#1 of 6 Thing a Private Investigator Won't Tell You

#1 Thing a Private Investigator won’t tell you by BRIAN WILLINGHAM

We utilize lots of public records, which are easily accessible by you.

He says, “As you might imagine public records are accessible by anyone.  However, just because they are accessible by just about anyone does not minimize their importance.  Public records are an incredibly important resource, but understanding and navigating the maze of public records in the U.S. is skill that takes years of practice.”

I couldn’t agree more with Brian Willingham!  In fact I have similar facts posted on my website, pi-speaker.com, (Tips) that reflect the same statement and I offer the public resources that Private Investigators use including information about public records. 

Knowing how to navigate using the information you acquire is key to the success in the outcome of an investigation.  Besides public record, building your resources, knowing how to obtain the information and what to ask for, and building relationships with your resources are extremely important in the success of a PI.    Retrieving data from the internet and knowing what to use and where to get it are key elements. 

There are only so many public records you can access easily and at your finger tips.  Once you run out of those you must have backup resources and that is where a PI can become helpful.  There are companies that have data that are only retrievable by law enforcement and Private Investigators.  And, there are public websites that offer full reports that include addresses, aliases, and such and some may even offer identifying factors such as social security number and date of birth, however, this is very rare.  The data you can retrieve on a public website differs than those accessible to law enforcement and PI's.

A social security number is the main ingredient in identity theft.  From a SSN you are able to recover a person’s name, date of birth, current and former addresses, aliases, email addresses, social media information, relatives, neighbors, and much more.  This is why it is so important to safeguard your SSN’s and your children’s SSN’s because it is very easy for an identity thief to get away with so much more with a child’s number.  Children do not have credit and do not have a credit report or rating unless credit is obtained.  Throughout my career I have witnessed parents who irresponsibly use their children’s SSN’s in order to gain credit and loans.  And, this can ruin their credit as adults.  I consider this a form of identity theft.

Due to the skill set that PI's have some are hired by law enforcement to work their cold cases.  A third eye will catch things that were overlooked the first and second time and PI's may have resources and skills that law enforcement Detective's do not.  And, there is a misconception between Police Officers and PI's.  Police Officers enforce the law and upgrade to Detective status.  A PI IS a Detective.  PI's do not arrest people and enforce the law and do not have the rights that law enforcement officers do.  In fact PI's must respect the laws more so than the average person.  If caught breaking the law in any capacity they risk losing their PI license.  But, in order for a PI license to be in jeopardy the case must be strong against them.  People don't like PI's that put them under investigation and in fact will try to harm the PI by filing a false complaint against their license and sometimes an idiot will go as far as falsifying court documents in an effort to obtain a restraining order against the PI.  Nice try, but it is a crime to falsify legal documents. The Federal False Claims Act and Crimes Act 1958 are only a few laws that can put a criminal right back where he/she belongs not to mention perjury.

Feel free to access the public resource provided on the TIPS page on my website that will help you start your own investigation when hiring a contractor and more.  Check it out here.

If you have a question for a Private Investigator please feel free to post them here or you can email me.  If you prefer your question not be posted on this blog please indicate so.

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#2 of 6 Things a PI Won't Tell You

6 Things a PI won’t tell you by Brian Willingham

#2

Brian says “Our job is to collect facts, but sometimes those facts don’t line up with what the client is looking for.  Investigators can certainly make things up or break the law to get what the client is looking for, but that doesn’t really help anyone.”

In 2012 when Brian wrote this stuff times were different.  I doubt a PI these days would admit to breaking the law to get what they need for a case.  Today most states require PI’s to be licensed and the license will be revoked if you are caught breaking the law for any reason whether professionally or personally.  I don’t know any PI, including myself, that would take such a risk especially if they have a lot to lose.  But, it is questionable as to what is considered breaking the law in this industry and to what degree is one breaking it if they are working responsibly in a professional capacity.

