Photo: Supplied / NZ police
Police have never received so much information about the missing Phillips children but it does not contain "the golden nugget" leading to the safe return of the three children.
At one minute to midnight on Tuesday the $80,000 reward for information helping to solve the disappearance of Ember, Maverick and Jayda and will run out.
They were taken into the bush by their father, Tom, two and a half years ago. Police believe they are in the Western Waikato within Marokopa area or the surrounding areas.
Last week their mother, Cat, made an emotional appeal asking for them to be returned.
Since the reward was posted earlier this month police have received more than 150 new pieces of information of which about 50 were considered worth following up, Acting Detective Inspector Andrew Saunders told Checkpoint.
He was "quite encouraged" by the amount of information the public had provided.
"We've never had this volume of information come in but it's the painstaking time to go through it and do all the followup."
Half a dozen officers were working on the case and assessing the various leads such as alleged sightings and locations of interest.
However, nothing was "the golden nugget" leading to the breakthrough of finding the family and none of the information had prompted specific property searches.
Saunders also said there was no psychologist or anyone similar working alongside officers to try and analyse Tom Phillips' behaviour.
There were "persons of interest" that police suspected had been helping Tom Phillips but he was unwilling to go into details of how any pressure was being applied to get them to cooperate.
He believed $80,000 was a big enough incentive.
"It's really targeted at those people which may be a small number who have direct knowledge of where those children are."
He urged anyone who hadn't been in touch to think only of the children's welfare, the kind of lives they were leading and the number of relatives they were missing out on seeing.
In a media statement on Monday evening, Saunders said police were still focused on getting a result in the investigation.
"I can confirm that we have identified several locations of interest in Western Waikato that we're focusing our efforts on."
The police presence in Marokopa had been scaled back.
"I want to acknowledge the Marokopa community who have made our staff feel welcome in the area over the past fortnight."
The Phillips children pictured with their mother, Cat, before they disappeared. Photo: Supplied
