The early hours of Monday morning and the sound of gunfire rends the air.

A policeman, hit in the head by a bullet, scrambles to find cover as colleagues rush to his aid. A second man lies lifeless on the ground.

With that bloody shoot-out on a dark, rural road in New Zealand, it appeared the final chapter in a mystery that has captivated a nation and beyond had been written.

Tom Phillips, on the run from police with his three young children for almost four years, had at last been found.

His eldest daughter, Jayda, was with him when he died, their quad-bike having been forced off the highway as they fled from the scene of a botched burglary.

In the hours that followed the 12-year-old would help guide police to the remote camp where her two siblings, Maverick, ten, and Ember, nine, had been holed up.

The trio were then taken into care. As of last night there was no indication that they had yet been reunited with their mother, Cat.

Precisely why that is, is unclear.

But yesterday it emerged that on the same day her estranged husband was shot dead, 46-year-old Cat appeared in court accused of drink driving.

Appearing under the name Catherine Christey, it was reported that she faced a charge of driving with a blood alcohol level of 174mg after being stopped by police on August 2.

In New Zealand, the legal limit for drivers aged 20 and over is 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. The case was adjourned until next month.

When asked for comment on the charge, and having to appear in court on the day her children were found, a relative of Cat's said: 'We have asked for privacy'.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that Phillips had been armed and taken one of his children with him to carry out a number of raids on local stores, there are still those who continue to regard the 38-year-old as some sort of folk hero.

Online, commentators portray him as the 'victim' of a custody battle who just wanted to bring up his children in the best way possible.

Despite him gunning down an officer, they accuse police of being 'trigger happy' and of seeking Phillips's death.

Unsurprisingly, this portrayal has infuriated the authorities in New Zealand who have suggested that the full story about his life on the run with his children has yet to be told. 

The reality is that while the mystery of the runaway dad has reached a tragic denouement, the task of unravelling the full story is only just beginning.

A number of troubling questions remain unanswered about the case.

As many suspected, far from surviving off the land, Phillips had clearly been receiving help from others, though it remains for the police to establish whom.

Items found on the quad bike and at two of their campsites revealed a surprising array of provisions.

Alongside a number of guns were cans of Sprite, a 24-pack of Jack Daniels pre-mixed whiskey and cola, and bottles of iced coffee and chocolate milk.

Then within hours of Phillips's death, lawyers acting for his mother, Julia, went to the High Court in Wellington to seek an urgent injunction.

It sought to prevent media, police and Oranga Tamariki – the name of the New Zealand Ministry for Children - from publishing certain details relating to the investigation into Phillips and his family.

An interim order was granted for 48 hours, with the matter called back to the High Court on Thursday when media organisations were amongst those able to make further representations to the court. 

But at the end of the hearing, the injunction was extended for a further week, preventing publication of the matters in question.

Of course, as is so often the way in today's world, while the so-called traditional 'mainstream' media has abided by the court's orders, online it has only served to further fuel speculation.

Lance Burdett, a former senior New Zealand policeman, last night warned Phillips's supporters that they will come to regret their stance as a fuller picture of his four years on the run emerges.

'There will be other aspects that will come out and they will have egg on their faces,' Mr Burdett, a hugely experienced detective inspector who has followed the case since its outset and spent time talking to the Phillips family, told the Daily Mail.

'It's really important that everybody stops and thinks, but of course you are going to have people that will not do that.

'The fact that Tom was able to evade the police for so long attracts some people, and when I look at their profiles online I see they are already very much against the police. 

'They will not change their opinion no matter what. But you can't hold things back forever. There will be other people who get charged over this. 

'The children will be protected but the facts of what went on may not be.'

The authorities, too, have been left desperately trying to counter some of the narratives spread about Phillips and his parenting.

Soon after the incident, New Zealand's Police Minister Mark Mitchell spoke of the children's experience.

'They have seen and been exposed to things that children in our country should not be,' he said. 'It's very complicated and it's very complex and it has been for quite some time.'

On Thursday, he went further, labelling Phillips a 'monster' for the suffering he had inflicted on his children, and the danger he had put them in, adding that he was neither a 'hero', nor a 'good father'.

Throughout his years on the run, Phillips's supporters not only portrayed him as some sort of martyr, but also spread wild rumours about the fitness of the children's mother, Cat, to look after them.

While they were missing, she made a number of emotional appeals calling for them to be returned. 

And on the day they were found, she issued a statement speaking of her relief that her children's ordeal 'has come to an end'.

She added: 'They have been dearly missed every day for nearly four years, and we are looking forward to welcoming them home with love and care.'

But, as we know, there has been no swift reunion.

Earlier in the week, Mr Mitchell was quizzed by Radio New Zealand as to why there had been a delay reuniting Cat with her children.

'I totally get where you're coming from with the questions around the mother and siblings and everything at us screams… why are they not reunited?' he said. 

