Reincarnation(Gail Moore) Started like any other day, who would think that my partner and I would end the day being so totally confused. Two small town cops making such an enormous discovery that would change lives.

7 am and my wife Mandy says to me, "Remember I have a hair appointment so i hope you don't have anything on."

"Well yes I have actually" I answered.

Did you forget I changed shifts and I am working this morning? Can you change your appointment? Not likely Mandy says. It's in 2 hours and I have already changed it twice. Don't worry, I tell her, I am only catching up on a pile of paper work. William can come in with me. Thank goodness for that Mandy says.

William settles down at the station and plays off his ipad for about two hours. I stopped for a break and to have a bit of time with him. We wander across the street and get William a shake and a coffee for myself and my off sider James.

Back to the station and William starts poking around the office, Handcuffs off and on a dozen times, then he asks me to show him a fingerprint kit. I pull it out and take his prints and tell him he's probably the youngest New Zealander to ever have his prints done. He gets a huge thrill out of that. I told him I had never had a 9 year old criminal before. we had a laugh. James laughs along with us. As i put his prints into the computer James walks off to continue his files, laughs and comments, "Did you realise you just filed them?" "Oh sh-- " I say. i Will delete them shortly. William settles down with his ipad once more.

Bloody Hell, they hear me yell. James comes back in the room to see what I swore at and Wills Yells out "language dad. I'm going to tell mum on you." James asks "what's up". "Look at this" I say. "This is Williams fingerprints" I whisper so as he can't hear me. "There's a match." "What do you mean there's a match?" "There's a f----- Match I'm telling you." He sits looks at the computer and we look at each other like a couple of stunned mullets. We done something wrong obviously.

"Hey William" James yells, "I need fingerprint experience, Can I take your prints mate?" Yep, and he happily jumps up to repeat the process again.

Second match and we sit and look and go, impossible, can't happen, Computer fault, and we get on with doing our files. Unsettled, I go back to the computer and look at the file on Williams fingerprint match. I raise my voice. "You got to be joking me." James comes back in and looks at me. "Hey mate, you're are as white as a ghost. Do you want me to get you something?" "Yeah, I think I am hallucinating, Went back to this file with Williams fingerprint match" I whisper "and look at this." "Look at what?" "That" I say. He says, "means nothing to me the guy is deceased." "Yes" I whisper in a very quiet voice. "He died on the day William was born." Again we sit and look. Neither of us spoke for a bit.

"We will talk shortly James" I say. "Mandy is home so i'll take William and come straight back." William walks in and immediately tells Mandy I swear a lot and how he is NZs youngest criminal. She asks if im okay and I tell her "yep got something on and have to get back asap." I heard her ask William when I was on my way out, "Whats up with dad" and he says. "I don't know but he swears a lot at his computer"

Back at the station and James has not moved from where I left him. He sat staring at Williams fingerprints. There is no doubt that they are a match. I have spent the whole time you were gone studying them and 100% I tell you they match. Yep I know. We talk for the next couple of hours about the reasons this could have happened.

What next? James says to me...Nothing today, we will have to catch up on our own work and sleep on this one.

We go home that afternoon still pondering the days events and what to do about it. I kept looking at my son like he was someone else. Strangest feeling. Like there is this man hiding out in my sons body. Just creepy.

3 am and James phones. I couldn't sleep, he tells me. I laugh and say "so you didn't think I should either". Right. Actually James, I was wide awake. Mandy wakes and asks, Have you got a call out. Yes I say then I tell James to meet me at the station.

Other work mates are on duty and ask us what we are doing there. We say just a lot to catch up on and enter an empty room so as we can talk without anyone listening.

Okay what are we going to do about this? We can't just leave it. It's like William has been reincarnated or something. Not that I believe in that but I also don't believe 2 people can have the same fingerprints.

James tells me, I have hatched a plan.

Cool what sort of plan?

Well it's not 100% above board but if we tell anyone what we want to do then they won't allow us to do it.

What, we can't do anything illegal, our jobs will be on the line.
He raises his brow and says "Well it's not illegal, just not the right protocol, that's all."
"Okay then out with it" I say.

Well I figure if William's prints have a match there may be others and the reason they haven't been picked up is because we archive them every 10 years so if someone were a match we would never know because their match is already archived by the time they have a criminal conviction. What do you think?

Makes sense I tell him, so what's your brilliant plan then?

Well you know how every year we go into the primary schools and give the kids a talk. This year we give the kids a gift to take away. Their mug shots and finger prints. We will take their details, photos and fingerprints and tell them we are going to take them back to have them laminated as a keep sake. We bring them back here and check out if we have any more matches. What do you think? We can do one class a week for the next 15 or so weeks until we are through the whole school.

I guess it would work, but we will have to get permission to take their prints before we go ahead with it. Can you see us finding anyone else? I find this all very creepy James.

Me too, he says.

Okay go home and go to sleep, I tell him. We will go to the local school in the morning and tell them it's time for our interaction with the kids.

Following week and we are organising our annual interaction with our local primary school. Our senior thought it was a great idea to interact with the kids, something different from our usual be good and don't get into trouble.

Permission slips have been sent out to parents to allow us to take the kids pics and prints.

James and I are very anxious coming up to the week of the first school visit not knowing what we will find. We were also at a loss as to who we will give our findings to. We decided that if Wills was the only one we found we would just get on with our lives and put this all down to a strange experience.

