; even when they were offered an $80,000 reward last year, they didn't take up that opportunity, so they've been incredibly staunch and loyal.
Is the children’s mother from the same region?
I think she's from a bit further afield, but she's certainly someone who's known in the district. We know in more recent times, she has done farm work in the district and I've heard some people speak very well of her.
You’ve covered this story for three years, which parts of it do you think will stay in your thoughts?
One huge question that has driven this whole story, and created interest around the world, has been: How can a man take three young children into hiding for nearly four years? Why can't the police find him? Why can't they send in the army, the SAS, their specialist trackers, and find this guy? That was what people were asking when you met them. They were asking it on social media.
Police made it clear that this was a case of a man who was determined, armed, untrusting of authority, had committed criminal offences, and felt driven into a corner by the fear of losing his children. And police said the idea of flooding the area with people, and then coming across him, just raised the prospect of a confrontation, possibly a violent confrontation, where they could not be sure they could control the outcome. So they were, particularly in more recent times, more openly talking about the idea of negotiation.
It's been a very rare story, where you've had a combination of an appeal from the police, saying: ‘Help us find these people. Help us find these children. We're worried about them.’ But the background to it is private, tied up in the family court.
You hear a lot of things that you can't report. And you hear contrasting things, so you have to be very careful. There’s a lot that we may never be able to report.
I think, for most of the journalists who covered this story, because we were dealing with three young children and we weren't sure what was happening to them, it really spurred our determination to keep finding ways to report on it. It's a tragedy that the situation ended with the death of their father.Throughout this saga there's been overwhelming concern throughout the community and the country for the children. Not only for their physical accommodation, but their medical care: what happens if they get sick? We heard one of them had asthma – how were they getting their medication? There was also concern about their social development and whether they were getting the opportunity to socialise with other children and what sort of world view they were being exposed to in the company of just their father and his strong views of mainstream society.
I've done a couple of interviews with a child psychologist Dr Sarah Watson and she's explained that, through all this time, the children's father was their world – physically and intellectually. And now he is suddenly not there, which would have to be a wrench, however much care they are getting now. Their challenges are not over – a new phase is before them as they deal with reintegration into community life.
TVNZ has decided not to name or show images of the children going forward. They’re in the care of Oranga Tamariki now and there are things we can’t report for the sake of their welfare – and that’s what is at the centre of this story, bringing those kids back to a place of safety and allowing them to get on with their lives.
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