A woman drove a stranded man later confirmed as Tom Phillips to his broken-down car where his children were waiting in 2023, but the tip went unactioned for more than a week after the responding unit was diverted and the job cancelled, a public inquiry has found.
Police Commissioner Richard Chambers acknowledged this as a "significant missed opportunity" to locate the children and that cancelling the job outright was the "wrong decision".
Read more: Marokopa inquiry released: Whānau warnings 'brushed aside' by agencies
The report into the disappearance of the Phillips children, tabled to the Governor-General in July and released today, detailed a May 28, 2023 sighting from a Te Anga Road resident given the pseudonym Rhonda.
Rhonda called the police's 105 line after a man turned up her door near Marokopa asking for a jump-start. She described him as Caucasian, in his late 30s to early 40s, with black hair, a beard, and a skinny build, adding he "smelled strongly and like someone who had not had a shower in a very long time".
Revealed: The ‘missed opportunity’ to locate Marokopa fugitive Tom Phillips - Watch on TVNZ+
She and her mother-in-law drove him to his car, a dark-coloured Nissan, which had been bogged down on a forestry road. Rhonda told police she saw a girl standing beside it and other children inside.
Police sent a unit at 2.27pm, about half an hour after the call, but it was pulled away to a family harm job nearby. By 3.30pm the report had been closed with the code "K1" - meaning no further action.
"Police have not been able to explain to the Inquiry why it was 'K1'd,' without any follow up," the report said.
The inquiry accepted the initial diversion was reasonable, but found the case should not have been closed off entirely once the unit became free.
A senior constable did attempt to escalate it, emailing a police search and rescue officer who had worked the original search for the family, writing: "It doesn't say why it was K1, but could be worth a look."
However, that officer was on leave with an out-of-office reply on and did not read the email until he returned to work on June 6 - nine days after Rhonda's call.
Once he did, he alerted a detective from Operation Curly, the police team hunting the family, and Rhonda gave a fuller statement.
She said the man had seemed evasive, kept his face partly covered, had mud under his fingernails, and claimed to be travelling from New Plymouth to Hamilton. He never once mentioned the children in his car, she said.
Her mother-in-law backed up the account, describing two girls in black puffer jackets that looked "quite new" and movement she believed to be another child.
Attempts to trace the number plate went nowhere, until September 2023, when news broke of a warrant for Phillips over the armed robbery of a Te Kūiti bank.
Rhonda recognised the black jeans and work boots and rang police.
The abandoned car was eventually found nearly two years on, pushed down a bank close to two of the family's now-known camp sites. Police confirmed it had been stolen from Te Kūiti the day before Rhonda saw it.
The inquiry rejected police explanations that the tip was one of many, saying only a handful of sightings had come in over the previous four months.
"The Inquiry finds that had some or all of these actions been undertaken the children could well have been found sooner," the report said.
'Missed opportunity' - Police Commissioner
Speaking in Wellington, Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said the diversion to the family harm job was justified but the case should never have been dropped entirely once officers were free again.
"What occurred there was my staff were heading to deal with that in a timely way. They were diverted to deal with a family harm matter, and that is fair," he said.
"But what didn't occur was the timely follow-up with another unit or the investigation team, and that's the missed opportunity."
Acting on the tip sooner could have changed the course of the search, he said.
"Had we been able to deal with that in the timely way that we should have, we may have been able to locate the children at that time, or at least we could have connected that information to the aggravated robbery of the Te Kūiti bank.
"That would have allowed us to have used provisions of the Search and Surveillance Act sooner, so we accept that that was an opportunity."
Phillips was fatally shot by police on September 8, 2025, ending a search that had stretched almost four years. His three children were recovered alive that day.
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