 There was a day that PI’s would use whatever that was available to them in order to resolve a case they were working on and it was common, and still is, for law enforcement to depend on the work of a PI to get the work done.  In my career I received more phone calls from Police Officers than college graduates seeking employment at my firm.  I often worked with the Police but never hired them.  I have my reasons.

 When a case goes cold within law enforcement it is common to hand it over to a reliable Private Eye to crack the case.  It is true that we have different resources than that of law enforcement and that are legal.  But, there are times when PI’s rely on the help of police in order to solve a case.  I personally have experienced this more than once and regardless of the circumstances the respect for one another should be mutual.

A few years ago someone came to me with an identity theft case.  An unidentified person stole my clients identity AND personal financial information including credit cards and debit card number.  The thief was able to buy this information off the market and then from a distant location they were able to use the information.  I found out where this information was being used and when I did I immediately contacted the police in that jurisdiction.  I was stunned by their response to me when asking for help.  My request was for them to go to a Walgreens in their area and view a video that should have recorded the face of the thief.  In the beginning they made promise after promise that they would do it but it never happened.  The last time I attempted to get their attention they told me they were too busy working on local cases.  Thanks a lot Orange County!  Needless to say without that video I was unable to identify the thief which could have lead to his capture, taking him off the streets and sparing any future victims.  Fortunately, I was able to resolve a few other issues for my client but what I would have given to catch the scum that took the identity of my client a hard working individual who made an honest living. 

What Brian is talking about when he talks about “facts” to a case that the client may not be expecting I wholeheartedly agree with.  It is often that a client has an idea in his mind how a case will end and the PI surprises their client with unexpected information that could potentially change the course of the case.  The unexpected information can curtail the investigation and is often at the request of the client to not take it any further.  They may not want to know the way it ends or who may have been involved.  It all depends on the circumstances and type of case.

I doubt a seasoned PI would make things up just to satisfy their client’s needs.   The word seasoned indicates the PI has a lengthy career in the field and wouldn’t last very long if they simply made things up as they went along unless they constantly change their name, name of their company, and consider themselves seasoned.  I am getting a little carried away here but you get the point I am sure.   Now these days you have to have a license, at least in my state, and it is a very expensive and lengthy process that takes place every two years.  I highly doubt one person could obtain more than one PI license in their state without getting caught. 

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#3 of 6 Things a PI Won't Tell You

#3 We rarely find that smoking gun.  Brian Willingham

Brian says, “You’ve seen it before.  That smoking-gun piece of evidence that cracks the case wide open. It’s usually right after the commercial break and just before the top of the hour.  The smoking gun makes for great TV, but it doesn’t come up all that often in real life"

Sensationalist at its best the very moment the smoking gun is revealed right after the commercial break and of course the lead up to the scene right before the commercial.  There is no such thing as sensationalism when a PI finds evidence although it can certainly feel exhilarating.  

 In 1999 I found the smoking gun that put a five time convicted criminal away for fifteen years.  In my case it was almost, but not quite, handed to me on silver platter but in this particular case I had to work hard to piece it all together as there were many fragments that had been interspersed throughout the crime spree.  

A Private investigator is typically hired by the family of the victim in the majority of cases because they feel the police are not doing enough to try to solve the case but PI's also work beside law enforcement and it's not always because they won't do enough but because they can't and for various reasons.  In my case I led the investigation with the support of the police.  They certainly came in handy when after the smoking-gun was found to arrest the perpetrator and that is something I was not able to do although it would have been my pleasure to slap the cuffs on him.  There are things a PI can do that law enforcement cannot and vice versa.  Here is a wonderful article that I couldn’t have written better myself that describes the difference between law enforcement and a PI or PD (Private Detective).  

Brian is right when he says it is not often that the smoking gun is found and that is why many of the trial cases in the judicial system are built on circumstantial evidence and in many cases will put an innocent person behind bars. 

I will talk more about innocent people behind bars another time because I feel it needs to be addressed to the point where it can help improve the judicial system that citizen are supposed to trust.  I certainly do not.  Do you?

