By Sam Sherwood of RNZ
It was the investigation that gripped the nation. A father and his three children evading authorities for four years. National Crime Correspondent Sam Sherwood takes a look inside Operation Curly.
It was about 4.30pm on Monday when Detective Senior Sergeant Andy Saunders received the text message.
He was with Deputy Commissioner Jill Rogers at a police cordon, awaiting updates as his colleagues searched through dense bush for Tom Phillips’ remaining children.
Police had been told there were guns at the campsite, and Saunders admits the wait was “nerve-racking”.
“You still don’t know how it’s going to end,” he says.
“Our biggest concern was we never wanted a child hurt.”
Then came a three-word text.
“We’ve got them.”
The Phillips children were alive, they were safe, and soon their 1358 days in the bush would be over.
For Saunders, it saw the end of more than two years dedicated to finding the family.
In an interview with RNZ, he spoke about the obstacles faced by the investigation, named Operation Curly, and the toll it took.
“I can tell you this case invaded my dreams.”
On December 20, 2021, Tom Phillips and his three children, Ember, then 5, Maverick, 7, and Jayda, 8, went missing for a second time. As was the case with their first disappearance three months earlier, the investigation was initially handled by Western Waikato area staff before eventually being transferred to the Western Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB).
A review determined that more resources were needed, and the focus of the investigation changed.
In May 2023, the major crime team was put on Operation Curly. The district commander briefed Saunders on the case and told him he would be handling it.
“I guess the arrogance of a detective comes through,” he recalls.
“I said, ‘That’s all right, we’ll have them in a month.’ And then I quickly realised when I looked at it more closely that this was going to be a long-term inquiry.”
The team began by searching the file for any gaps.
The core investigation team consisted of about six officers. They also had access to the Armed Offenders Squad and the Special Tactics Group for various searches.
Inside the headquarters were photos of the missing children.
“We had our mission on the wall,” Saunders says.
“That was something we were always conscious of. A lot of the time, people talked about Tom - ‘Have you found Tom?’ - our focus was actually always finding the children, getting them out safely.”
The team faced significant obstacles, including the environment.
“We weren’t sure if they were still in that area. Had they left the wider Marokopa area? There were reports all over New Zealand, and every piece of information coming in had to be assessed, and some type of investigation occurred.”
Saunders says the team was concerned about how the children were coping and about the conditions in which they were living.
“You’ve got three young children, which is the biggest thing. It’s not like Tom went off on his own. He took three young children with him, and how are they surviving?”
Then, in September 2023, police obtained a warrant to arrest Phillips after an armed robbery of a bank in Te Kūiti in May, in which a shot was fired.
“It ramped up the risk, and our profile of Tom, around what lengths would be taken to protect that lifestyle he had created, and that’s what I sort of kept talking about ... because a lot of the public obviously ask why don’t you just send in hundreds of people walking through the bush. That would have ended, quite frankly, in people being killed.”
Two months later, there was an attempted burglary of the Piopio Superette. Again, police could see Phillips and one of his children, leaving detectives wondering what had happened to the other two.
“That’s always in the back of their head. Look, we’ve never seen the other two children.
“Our concern was we didn’t even know if they were still alive ... there could have been an accident, anything could have happened.”
Then, on October 3 last year, some pig hunters north of Awamarino filmed a man followed by three children in wet-weather gear carrying camouflaged backpacks. The group were seen trekking through rough, overgrown terrain before disappearing behind a hill.
Saunders said the footage was the “biggest game-changer” for the investigation.
“The first thing that confirmed for us was they’re all still alive ... and the locality there really indicated to us that, yes, they may have left the area for periods of time to commit offences, but they’ve always gone back there. So Marokopa, that area was still safe for them.”
Staff were put in to try to track the family, but they were unable to find them.
Saunders says the case “invaded my dreams”.
“We’re constantly reviewing our thinking. Are we in the right place? Are we on the right track? Do we need to change our focus? Are our techniques adequate? Do we need more support?
“We’re always as a team discussing what’s working, what’s not. We had some highs and lows. There’s times we’ve considered ourselves very close, and then it didn’t pan out.”
The next significant update was last month, on August 27, when police obtained CCTV footage they believed showed Phillips and one of his children attempting to break into the Piopio Superette for a second time. The owner of the store said the only thing that was taken was milk, after a padlock was broken on an outdoor chiller.
Saunders said the incident created more questions than answers.
“What does it mean? Because we’ve always said we believe he’s getting supplies, and we do, we still believe he was, and so why go out that brazen and go back to that place, commit a burglary …
“So, is that a case of things have changed with his support? We don’t know, or is it just, ‘I can do what I want’?”
In the early hours of Monday morning, Saunders was woken with a significant update.
There had been a burglary in Piopio, a vehicle had been spiked and shots had been fired. An officer had been shot, and so had Phillips. The child with him had been taken into custody.
Saunders immediately made his way to the police station.
“Obviously, there’s shock, but not surprised,” he says of his reaction.
“We always knew this was a potential outcome.”
Once he arrived at the police station, he was given a full briefing. An incident management team had been set up to work through what needed to be done. The focus now was on finding the remaining children.
He said there was a sense of relief, as police would now be able to work with the child to find out where the others were and get them out safely.
“But it’s still nerve-racking in that period, because you still don’t know how it’s going to end.
“We have specialist groups to deal with that. And so that’s really where they do the sort of heavy lifting. That’s not for me to then tell them how to do their job.
“So we sort of say, here’s where they are, and then they plan carefully, consider their options, how they bring that to a safe end.”
It was about 4.30pm when Saunders received the text to say the children had been found.
“It was just that sheer relief when they had them out, because we thought, yup, it’s over. That pretty much was the end of [Operation] Curly. We achieved our aim.”
Yesterday, police released a series of photos of the main campsite where they believe Phillips and his children had been living for several months.
A tent could be seen beneath a tarpaulin and netting that had been erected over a small dug-out area of bush on the side of a slope. The tarpaulin was held up by bush timber and secured by what appears to be flax. More bush timber was used at the base of the tent to secure it.
Police said sleeping bags were also found at the camp.
Rubbish was strewn around the site, with multiple empty drink containers, including plastic bottles of Mammoth iced coffee and chocolate milk. Large buckets with lids were placed around the edges of the site.
Beneath the tarpaulin, conditions appeared to be dry. A small bench space had been created from a large plastic waterproof case, and was covered in more empty drink bottles, a metal mug and a Jack Daniels and cola box, although it was unclear whether the box contained any alcohol.
Another rotting box of Gordon’s premixed gin and tonic could also be seen, along with a 9kg LPG bottle and a small single-element camp stove.
Saunders says the site was in a “very grim, dimly lit area, surrounded by dense bush”.
Asked how he looks back at Operation Curly, he says it was a “massive challenge”.
He is “really proud” of the team that worked for four years to find the children.
“It’s a huge relief.
“There’s been highs and lows, but I’m very proud of their work, also other work groups within police that have supported Operation Curly.”
Police always suspected Phillips was receiving help, and the investigation will continue to look for those supporting him to hold them accountable.
As for himself, there is still some “tidy-up work” to do, after which he hopes to take some time off.
He was always confident that Operation Curly was going to come to an end.
“There’s no doubt we were trying to operate in his environment where he was very comfortable, so he had the upper hand there.
“But as one of the investigation team said, he’s got to get lucky every time. We only have to get lucky once, which is true ...
“So a lot of people might have thought he’s very clever. I don’t really consider him clever. I really just thought he’s motivated, absolutely motivated, to keep that lifestyle going that he’s created, but eventually, at some point, it was always going to end for him.”
- RNZ