Chris Budge: Private Investigator on the Tom Phillips situation, the location of the recovered kids

A private investigator who previously tried tracking down Tom Phillips says the area where the fugitive’s campsite was found was where people expected. 

Phillips was killed in a shootout with police after a quad bike he was riding with one of his children was spiked by police on a rural Waitomo road yesterday morning. 

Following a large manhunt, the remaining two children were found at a campsite two kilometres away. 

Chris Budge told Ryan Bridge the area is rugged in parts, back country gravel roads, with little isolated farming communities. 

He says the area is quite hard to look through, which is why police weren’t able to locate them over the last few years. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tom Phillips is dead. The three kids are safe. The
a cop who was shot expected to survive. They were
found in the campground about two k's from the quad
bike shootout location. Bush was rough and rugged, and.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
I can tell you with great relief this evening that
soon after four point thirty today we've located Tom phillips
remaining children. They've been found in a campsite not far
from here, further up the Tioga Road. I can confirm
that the children are well and uninjured.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Chris Budge is a private investigator who was looking for
Tom Phillips with us this morning. Chris, good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Certainly an exciting but sad day.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
What did you make of the location?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
That's within the thought patent? Everybody thought this sort of
sort of halfway between the triangle of Oshong and Maricoppa
and the dairy where he's been seen more than once.
So it's certainly within the area. It'd be interesting thing
to see what comes out around camp site. You know,
it was it structured exactly what was there, and that

(01:07):
that's what the police were going through on their forensic examination.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
What sort of square kilometers area are we talking about
that we thought he was in well.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Overall, it's kind of thought it was round about a
sixty kilometer square area going all the way out to
calf here at the north and probably the dairy area
where we're seeing to the south, and that area there is.
It has some very rugged parts that country road gravel roads,
as we saw in the media last night. So certainly

(01:37):
there are isolated little communities and also buildings are certainly
plenty of farms. So it is an area that is
quite hard to look through, which is obviously why the
police were been able to locate the over the last
few years.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
What about the heat seeking thing, This idea that you
can get choppers up, you can get drones up and
they will give you thermal imaging and you should be
able to find them. Were they in a cave.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
No, no thermal imaging. Its actually quite easy to hide behind.
I do go out hunting and you could have an
animal or a person hiding behind a solid tree trunk
or under a level of a foliage and the thermals
will not come out. So it's not one hundred percent guarantee.
You would have to have them in a semi open

(02:20):
or under a light foliage to be able to be
able to spot them. So it's one method of investigation,
but it's not absolute.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Some people say that Tom Phillips is a hero, that
he has done you did the right thing, that there
was a custody dispute, et cetera. What do you say
to those people.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
I have looked at the social media over the last
twenty four hours and previously, but especially over the last
twenty four hours, and listen, I'm really surprised with the
negativity around people that people are saying things like I
hope the cop doesn't survive, the system is bad, people
are bullies. I find that absolutely disgusting. We have a

(03:02):
circumstances where I have set for quite from the very
start of a situation of a father who has abscondered,
have abducted his children away from the wider family group.
And it's not just the father's decision, it's more around
removing choice in socialization for those children and hiding away

(03:22):
from everybody. So I think those people are wrong and
taking a really big chill prill in regards to what
our news the Zealand society is all about. It's more
about being together, being with families and giving children the
best opportunity that.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
They could have Chris Budge, private investigator who was looking
for Tom Phillips.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
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