Not long after Rochelle Rees signed on as an animal rights activist, she realised she would come to police attention - even as a 13-year-old when she started attending fur protests, she noticed a frequent blue uniform presence.

She gets that the police have a role in maintaining the law.

Troubling, though, has been the interest of private investigation firms, one in particular.

“Thompson & Clark has been on our radar even longer than the police,” she says.

The reason it’s troubling, she says, is because whereas the police have responsibilities to the public, Thompson & Clark “can act solely in the interests of their clients”, under the law and code of conduct which governs them, of course.

In 2010, Rees and her friend, Jasmine Gray, came out of the district court in Levin when they noticed something odd underneath their car. It was a tracking device, linked to Thompson & Clark.

Rees and her partner were later issued with a trespass notice for pig farms, served on her when she was at a community board meeting (she was a member of the board), and her partner when he was at home.

“My partner pulled out his camera to take pictures of the guy (serving the notice) and he kind of panicked about his photo being taken and instead of just handing over the trespass notice he handed over everything in his hands which included emails from Gavin Clark giving him instructions,” says Rees.

Over the years, Rees says, she noticed that photographers hired by Thompson & Clark to observe their protests would be “chatting and very friendly” with police. But she never had anything conclusive to prove a link between the organisations.

So she asked, sending in Official Information Act requests asking about the company and connections with the police.

She did discover that firm founder and director Gavin Clark had been a police officer from 1985 until 1998 and that it was “possible he may have had involvement with investigations into political activists”.

She found that police had paid about $200,000 for a Thomson & Clark-related company for services such as security guards for the Pike River emergency.

But on the more critical question of whether police and Thompson & Clark shared information, police said her question was too broad and didn’t answer her.

It wouldn’t be the last time police would give that answer.

In 2008, Rochelle Rees worked with investigative journalist Nicky Hager to expose her then partner, Rob Gilchrist, as a police informant. For about a decade, Gilchrist was being paid by the police to give them information about the activities of animal activists.

Looking back, she says it had an impact on the activist groups at the time, and she can see that it changed the way she saw things.

“It was quite upsetting, more than anything because it makes you question whether you can trust the people you're working with and are friends with and very close to so it shatters your own sense of judgement in other people,” she says.

A few years later, she started thinking about one particular man who had drifted into the activist movement then disappeared. Who was he?

In 2003, not long before the Iraq invasion, Rees and some friends were at an anti-war march in Auckland’s Queen St when a man started talking to them.

“He said he was vegan, into animal rights and had been in Italy for eight years and had just come home and was keen to be involved,” says Rees.

Quickly, he became active in the animal activist group Rees and her friends were involved in. He said his name was Laurie Moore and that he was aged in his 30s.

“Most of us were young and female then,” says Rees, who was 16 at the time.

Jasmine Gray remembers that being a “bit unusual” at the time. “But I think we were all quite accepting of people who were a little bit different and stuff like that. So we were warm and welcoming, and he seemed quite enthusiastic.”

He certainly did. Pictures from the time show him heavily involved in activities, painting signs, banging a drum at protests, helping hand out brochures on the street.

Laurie Moore was a model activist. He said he was a landscaper so had flexible hours which meant that he always seemed available.

He travelled to Christchurch with the group in 2003. “Animals rights activists from around the country travelled down there for a week of protests and Laurie came along, stayed with us on the marae where we were staying, came to all of the events, and got to know animal rights people from around the country.”

Laurie Moore lived in an apartment in Dominion Road, Auckland, in the same block that Rees had been. Except his apartment was sparsely decorated, and he had no signs of family or other friends.

“We all definitely became friends with him,” Rees says. “We had lots of social events as well, I remember having drinks at the pub with him on Dominion Road near where I worked and he lived.”

He hosted meetings and pot luck dinners at his apartment and even had one of the group’s members stay with him for a couple of months.

In October that year, 2003, he was involved in a protest at Tegel, where members of the group went up to the company’s headquarters and scattered hay (as a nod to the fact that the company’s caged chickens did not have such luxury). One of them handed the company a letter explaining why they were there.

As far as subversive activities go, it was hardly the most disruptive, outrageous attack on a company, as upsetting as it must have been for the Tegel staff.

Nonetheless, one of the group was arrested the next day.

The next month, Laurie Moore told the group he was going to Australia to do fruit picking and suddenly left - something he hadn’t talked about doing.

“He sent us emails, sort of further and further apart...and a few years later I tried to contact him and my email bounced back,” says Rees.

Gray says, with hindsight, it was strange behaviour. “Given the closeness of our interactions...that was kind of weird to just sever those ties.”

But at the time, none of them thought anything of it. In activist circles, people come and go.