 

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#4 of 6 Things A PI Won't Tell You

#4 We don’t have any special powers Brian Willingham

“Years of television may lead you to believe that Private Investigators drive Ferraris, have law enforcement powers and have access to secret government records, in addition, you may believe that you are required to talk to a Private Investigator.  While some investigators may drive Ferraris, the rest of it is not true.  In fact, in most cases, a Private Investigator does not have any more power than the average person."

I agree with Brian to a degree.  While his list of 6 Things A PI Won’t Tell You was published in 2012 the laws are constantly changing in both directions giving us rights and taking others’ away. Let me express that real PI’s follow the rules and laws.  Anything PI’s recover as a result of an investigation would otherwise be a waste of time if not legally acquired, besides there is too much at stake for a PI who makes his/her living doing what they love to do.  They can lose their license and face the consequences of their actions.  It’s true that a PI is really just a public citizen and do not have law enforcement powers.    The power that a PI does have is skill and experience.    A doctor thinks like a doctor, a lawyer thinks like a lawyer and a PI thinks like a PI.  Be careful not to underestimate someone who digs around for information for a living, seeks the truth and knows how to find it.

PI’s  have power in the sense that they have the skill set to do what might be necessary to solve a case and it certainly helps when they investigate someone who has nothing to hide.  People who have something to hide will not be so forthcoming.  For example, when Shawn Hornbeck went missing and I sat down with his parents in an appeal to help find their son, pro bono, they were eager to cooperate with me and answered every single question asked.  Once during a rescue {of a women who was being controlled by her husband and held hostage} the bad guy in this case lied about everything and {in his own mind} justified his behavior to take the blame away from himself. 

One kind of power Brian is talking about is the kind of power a police officer has with a badge, for example, a PI cannot make an arrest.  I personally would not want to have that right.  If I wanted that right I would have become a cop. And, PI’s are more comparable to a Detective where they investigate not arrest. We have the same rights as the public to make a citizen arrest where allowed.  In fact, although some PI’s have a badge it is unethical to use it under unnecessary circumstances.  If you saw a person wearing a badge you wouldn’t think “there’s a PI”, no, you would think “there’s a police officer”.  It can almost be considered a form of misrepresentation if a Private Investigator or Private Detective were to walk around wearing a badge.   In fact, most PI’s don’t wear their badge and might keep it in their back pocket.   When my firm bought badges back in the day we had to ID ourselves as a legitimate Detective Agency but I am confident these days you could buy one no matter who you are and believe me when I say that people do and they misuse them, misrepresent themselves, and impersonate.  That’s the Internet for you.  But, why does a PI have a badge if it’s of no use to them?  Some PI’s have a badge as a token of accomplishment.  PI’s go through a lot of training and most are highly educated with degrees in criminology and more.  Most states require PI’s to be licensed and are required to take continuing education classes yearly or every two years in order to maintain their license.  Even as a Research Analyst I have 48 CEU’s in the field of Investigation.  I have had my badge for many years and back in the day it came in handy when working on missing children cases.  It was a form of ID that people took more seriously than had I just stated "I'm a PI so give me all the information you have" and expect the family to believe me.  These days’ people are on guard more so whereas anybody could get a badge and lie about whom they are even the child’s abductor.  Remember the three girls who went missing in Ohio?  Their abductor, Arial Castro, was there to help advocate for the return of one of his abductees. If I am acting on a professional level it helps to have a form of professional ID.  If I needed to I would not only use my badge but my professional state ID card.  

Secret government records are not accessible to anyone without legal right.  If a PI has legal means of obtaining secret government record I guarantee that they are using them.   It takes years for a PI to establish resources and contacts in order to achieve a great amount of success and while the information they access must be legal and with permissible purpose there are different ways they can go about getting it.  One way is to call in a favor to a friend and more than often that friend is a colleague.  You know who to trust and who not to trust in other words a PI who has morals and boundaries will stay away from the dirty PI’s who act like big shots among their peers bragging about the illegal information they can get.  Most PI’s have the same record access and resources and anything beyond that may not be legal.   And, if they are using information in the court of law and it was obtained illegally I guarantee it will be of no use to the client.

