The Mysterious Disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2
In 2014, while looking for two missing hikers, Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers, in Panama, officials came across a digital camera in the forest that they believed belonged to one of them.
The photos they found on that camera were disturbing, to say the least. And they held terrifying clues as to what happened to the missing girls.
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SOURCES
https://www.thedailybeast.com/death-on-the-serpent-river-how-the-lost-girls-of-panama-disappeared/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-lost-girls-of-panama-the-full-story/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tourist-trap-how-did-the-lost-girls-perish-in-paradise/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-lost-girls-the-bones-and-the-man-in-the-panama-morgue-1/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170629190802/http://www.answersforkris.com/en//
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8hd83x
https://nltimes.nl/2015/03/04/kris-lisanne-likely-fell-cliff-panama-investigators
https://www.themirror.com/news/world-news/haunting-photo-clues-left-behind-664843
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23041623/major-update-mystery-panama-jungle-girls-new-search/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/dutch-police-hint-criminal-activity-womens-disappearance-n87291
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/dutch-women-who-went-missing-panama-confirmed-dead-n141201
https://www.whitehawkbirding.com/panama-wildlife-a-glimpse-at-great-biodiversity/
Book referenced: Still Lost in Panama, by Christian Hardinhaus & Annette Nenner
TRANSCRIPT
In 2014, while looking for two missing hikers in Panama, officials came across a digital camera in the forest that they believed belonged to one of them.
The photos they found on that camera were disturbing, to say the least. And they held terrifying clues as to what happened to the missing girls.
Today, I want to tell you the story about the disappearance of two Dutch hikers that vanished into the Panamanian Jungle and what they found on that camera. but first….
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In 2014, Dutch roommates and best friends Lisanna Froon (Lease-anna Frohn) and Kris Kremers arrived in Panama for what was going to be the trip of a lifetime. They’d been planning this trip as a post-graduation reward for six months. The plan was to see a new country, learn a new language, volunteer, and of course, blow off some steam before returning to school to work on their master’s degrees, which they were set to do that fall.
After a two-week crash course in Spanish on a Panamanian island, the girls relocated to a small tourist town on the mainland: Boquete (Bow-ket-ay) where they were going to be volunteering with young kids. Their first day they arrived at a daycare center excited, they were even carrying a few toys that they brought.
But when they arrived, they learned that there had been a miscommunication. They actually weren't set to start for a few more days. So now they had some time to kill. And that was not going to be a problem for them, these girls loved exploring new places and – Boquete was a destination for adventure tourism there was tons to do there.
And the girls found that Just outside the city limits was a jungle full of trails, and even an active volcano deep inside. Kris and Lisanne (Lease-anna) decided to take a spontaneous hike on El Pianista, The Pianist trail, that led to the top of Baru (Bar-roo) volcano.
And so, as they were heading back to their host family’s house after the volunteer mixup, they ran into a local guide that we’ll call Marco and he offered to lead the women to the trail. He’d hiked the trail a million times, he said. He even offered to host them overnight on his property in this remote village in the jungle called Alto Romero.
Now, The girls figured they could hike this trail without help, it was a relatively easy out and back so they politely declined the offer. And maybe it’s because they felt guilty, but they told Marco they would do a tour of a local strawberry farm the next day with him, and they went on their way.
Then, The next morning, the girls left their host family’s house at around 8am. At 9am, they asked a local innkeeper for directions to the Pianista trailhead, and they arrived there at around 10am
The trail is within protected land, but people’s properties back right up to it, especially at the beginning. As the girls began the hike, they passed by people’s homes and outbuildings for their farms. Many of these residents remember seeing the women beginning their trek up the mountain in the direction of the volcano. But none of them remembered seeing them come down.
The next day, Marco waited for Kris and Lisanne at the strawberry farm for their tour, but the two never showed up. He got a bad feeling, and he actually had the number of the host family they were staying with so he decided to give them a call. Their host mother, Marjolein (mar-yo-lane), went into their bedrooms to check on them, but she found that their beds were still made from the day before. The women definitely didn’t come home last night.
Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
I have a big story that I want to tell you. It’s the story of a disappearance, but some people say there is a monster hidden somewhere in it. And as I was pouring through the research, the panamanian authorities statements, the investigation done by the dutch, I kept feeling like I caught glimpses of that monster, living in between the lines of the police report, like he was only there if I squinted really hard and read the research twice. It’s hard to explain but I think you’ll see what I mean
And one thing I want to add before we get into everything, is that I had heard of this story years ago, and maybe you did too. But the reason that I want to tell it today, aside from it being dark summer, is that recently a bombshell dutch investigation was released, one that said everything we know about this case is wrong. That everything you heard before came from the Panamanian authorities and that they were lying to you.
