The mother of the three missing Marokopa children, known as Cat, says she was the first person to spot Tom Phillips at Bunnings last year.
Phillips and the children, Jayda, Maverick and Ember, have been missing since late 2021, but were spotted on farmland near Marokopa last Thursday night.
Cat told Mata Reports she recognised her former partner as she walked past a ute in the Hamilton Bunnings carpark in August last year.
Bunnings images showed Tom Phillips wearing a disguise when he visited the Te Rapa store to purchase goods.
Cat said she was suspicious of the ute and wondered if it was connected to her former partner.
Mother of Tom Phillips' children convinced people are helping to keep fugitive on the run
Speaking exclusively to Mata Reports presenter Mihingarangi Forbes, Cat says she stopped in front of the ute which was parked facing outwards and recognised Phillips through his disguise.
"It was just the way he put his head up because I just had a feeling about that ute."
Phillips had returned home to his parents' house a year earlier but this sighting was the first public sighting since February 2022.
She believes Phillips recognised her, drove off and she gave chase. When they stopped at a red light she took images of the ute and thought about getting out but was worried it might instead be a member of the public.
The man police believe to be Tom Phillips, sighted at Bunnings in Te Rapa and the stolen 2003 bronze-coloured Toyota Hilux flat-deck ute believed to have been driven by Tom Phillips and seen in Pokuru near Te Awamutu, in Te Rapa, and in Kawhia. Photo: NZ Police
She says she continued to follow Phillips but he cut in front of a bus and turned down a side street where she lost him. She pulled over and called the police immediately about the sighting.
Cat said the ute belonged to an associate of Phillips and she believes it was only reported stolen following the sighting.
She believes Tom Phillips is being helped and she has a message for his supporters. "My babies deserve better, it's beyond time that they come home and supporting Thomas is essentially supporting child abuse because that's what it is. There's no beating around the bush. None of this is ok."
She added: "Those people need to stop. They need to think seriously about it and they need to question themselves, why do these children deserve any less than any other child in New Zealand."
She says she is overwhelmed by the situation. "I'm like in survival mode every minute of every day... It's like a waking nightmare every single day. It just never stops, it's never ending, I just want them to come back, they need to be home, they don't belong out there."
Breaking down into tears, Cat says she has "lost her way" since the children have gone and she worries she has failed them.
"I'm lost without them. They were my world, they were my everything ...that was my only job in life and that was my children. ... I feel like I didn't fight hard enough, I didn't make enough noise."
She also challenged Tom Phillips' reputation as a bushman, saying when they were together they only went "proper" camping once where they had no power and went hunting.
Cat believes an exchange between a pig hunter and her daughter last week was a cry for help.
A video captured by the pig hunters north of Awamarino in Waikato last Thursday showed a man followed by three children in wet-weather gear carrying camouflaged backpacks and wearing masks.
In June she made an emotional appeal asking people to help find the children so they could be returned to her.
Cat, the mother of the missing Marokopa children. Photo: Supplied / Police
It followed the police's launch of an $80,000 reward for information that would help discover their whereabouts. The offer has run out without providing the critical breakthrough.
At the time police also released a video of Cat in which she said: "They are just innocent children. They do not deserve to be treated this way.
"They do not deserve the life that is being provided to them right now."
She also criticised her estranged husband, accusing him of child neglect, endangerment, abandonment and abuse.
Police said at the time that the reward had resulted in more than 100 pieces of new information via phone calls, emails and personal approaches to them.
A photo posted on social media by Cat of her and her three missing children during a visit to the park in November 2021 before they were taken by their father, Tom Phillips. Photo: Supplied