The four years since Phillips and his children first went missingpublished at 09:15 British Summer Time<\/p>\n
09:15 BST<\/p>\n
This is a case that has spanned nearly four years – here’s a look back at how the story has unfolded.<\/p>\n
11 September 2021 <\/p>\n
Tom Phillips went missing for the first time with his three
\nchildren from his parents\u2019 home in Marokopa. A huge search effort followed,
\ndaily, for three weeks.<\/p>\n
30 September 2021<\/p>\n
Phillips arrived back home with his three children, claiming that they went “camping”, but offered no explanation beyond that for the disappearance.<\/p>\n
He
\nwas then charged for wasting police resources. The search efforts for three
\nweeks cost the country hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
December 2021<\/p>\n
Phillips went missing again however this time round a search
\neffort was not launched by police.<\/p>\n
12 January 2022<\/p>\n
Phillips failed to appear in court so police issued a
\nwarrant for his arrest.<\/p>\n
9 February 2022<\/p>\n
Phillips returned to his family home alone at night to
\ncollect supplies. He was not seen again for more than a year.<\/p>\n
August \u2013 November 2023<\/p>\n
There were numerous sightings of Phillips and the children – at a hardware store, in an altercation, on quad bikes, and in multiple alleged
\nrobberies.<\/p>\n
June 2024<\/p>\n
Police issues an $80,000 (\u00a335,050) reward for any information that
\nwould lead to the location of Phillips and his three children. The reward
\nexpired and police did not have a breakthrough in the case.<\/p>\n
4 October 2024<\/p>\n
Phillips and his three children were spotted by pig hunters
\nwalking through farmland. Tom Phillips was seen carrying a rifle as the four of
\nthem hiked through Waikato farmland with large backpacks.<\/p>\n
27 August 2025<\/p>\n
CCTV showed what police believed were Phillips and one of
\nhis children, both masked, breaking into a shop in Piopo, Waitomo, in the middle of the
\nnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The four years since Phillips and his children first went missingpublished at 09:15 British Summer Time 09:15 BST…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-122596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}