Again, the skill and experience of a PI is what makes a good PI.  A seasoned PI who has a specialty will typically know exactly what needs to be done including the shortcuts in order to solve a case.  For example I have training in skip tracing.  Skip tracing is the process of locating a person.  Skip tracers can legally also trace telephone numbers, credit cards, and just about anything that has a paper trail.  A good PI will know the right questions to ask their client in order to establish the best shortcut that will get to the requested ending result.  The process of skip tracing involves as many steps as it takes, however knowing which direction to go and how the information can be used is the key to success.  It’s simply putting a puzzle together in the right order.  Some of the puzzles are small and some can be very big.  Some are more time consuming than others.  I also must add that I interrogate my perspective client before I accept a case.  I always have to know why they want the information and what they intend to do with it when they get it.  Their answers will dictate whether or not I accept the task and what resources I can use.   PI’s, Skip Tracers, Investigators, Financial Institutions and more must have permissible purpose in order to access records that they most likely had to jump through hoops to access in the first place.  These are the resources that are not available to the public and must be used in a responsible and ethical manner by those who use them. 

Now, about the Ferraris.  Successful PI’s can easily bring in a six figure annual salary.  On average, in 2012, the annual salary of a PI was right around $50,000.

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# 5 of 6 Things A PI Won't Tell You

#2 We hire subcontractors to do most of the work. BRIAN WILLINGHAM

Brian says, “There are independent investigators everywhere, many of whom do subcontract work for other firms.  It’s the nature of the business, in part because investigators rarely have a steady, normal workload.  Hiring subcontractors makes companies nimble, and it allows companies to hire outside experts who they wouldn’t be able to keep on staff or investigators in areas where they don’t have any coverage.”

There is nothing wrong with hiring a subcontractor to do the work especially if you know they will get the work done properly and timely.  It has been my experience that when someone calls you for your professional expertise they don’t care where it comes from and only want the results.  I am referring to an anxious husband who wants to know if his wife is cheating on him or a parent who wants to reconnect with their adult child having not seen them in over 20 years. 

Fortunately, I have never had a problem doing work in house.  I have been blessed with a fully staffed office for over 20 years.  Seldom did I hire a sub contractor on a case by case basis. If I did not have a staff I would happily help sub contractors keep busy with work.  But, it would have to be someone I know and well. When I started working for Dash Investigations in 1995, now known as Consumer Detective Corporation, my boss told me a story that taught me a lesson at someone else’s expense.  My boss, Mark, was hired to find ownership of a license plate on a car that parked in his driveway every night while he was at work leaving his wife at home, alone, so he thought.  He suspected his wife may have been cheating on him.  Mark knew why the man wanted the information but didn’t ask him what he would do with it once he had it.  Mark learned the car belonged to a man his wife was having an affair with and gave the information to his client including the name and address.  As a result of these findings Mark's client took a gun, went to the guys house, and shot him!  I cannot recall whether he survived the attack.  It was a long time ago.  I do recall that Mark had to give testimony to the fact that the shooter came to him for the information.  I will never forget this story and as a result I always ask my client what they plan to do with the information that I give them before I even take the case.  I would never hire a contractor whom I was not acquainted with.

 Throughout my career I often received phone calls from people who wanted to get into the industry especially police officers who wanted side work or wished to retire from the force and do what they do best without a badge short of making arrests.  I have hired a few police officers on a contractual basis and I have been hired to investigate police officers.  I have had people ask me to train them in skip tracing but there are tricks of the trade and secrets that you don’t reveal.  It's like a magician giving away the secrets to his magic tricks.  It took me many years to build the relationships and resources that contribute to my success.  It would not be wise for a PI to hand their secrets over to just anybody.

If I were to hire a contractor that contractor would have to come with their own resources, skills, and knowledge.  In order to get the experience they have to have the opportunity to work.  It’s not easy breaking into this industry without the clientele.  It’s like any start up business in an professional capacity such as accountants, plumbers, electricians and PI’s.  You have to have experience to get the clients.  If you can't get the work how do you build experience?  I support the efforts of those that wish to get into this industry.  

