Fugitive murderer Phillip John Smith spent several hours in transit in Santiago, Chile before boarding a flight to Brazil, police in Chile say.
Smith was on a 72-hour short term release programme from Spring Hill prison in Waikato last week when he absconded and flew to Chile.
Smith was jailed in 1996 for murder, aggravated robbery, sexual violation, indecent assault on a boy and kidnapping.
He had stabbed to death a man in Wellington whose son he had been sexually abusing. Earlier, he had tracked the family from the Wairarapa, where he was facing sex charges, to the Wellington suburb of Johnsonville where they were living in a supposedly safe house.
Hours after leaving prison, Smith flew direct from Auckland to Santiago on a passport obtained in his birth name of Phillip John Traynor, Radio New Zealand reported.
The Department of Corrections was not aware until it made checks two days later that he had gone missing
Police in Santiago said at a media conference this morning that Smith had flown on to Brazil.
Interpol spokesperson Ricardo Quiroz said Smith arrived at Santiago airport on Friday and was believed to have been in transit there for only a few hours.
He said Smith did not go through immigration into the country, but boarded another flight to Sao Paulo and then on to Rio de Janeiro.
The Department of Internal Affairs says it is not clear how the convicted man managed to lodge an application under the name of Traynor while still in prison in 2013 and said it was likely he had the assistance of an accomplice.