Tom Phillips was an award-winning student at a private school, then a farm worker, parent and home educator. Neil Reid tracks his descent into armed fugitive life and losing it all in a police shoot-out on a deserted road.
Before he vanished into thick Waikato bush with his children, Tom Phillips was more than their father.
He was also their teacher: in charge of the homeschool education that Jayda, Maverick and Ember (now aged 12, 10 and 9) were receiving.
Home schooling was a family tradition. A Herald investigation has revealed that as a young boy, he too was home schooled at times by his parents Julia and Neville on the family’s sprawling Marokopa farm.
His early education at home was a world away from the more structured and formal schooling he received later as a boarding student at the prestigious and expensive Hamilton private school St Paul’s Collegiate.
Phillips learned the basics of mathematics and literacy in the family farmhouse.
His personal Marokopa schoolyard doubled as his backyard.
When he wasn’t being taught core subjects by his mum Julia, he was learning life skills on the family farm, assisting his dad Neville.
The Phillips farm – like others in the Waikato and King Country – has rough craggy hills with steep drops and deep isolated gullies with no cell phone coverage. In winter it’s swallowed up by fog and low cloud.
It’s land Phillips headed into the first time he vanished with his children – then aged 8, 6 and 5 – in September 2021: an abduction many now believe was a “dry run” for the second longer disappearance, which ended with his violent death.
When Phillips decided he wanted to home school his own children, he would have needed Ministry of Education (MoE) approval to have done so within the law.
“When you homeschool, you are fully responsible for your child’s learning and can set your own curriculum” the Ministry of Education says on its website.
If he was home schooling legally, Phillips would have had to apply to the Ministry for Certificate of Exemptions from school for Jayda, Maverick and Ember - and prove all of the children’s legal guardians agreed they should be home schooled.
The Ministry would have had to have been satisfied with his intended learning plans and what a normal study week would look like.
By home schooling three children, Phillips would have been eligible for an annual payment of $2030 from the Ministry.
The Phillips family loves its slice of paradise, hidden away near Waikato’s western coastline.
Their passion for the local flora and fauna is such that in 2021 Julia and Neville Phillips opposed construction of the Taumatatotara Wind Farm that will in January see turbines erected on some local farms - but not theirs.
According to the Waitomo District Council, the Phillips’ opposing submission raised issues regarding the turbines “spoiling the natural environment, traffic effects and lack of consultation”.
Neville Phillips runs the family farm, one of the biggest private land holdings in the Marokopa area. His brother Ben lives next door and Tom often worked with them - fencing was a specialty.
The family was known for a love of music.
Neville has performed in the Waitomo Caves Music Society’s choir, including delivering a solo performance of Rise Up, Shepherd and Follow at a Christmas performance to 600 people inside the Waitomo Caves in 2014.
He and Julia have also sung together in the Otorohanga Baptist church’s choir.
Before Tom worked on the farm, from an early age he learned hunting, survival, bushcraft.
There were family pig hunting trips with Neville as they grew up.
His outdoor skills were nurtured again in Year 10, when - while attending elite private school St Paul’s Collegiate - he was sent on an intensive 12-week outdoors and survival course in the central North Island.
The award-winning Tihoi Venture School is described by St Paul’s as “New Zealand’s most significant outdoors programme” and its activities include firearms and range shooting, kayaking, abseiling, rock climbing, tramping and mountaineering around the Pureora Forest on the western side of Lake Taupō.
Phillips was multi-talented: he also won a religious studies award from St Paul’s Collegiate.
Te Anga Rd farmer Clive Morgan – who lives about 300m from where Phillips was fatally shot – told the Herald he had known the Phillips family for most of his life, and described Neville as a “good man”.
Tom was a “born hunter and survivalist” he said.
In his early 20s Tom worked on a local farm owned by John Carter. Carter attended his 21st birthday and described him recently as a “good lad”.
“He was reliable, he worked hard, he was always there - he didn’t arrive to work drunk or anything like that - and he had good skills for a lad that age” he told the Herald.
“So, I’m quite sad about what’s happened, really.”
Later, Tom stole a quad bike, motor cross bike and other items from Carter while evading police.
Other locals told the Herald Tom was an accomplished deer stalker.
The positive comments from some locals about Phillips contrast starkly with Police Minister Mark Mitchell’s description of him as a “monster” who used his children as “human shields”.
Wellington-based Private Investigator Chris Budge, who started investigating the case in mid-2022, told the Herald he believes locals actively helped Phillips to evade police.
Based on interviews with several locals and the children’s mother Catherine Christey, he thinks people provided supplies, transportation, fuel for the quad bikes Phillips had stolen, and also potentially accommodation for the fugitive family at times.
When Phillips vanished for the second time in December 2021, he was in the middle of a custody battle with Christey, the mother of Jayda, Maverick and Ember.
He was also the stepfather of Christey’s two older daughters, Storm and Jubilee Dawson.
During the long search for Phillips and the children, Storm painted a picture of a vindictive man who was out to upset his former wife.
In various social media posts she described his actions as “selfish, extremely hurtful, heartbreaking and most importantly, delusional.
“No person in their right might would do this to their own children,” she wrote on January 20, 2023.
In an earlier post, she claimed: “When I was 15, I heard Tom say that if my mother left him he’d take the kids and she’d never see them again.
“I brushed it off because it seemed like an empty threat and I had faith in the system. Looking back, I don’t know why.”
It is understood Phillips and Christey split more than a year before Phillips first vanished with the children for about three weeks in September 2021.
Christey released a letter in June 2024 that revealed Phillips’ anguish that their relationship had ended.
In the letter, he described Christey as “the woman I have been in love with for over seven years”.
He asked for forgiveness for an unspecified reason and said he had had “suffered” every day.
He wrote their relationship had brought him “so much joy and I don’t feel complete without you.
“You have a beautiful personality and the happiest years of my life are because of you” he wrote.
“I hope you can remember the man you fell in love with and know that although I make multiple f*** ups I have a good heart and I mean well.”
Phillips added in the letter he knew he could make Christey happy again and said their “awesome family” was “worth fighting for”.
Christey released the letter on social media the day after making a plea for information leading to the return of Jayda, Maverick and Ember in a video released by New Zealand Police.
She never revealed when the letter had been written.
Family Court rules mean the Herald is unable to report some specifics of the case and custody battle between Phillips and Christey.
At the time of his death, Phillips was facing several court charges.
An arrest warrant was issued for him in January 2022 after he had failed to show up at court after being charged with wasting police resources following his September 2021 vanishing.
He was also facing charges of aggravated robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm after allegedly robbing a bank in Te Kūiti in May 2023, then firing a shot at a supermarket worker during his getaway.
He was also alleged to have committed multiple other break-ins and thefts from rural storms and farms near where he was hiding out.
Local supporters of the fugitive have told the Herald at various times he would have been able to evade detection solely by his own bush skills and instincts.
It’s an argument that doesn’t ring true for some other locals - and police, who have long insisted Phillips was being helped.
After the discovery last week of several bush-clad hideaways used by Phillips, Detective Inspector Andrew Saunders openly told media the focus would now be on trying to identify his helpers.
That would include linking items found in the bush to people who might have provided them to him, he said.
“We’ve got to identify, have they come from burglaries? Have people purchased them? Can we link them back to stores to see, has he stolen them or have people purchased them for him?” Saunders said.
“Given what’s occurred in terms of the attempted murder of a police officer, we think it is absolutely important that we continue to look for those people that have been supporting Tom Phillips and hold them accountable.”
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 33 years of newsroom experience. He has spent time in Marokopa during the lengthy police hunt for Tom Phillips and his children.
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