If you are interested or know someone who is interested in getting into the PI business please read my posting titled Adventures in The World of Investigations.

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6 Things a PI Won't Tell You

#6. Our work is really boring.   BRIAN WILLINGHAM

I don't necessarily agree with Brian and suspect he is talking about surveillance and that indeed can be boring, but not always.

A long time ago when I first started out in my career as a PI surveillance was one of the first things I learned how to do.  I was taking on a new position with a PI firm as manager and head investigator and although I knew how to make the bread and butter for the company I had other areas to study and surveillance was one of them.  Anybody could follow someone to see where they are going and what they are doing but if you lose your subject do you know how to find them again?

Here is an example:  I was hired by a husband to follow his wife.  He suspected she was cheating on him.  I said to him what I said to all of my cheating spouse clients, "if you suspect it then it is probably happening. What are you going to do with the information if you find out you are right?"  I am not going to risk my life and that of my partner for the sake of someone else' infidelity.

This case took place in the city where there were one way streets and parallel parked cars on the neighborhood streets that had rows of houses with little room for side yards.  My client was desperate to find out if his wife was cheating on him.  He said she was coming home late at night telling him she was working late which he learned was not true.  He had an idea of where she might be going after work but did not know the address and if there was anything going on that shouldn't have been.  Short of entering the house and seeing with our own eyes she was doing the deed with someone other than her husband our abilities were limited.  Our efforts were handicapped by the surroundings such as trees, cars, other buildings, etc.  

Now, there are certain things I will not divulge for the sake of giving away too much information. I assure you that no laws were broken and nobody ever got hurt during any of the investigations I had anything to do with not to mention we always contacted the police in the jurisdiction we were in and they were always made aware of our purpose and were most likely familiar with our activities.  If any of the neighbors called the police due to 'suspicious activity' they were told that they were aware of our being there.

Our client gave us a starting point.  We picked up our subject at her place of employment and started to follow her.  There were a lot of turns at stop signs and if we did not stay close enough, due to rush hour traffic, we would lose her but we also had to keep a short distance away so she would not feel as if she was being followed.  That could be disastrous.

Once we were hired to follow a young woman from her job one night after she got off work and we lost her in the process.  We learned that later that night while on her way home from a party, drunk, she hit a brick wall and was seriously injured.  Had we been following her naturally we could would have thought she was trying to get away from us and as a result slammed into a brick wall.  It was meant to be that we lost her.  Thankfully she survived in the end and as I recall we found out she was not cheating on her husband that night.  Out of all the surveillance jobs I had worked on this is the only subject I had ever lost.

Due to the continuous stops we did eventually lose our subject but we managed to pick her back up at another cross street.  When we lost her we felt our hearts drop down to our feet.  We failed but we didn't give up.  We used our skills to navigate ourselves around the neighborhoods in order to catch up with her again. Speeding through neighborhoods, hitting more stop signs, and keeping our eyes open as wide as can be we found our subject at a stop sign.  It was a sigh of relief.  Once we had her in our sights we followed her to a house where she parallel parked her car. Of course we kept going down the street but came back around and parked our car within eye shot of the house we thought she entered.  First, we had to verify she was in the house and once we did we sat and waited.  This is where the boring part comes in.  You sit and take turns keeping your eye on the subject and any movements made.  While we waited we did our computer searches to find out who owned the property and then did a background on the resident of the home.  He was a single man that she worked with.  They appeared to be the only ones in the home at that time.  There was only one light on that was visible from the outside.  You have to have the guts to get out and walk around to the back of the house to see if there were any activities or areas that were more visible.  To be successful at surveillance you have to have the guts to do pretty much anything that needs to be done but as long as nobody gets hurt.

In the end we concurred that our subject was in deed cheating on her husband.  Their marriage ended in divorce down the road.

