WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Deep in dense New Zealand forest, a makeshift campsite was the final hiding place of a fugitive New Zealand man who vanished with his three children for several years.

On Tuesday, a day after Tom Phillips was shot dead by the police and his children — now aged 9, 10 and 12 — were recovered from the wilderness existence they had inhabited since December 2021, the story didn’t have a simple ending, officials said.

Law enforcement will now try to “put the puzzle together” of how the family lived, found food and avoided detection by searchers for so many years, New Zealand’s Police Commissioner Richard Chambers told reporters.

Photos supplied by the police of the family’s final campsite — where soda cans, tires and a metal container sat amid camouflaged belongings

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