'Why they're not together? There are good reasons for that. They are complex.'

Whether those reasons include her drink driving charge is yet to be established, but Mr Mitchell added: 'All that I can say is that the people that are with them are making sure that the kids are first and foremost in the front of the mind, in terms of how they're being looked after right now, and also bearing in mind too that we are being instructed by the courts on this matter as well.'

And he added: 'They are on a long journey themselves now, in terms of recovery, this is going to have enormous impact on them.'

While the child-centred approach of the authorities is understandable, Cat has claimed that her interests and concerns have been overlooked from the beginning of this sorry saga.

By coincidence, last Thursday marked exactly four years since Phillips vanished for the first time along with his offspring.

Back then his 4x4 truck was found abandoned on the shoreline not far from the family farm at Marokopa. 

The vehicle was facing the sea, with waves lapping at the bonnet. Empty child seats were in the back.

By then Phillips had already been separated from Cat for several years. The split had prompted a battle over Jayda, then eight, Maverick, seven, and Ember, five.

Full details of the couple's domestic arrangements have never been revealed because in New Zealand it is prohibited to report on family court proceedings.

At the time of his disappearance, he, or his parents, Julia and Neville, had custody of the children, whom he was home-schooling.

But it seems that was about to change, with Cat, it's understood, set to be given increased access.

Unsurprisingly, Phillips's carefully stage-managed disappearance had the desired effect. Police were alerted and a huge land and sea search followed. Family members were distraught and spoke of their worst fears.

But after 19 days, Phillips and the children walked through the front door of his parents' farm. All were safe and well.

Little explanation was given for his actions, other than for his family to claim that he had spent the time trying to 'clear his head' while camping in dense bushland ten miles from where his vehicle was found.

But Cat was having none of it. She told police that his aim had been to hurt her and that the children were just 'pawns' in his game.

'Why did he have to take the kids to clear his head?' she would later observe. 'He deliberately planted that vehicle on the beach to make it look a certain way. That was intentional... he's trying to teach me a lesson.'

Police now accept the first disappearance was a 'trial run' for what Phillips was planning to do later.

Amidst a public outcry over the cost of the search, Phillips was charged with wasting police time and resources.

But in December 2021, a month before he was due in court, he left the family farm with his children for a second time. 

It wasn't until he missed his hearing that police issued an arrest warrant.

Given his first disappearance, Cat has expressed amazement that more was not done to prevent him absconding again.

But she has claimed that from start to finish, she was repeatedly sidelined by the authorities.

'Regardless of what I have been saying, every step of the way nobody listened to me, I was just ignored, time and time again, minimised, gaslit and yet, look where we are,' she said. 'I have friends and family, but the support I've had through the system has basically been non-existent.'

And she added: 'If the system had listened to me in the beginning instead of judging me based on the words of somebody who essentially has been dumped, we wouldn't be in this situation.'

Cat has also been supported throughout by her two grown-up daughters, Storm and Jubilee, who are from a previous relationship.

In the months after their half-siblings disappeared, they launched a petition demanding more be done to find the missing children.

Storm alleged Phillips once lost his gun licence for threatening violence.

In a post on the Facebook page about the missing children, she also recalled hearing him threaten her mother.

'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,' she wrote. '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.'

In due course Cat did leave the marriage.

Of course, there are always two sides to any marital breakdown.

But in 2024 Cat shone a light on their relationship, posting an undated letter she claimed Phillips had once sent to her to show that 'all is not as it seems'.

In it, Phillips begged for forgiveness and for Cat to take him back, apologising 'for everything I have ever said or done to hurt you'.

The letter began: 'I don't know what to say or do to help you forgive me... You have a beautiful personality and the happiest years of my life are because of you...

'I don't feel complete without you. I hope you can remember the man you fell in love with and know that I make multiple f*** ups [but] I have a good heart and I mean well.'

In an interview she also spoke about Phillips's behaviour while on the run, criticising him for taking one of their daughters with him during an armed burglary on a shop.

'I think it speaks volumes to his frame of mind and to the person he actually is truly because who does that sort of thing?' she said. 'Is it to share the blame? Is it to manipulate her?

'Unless you have been with someone like Thomas you can never truly understand how they work. Things were really good, we got on really well, we were a good couple.

'But there was just certain behaviour that I actually said "No, no more, enough is enough, that is not OK"... the controlling... he didn't like me to go anywhere or do anything.'

She also strongly criticised those who had supported Phillips, pointing out that her youngest daughter was heavily asthmatic and needed medical treatment.

'Many of you say that the children are fine and they are being well looked after,' she said. 'How do you know? Have you seen them?

'What Thomas is doing is not OK. It is not OK to divide and conquer, to isolate and control. It is child neglect, it is child abandonment, it is child abuse. My babies deserve better.'

A sentiment which, to the background of the little that we already know, let alone what yet may emerge, all right-minded people will surely agree with.