Week 1 all permission slips back and off we go. Class 1 week 1, Nothing. Week 2 Class 2, Nothing. Week 3 Class 3 and sitting in the office James yells yes, yes, yes. Tim come in here quick.
Am here right behind you, I say, You yelled enough for the whole station to hear.
I found one. S--t I can't believe it. I actually found another one. Yep and same thing, look at the date of birth and look at the deceased date of death. They are a match. Okay let's keep going then. Within Minutes we had another. Over the next 15 weeks we had a total of 13. All others that we had collected that were of no use to us we deleted from the computer.

We now had to make a huge decision on who to tell and how much trouble we were going to be in for doing what we had done.

Our superintendent might be a good place to start, James suggests.
Yep let's just do it.

We made the appointment and had to wait a whole week and a half. I kept wanting to back out because I knew this was huge and I just wasn't ready for the response. any response we got was not going to be the usual "Oh yeah we can sort this." This was the complete unknown, Life changing.

Our super goes though the paper work and is very quiet. He reads thoroughly and methodically. Didn't speak for 1 hour 40 minutes. We just sat on the other side of his desk not speaking. I kept thinking, what have i done. This is probably our careers gone. God what have we done. I was expecting a bolicing. Finally He looks up and says. You two have been very thorough with these files. I just don't know what to say. For the first time in my entire life, I am dumb founded. Don't think i have ever been this floored. Thank-you for bringing this into me. Does anyone else know about this. "No sir," i answer. "That's good, let's keep it under wraps shall we. Just go about your every day work and i will be in contact as soon as i work out who to give this info to."

Yes sir. Man am i feeling good. I still have my job. As we start to walk away our super comments. "Not the right protocol boys but under the circumstances good call to keep it tight to the chest."
Thank-you sir.
Phew James says when we got outside. Would have been easier to do a pct every day for a week. I laugh, Yeah, we still have jobs.

Well we didn't have to wait long. Four days in fact, before we got a call to say, put your full uniforms on guys. We have a car picking you up first thing in the morning. Please let your seniors at the station know that we were so impressed with what you had organised at the schools that we would like to talk to the two of you about doing it in other schools.

A car arrives for us and we are whisked off to Auckland airport then on to a very small plane and taken to Wellington then on to a private hotel conference room. 2 security were stationed outside the room. The PM was there and a dozen other important people. One of which came over to us and told us we were linking up a video conference call with the USA and various other countries.

The video conference lasted about 3 hours and all countries involved agreed that our findings were quite incredible but needed even more proof.

Every country was to undertake the same study that James and I had done. We also had to repeat the process in another NZ school.

3 months later and all results were in. The results concluded that there were thousands and everyone involved had come to the conclusion that every human was the same but it was only those with criminal convictions that could be picked up.

Scientists that were involved in the study said there had never been anything this huge. We all agreed.

Again we were asked not to mention this study to anyone until they decided what to do with the findings.

3 months goes by and again we were whisked off for another conference call with world leaders.

USA President speaks: Ladies and gentleman we have all come to a conclusion on this scientific breakthrough. It must never be spoken of. Can you just imagine the repercussions on these findings if it was public knowledge?

And so it went on. After hearing all the reasons as to why it should not be public knowledge I had to agree. At least James and I can discuss it together.


One year on, James and I decide to take a holiday with our families to the Gold Coast Australia where Williams match came from just to see if he had any recognition moments de ja vu I suppose. Our accommodation we booked purposely just around the corner from where our match lived. It didn't take long. Walking down the beach with both families one of James kids asked for an ice-cream and William immediately said. "There's an ice-cream shop just down that road there." Mandy said, how do you Know that William? He replied, I don't know, must have seen a sign. Sure enough the ice parlour was there. As the week went on both James and I picked up on a dozen or so things that normally people would just go de ja vu.



4 years goes by and all but forgotten. Williams second year at College, I was out in the garden and received a call from the station. Was the sargeant on duty at the time. Hi Tim, I have your son William with me. Got caught shop lifting. I was fuming mad when I picked him up. What were you thinking? I asked. It was a dare dad. All the kids did it. I was the only one that got caught.

With the appropriate punishment out of the way I started thinking about his match and how he had a bit of a criminal history. I had his file still in my briefcase and decided to have a look at it. Minutes later a few calculations and wham. There it was, Williams first encounter with the law and his matches first arrest were exactly 14 years 7 months 2 weeks 2 days. Both for shop lifting. This was just Incredible findings.

I phoned James. Need to talk mate, about you know what. It had become the you know what subject for the last three or so years. important, he said. Sure is I said. As big as the whole thing itself. Be there in about 2 minutes mate, he says.
James walks in and chuckles. "I heard about the shoplifting incident mate"
I explain to him what had happened and my calculations. "Wow that's huge" He says.

We contact our super and go though the same process as last time. 2 Months on, different PM, some different world leaders and some of the same.

"The results of your findings have been processed and conclusions have been made that our lives repeated follow the same process when we are reincarnated." Seemed totally unreal hearing those words. "We are going to be setting up special task forces globally to see if we can eradicate the worst of our crimes by stopping the culprits before they commit the crime. We shall have an alert as to when the crimes will take place so we will be able to stop them. Of course this is massive and we will have to begin slowly and we don't know what will happen by stopping the process, but it is our duty to do our best with the knowledge we have...."

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