A New Zealand man who evaded authorities with his three children in remote countryside for almost four years has shot and killed by a police officer.

The December 2021 disappearance of Tom Phillips and his children - now about 9, 10 and 11 - confounded investigators for years as they scoured the densely forested area where they believed the family was hiding.

The family was not believed to ever have travelled far from the isolated North Island rural settlement of Marokopa where they lived, but credible sightings of them were rare.

Phillips has not been formally identified, New Zealand's Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Jill Rogers told reporters in the city of Hamilton on Monday, but authorities believed he was the man killed.

His relatives confirmed his death to local news outlets.

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