An exciting surveillance job I did was a highway speed chase.  We were following a subject from one state to another and it became very dangerous.  It ended with successful results and nobody got hurt.  

After putting in two years of surveillance training I decided it was not the area of investigation I wanted to work in. The only time I ever needed to use the skills I acquired was years later on a criminal investigation.  I have not had the need to use it since and I hope I never do.   -The end

"There is no hole big enough in this world to hide from a PI."

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My Past Life Regression Session

Before I begin I want to state that everything I examine and investigate on the topic of life after death is for the purpose of finding proof that there is life after death or finding proof that there is not.  This posting is all about regression therapy which is recalling a past life while under hypnosis.  I have not found convincing evidence to prove that it is possible to recall a past life because there is nothing to prove that it is true, but I continue on my journey trying to learn more about it until I satisfy my curiosity.  It goes without saying that when I speak of my past life regression session and past life recalls it is all alleged and not validated.  

I was still under hypnosis with my regression guide Rhonda Leifheit in the drivers seat.  I was looking for answers to a few questions that my past life might reveal about my current life.  As I regressed from a life I once lived in the 1920's as an aspiring singer I was taken back into a light as I descended.  This is where we left off: 

These were questions I was seeking answers to from the beginning.  I wanted to know if there was a connection between me and my mother, grandmother and husband. I also wanted to know what happened to the soul of my unborn child.  I did not get the answers I anticipated and was shocked at the results.  I knew this much, if the answers were premeditated or of power of suggestion I certainly would not have gotten the answers that I did. 

The light was of peace and calm and apparently where answers could be found while still under hypnosis. These were questions I was supposed to be able to answer, for myself.  As I listened to her voice the questions the answers rolled off of my tongue.  I did not have time to think about the answers.  It was as if I knew the answers before the questions were asked.  They say that right before we are born the angel touches our upper lip and we forget everything and when we die we know everything there is to know. Having been the one giving the answers I was surprised by them.  

Question 1:  Who in this past life is in your current life?
 
The only person in my past life that I was able to identify in this life was my father.  My father in this life shared my former 1920's life as my manager/agent.  I found this amusing considering I had not questioned a past life with my father but with my husband, mother and grandmother.  The agent in my past life reminded me of my father in this life but they looked nothing alike. Could it be that when Rhonda suggested I find my father from this life to comfort me from my fear of heights into the spirit world that I actually sought and found my father in a past life?  Meaning that my father in this life and the agent/manager in the past life were the same soul.  Could it be that in the spirit world we are connected and have lived many lives together where this soul has acted as protector and caretaker to my soul?  It makes perfect sense if I take into account  many of the research studies I found in the countless books I have read.  There is too much to explain but in a nutshell our souls have soul mates that are not necessarily lovers but are friends, siblings, parents, as well as lovers and our souls choose to repeatedly live lives on Earth with each other but in different capacities.  When we are "dead" or in the spirit world we know our soul mates well but when we are born into an earthly life and forget everything we knew in the spirit world sometimes we are so connected to someone that one can only suspect that they are somehow spiritually connected and in most cases they are.   I am sure you have heard of deja-vu when you have an experience for the first time that you feel you have experienced before.  This includes people you feel you know but no matter how hard and long you think of how you know one another the dots do not connect for either of you.....in this life.  This is a very good example of what a spiritual connection is.  You (your spirit or soul) recognizes someone in this life that you can only know in the spirit world.  I don't want to digress too much but this is where things get interesting.  Our body is occupied by our spirit or conscious state of mind.  Our brain connects our body with our spirit that it's really hard to distinguish the two.  This is possible through meditation where you can separate your spirit from your body.  While our spirit sits behind our eyes and manages our personality and consciousness it does not die with our body.  In fact, when we die there is no shift in the way we consciously feel as our spirit rises out of our body.  Several people who have experienced out of body and near death have stated that even though "they" were looking down at their own bodies they felt as if they were still attached to their body until they realized they were apart and only describe the feeling as FREEDOM.  Free from any illness that may have caused them disabled.  I can go on and on but I will save this for another time.

