{"id":66381,"date":"2025-10-08T21:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/66381\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T21:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:40:09","slug":"tom-phillips-parents-write-letter-of-apology-say-they-never-supported-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/66381\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Phillips\u2019 parents write letter of apology, say they never supported him"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe would like to send our sincere apology to all those in the Waitomo\/Otorohanga districts, most especially those in the Marokopa\/Te Anga community for all the trouble, inconvenience, loss of privacy and property caused by Tom,\u201d the letter states. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe letter was published in the King Country News today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe in no way supported him or agreed with any of his actions in the past 4 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are truly sorry for all you had to endure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Phillips case divided the local Marokopa population, with some resenting what they felt were overbearing tactics by police during the long-running manhunt. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey were treating everyone as if they were f***ing guilty, eh. Looking at you like \u2018are you f***ing hiding him? Are you?\u2019\u201d one local whitebaiter, Sam, told the Herald last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the people out here are retirees; there\u2019s not many people out here. They\u2019re either farmers or retirees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe campsite where Tom Phillips\u2019 children were. Photo \/ NZ Police<\/p>\n

Local Warren Keegan was also scathing of authorities, but said his anger had \u201cnothing to do with not finding\u201d the family.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur community is not very happy with the police anyway. I\u2019ll tell you that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just the way we\u2019ve been treated down here. They harassed the s*** out of us while they were looking for him. And when they closed the road we had no notification. I\u2019m very disappointed with police, straight up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just drove up and down the road, they never bothered to get out and take a look. They were parking up at your house and they wouldn\u2019t come and speak to you or anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe would like to send our sincere apology to all those in the Waitomo\/Otorohanga districts, most especially those…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[53633,1259,20300,305,16718,40571,440,13631,111,43,21031,139,69,1118,3766,31705,10936,5659,53634,16085,165,8229,5134,53632],"class_list":["post-66381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-apology","tag-community","tag-extending","tag-have","tag-him","tag-letter","tag-local","tag-never","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newspaper","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-parents","tag-penned","tag-phillips","tag-say","tag-sincere","tag-supported","tag-their","tag-they","tag-tom","tag-write"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}