Tom Phillips and his children hid out in the bush around Marokopa for almost four years. Photo: Robin Martin
A Taupō man who spent almost 1000 hours looking for Tom Phillips is convinced he saw Phillips three times during his search.
The search for Phillips and his children ended this week with Phillips shot dead by police and the children found safe and well.
Police are now wrapping up Operation Curly, which focued on safely recovering the Phillips children. A new mission named Operation Cranmere will be focused on identifying anyone who has been helping Phillips evade police.
Leon Wood says Phillips has definitely been getting help. He started searching for Phillips as a personal project, and because he felt bad for the children.
"I just thought they needed to be out in reality."
Wood covered close to 20,000 km during his search, logging his movements as he went.
He told Checkpoint he saw Phillips on a gravel road north of Te Anga, about 10 kilometres west from where Phillips had his final confrontation with police.
"I came around the corner and this ute was coming and it was quite tight, so we had to go quite slowly past each other. And I looked at the driver and I thought 'oh yeah, that's his friend who came on TV at the beach', but this was only seconds I had, so I looked across at the passenger and I could see Tom Phillips' head, and I could not believe it.
"And then I'm looking again at the back seat and then there are three kids sitting in the back, and I just said to myself 'that's him and his kids'.
"So I went up the road and tried to turn around and I did, but then there was a transport coming up the road with a wide load, so I could not get down."
The second time he encountered Phillips was when he drove to another remote area, and found a local farmer had installed some new gates
"I could see that the farmer had put on these wooden gates these big security gates, strapped them on with plastic strapping, and I thought who the hell would put security gates on wooden gates on a farm entrance to a station. I thought this doesn't stack up.
"So I got my binoculars out and looked at this bach that was about 400m away and then he came out onto the deck of the bach which was facing north. I could see his bald head, he went back inside and came back out with binoculars."
He said there were children on the grass outside the bach and they were told to get inside.
"So he was still looking at me and I was looking and him and I thought 'I better turn my ute around, because I need an escape plan if something goes wrong'."
Wood said the man at the bach then came outside with a long item.
"I couldn't quite see it properly, but I could see the leather strap waving in the wind, and I thought 'ah, that's a rifle', so I just ran to my vehicle and disappeared."
The third encounter was when he was coming back from Te Anga and saw a man standing on the end of a deck at a local bach.
"He was standing there, and it was quite cool and he had a hat on, so I couldn't formally identify him, but when I drove by slowly, he'd gone down the deck to the other side and I turned around and he was looking at me.
"And I thought that's strange, so a week later I went back to that bach and knocked on the door and talked to the old guy there, but he could hardly walk, so it was definitely not him. So I thought he had called in there, and was just visiting."
Wood said he was 100 percent certain that it was Phillips he saw on each occasion.
"I saw it clearly with my eyes, and then with my binoculars which are quite powerful, and both times I saw him he had three kids.
"It was definitely him, and the way he reacted... No way he was coming down to the gate, I can tell you."
Wood did talk to police about the sightings.
"But he trouble is there was no phone coverage over there, and Tom Phillips knew my ute very, very well. So by the time you get out, which is possibly about three quarters of an hour to a phone coverage area, it's too late, he's gone."
Wood said he was left shaken by the second encounter.
"When he had that rifle, he didn't actually point it at me, I was shaking for nearly an hour afterwards. I was horrified, and that's when I knew if the police had a go at him, he would fire the first shot. And he did."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