During my regression session I did not recover any relationships with the people I wanted to connect with the most.  My mother in this life and I are extremely close.  There is not a day that goes by when we pick up the telephone to call each other at the exact time and our lines are busy because she was calling me and I was calling her and the weird part about it is that I know why her line is busy and that she is calling me.  Also, sometimes when she calls me I was thinking of calling her at that very moment and she claims the same of me calling her.  I know I am connected to my mother in the spirit world and that perhaps our connection on earth is somehow driven by our connection in spirit.  We are in sync.

My grandmother and I were extremely close.  She called me her best friend.  I was always close to her especially after my grandfather died in 2000.  I was by her side daily while she lay in a nursing home bed unable to care for herself.  She depended on her family to take care of her needs that the nursing home could or would not.  It was then that I started reading about life after death and learned about death bed visions which explained what was happening when I caught my grandmother speaking to someone that I could not see.  I detailed my visits and earlier research in my Nursing Home Drama blog.  I feel that my grandmother and I once lived a life where I was her mother.  In fact, in this life I am named after her parents.  And, perhaps we too are soul sisters. 

 Question 2:  Is the soul of your unborn child in any way connected to either of your children in this life?

Surprisingly I said "my unborn child did not yet have a soul" so, no, there is no connection.  What?  I never imagined this as a possibility but I have read that the spirit (a branch of the soul) typically enters the body of a fetus in or around the fifth month in the womb.  If you ask any mother who has lost a fetus or unborn child for any reason whether a miscarriage or abortion she might admit that she wonders about the development of the spirit of her unborn baby and question when the conscious life began for that child.  There is no proof but researchers have suggested that a spirit that enter a fetus or unborn baby that is miscarried or aborted was aware that this would take place and that their life lesson was to see what it was like to enter a human form.  This may have been the case for new souls.  And, research studies show a spirit will sometimes be reborn into the same family especially after the loss of a young child.  This may seem complicated so if you want better clarification I suggest reading the book Return To Life by Jim B. Tucker, M.D.  This book is about research on reincarnation that Dr. Tucker and Dr. Ian Stephenson gathered from around the world.  The stories in this book are amazing and enough to make a believer out of a skeptic.  This is one of many books that document the investigations from a skeptics point of view.  Doctors and a team of investigators treated each case with doubt.  Their efforts were to discount the cases of reincarnation as young children remembered their past lives with detailed information including their home address, the layout of the home they lived in, names of family members, and more.  The investigators took the children independently to the address they recalled from a past life, had the child name each family member they recalled and their relationship to them in their past life.  The investigators often tried to trick the child by suggesting a family member with a wrong name but in every case the children would correct them with the correct name.  In all cases the families had lost a loved one the way the child recalled and confirmed everything the young child claimed.  The puzzling fact is the young subjects in this book were three to five years of age, most could not read, and have never been to the areas where they claimed to have lived their past lives.  The distance could have been as far as 200 miles away from their current homes yet they knew the address and demonstrated familiarity with the vicinity they claimed to have once occupied.  It's the perfect book for the skeptic.  

With my questions answered I was satisfied with this session.  I walked away wondering if I had really lived this life as an aspiring singer in the 20's or made it up without knowing I was making it up.  I felt exhausted as though I had been doing physical work but I had only been lying on a recliner for an hour.  I went home after my session and did some online research hoping to find something about a once cigarette girl turned singer somewhere in France in the 20's but I did not find anything.  I did, however, find a (black and white) picture of a cigarette girl that resembled the one in my session.  I had never seen the picture before.  

Believing in life after death really has nothing to do with past life regression or the ability to recall a past life.  While we live multiple lives, thousands of them, we may or may not be able to recall the lives through past life regression or meditation.  There are books giving detailed steps as to how one can recall a past life but how do you know whether or not what you recall as a past life is really true?  

The next session was a few weeks later.  My reader, Rhonda, took herself into the Akashic Records searching my past lives.  I had more doubts about this reading.  To be continued.......

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