So today I want to paint the whole picture for you, and I want you to decide what could have happened to two girls who were doing a short hike in the Panamanian jungle, and never made it home.
And just a quick reminder, we have a bonus episode for July out on Patreon and this month the community voted on ghost stories and urban legends surrounding Chernobyl. We’re talking about the creepy dolls that people find scattered around the Chernobyl Exclusion zone, the very haunted hospital there, and so much more. Make sure your subscribed on Patreon or Apple podcasts to hear the episode.
Alright, let’s get into it, and as always, listener discretion is advised.
ACT ONE:
Marco the tour guide, as well as the girl's host mother and other folks started doing an informal search around the town that day, but they weren’t able to find any sign of Kris and Lisanne. By the end of the day on April 2nd, a little over 24 hours after the two girls began hiking the Pianista, missing person’s reports were filed locally, and their parents back in the Netherlands were notified of their disappearance
The next day, April 3rd, Marco, who had now really taken the lead on the investigation, even though he had only ever had a brief interaction with the girls, got in touch with SINAPROC (See-nah-proke), a Panamanian federal law enforcement agency. Marco arranged to lead a group of officers up the Pianista to do a search. But that day, they’d barely started the hike before SINAPROC officials were called back to their local office to prepare for the arrival of a Dutch ambassador the next morning.
So Marco decided to just continue the hike alone. He was very familiar with this area; he led tourists there often and he owned land that was only accessible by this trail. So he knew that it was a well trod trail that went up to a peak with an elevation of about 6600 feet (2012 meters)
The trail is called Pianista, or Piano Player because it includes a set of steep steps like a ladder. Sideways, they look like the keys of a piano. Because of these steps, the trail is marked as moderate, but Marco knew it really wasn’t that difficult of a hike–it’s a very clear trek: a well marked trail with no offshoots. A simple out and back It didn’t really make sense to him that the girls would have gotten lost on it.
He reached the peak of the trail and saw no sign of the girls at all, and that’s when his heart sank. Because you’re supposed to turn around when you get to the top, but it’s not really well marked. In 2014, a sign was added that read “End of trail, no return passage” in spanish”, but that wasn’t there when the girls were doing this hike.
On the other side of where this sign now is, the trail was not maintained and much more treacherous. Actually, some locals refer to this area as “Jungle Hell” We’re talking knee-deep mud, slippery, steep terrain, deep ravines and river crossings over rickety bridges. These are trails that only local indigenous tribes use, because they’re so maze like and confusing to anyone who doesn’t live in the jungle and have to use them every day.
Marco knew that if the women didn’t return, it was probably because they were lost or injured on this more dangerous side of the trail. He continued on. But he didn’t find them.
BREAK 1
Over the next couple of days, SINAPROC searched all the popular hiking trails around the city, which is a massive area covering 621 miles of wilderness. Sniffer dog teams and helicopters combed the area. The indigenous tribes in the area were also all searching
Lisanne and Kris’ family, along with Dutch investigators, came to Boquete to help search. At this point, local and international media were covering the case. Everyone was biting their nails, wondering who would find something first, and 10 days after the women disappeared, they got their answer.
About 50 meters off the Pianista trail, a local video blogger that had joined the search found a plastic bag from a local supermarket with snack wrappers inside. Next to it was a shoe, with a long blonde hair attached. Both of the girls had long blonde hair, so he immediately delivered these items to SINAPROC, and – of course – posted a video about his find on YouTube. Initial comments from law enforcement about this find were optimistic.
But, then something really strange happened. a few days later, the SINAPROC General Director told the press that the shoe never existed, and the plastic bag had nothing to do with the missing women. This was a weird backtrack from their initial comments. People started speculating that the video blogger might have planted the evidence.
But much later, it came to light that SINAPROC lost track of the supermarket bag. When it eventually reached a lab for testing, its handling hadn’t been properly logged, making it impossible to test it for fingerprints accurately. It’s not clear what happened to the shoe, but it seems like it was never tested, and we can maybe assume that it was lost as well.
That was just one of many, many missteps SINAPROC and the local police department made during this investigation. One local referred to their search efforts as a total mess. After searching the wilderness for about 10 days, the authorities seemed stumped. The General Director told the press: “We have never lost a single person on this trail. We’ve always found them.”
The investigation needed new perspective and energy. So On April 22nd, about twenty days after Kris and Lisanne disappeared, both of those arrived when public prosecutor Betzaïda (bet-sah-EE-dah) Pittí took over. She took one look at the facts of this case, and made a bombshell statement. She said that she was pivoting away from search and rescue, and focused on a criminal investigation. She believed something horrible and intentional may have happened to these girls. This shift marked the beginning of two opposing theories about what happened. One theory is taken by Panamanian police, and the other theory is taken by the Dutch authorities that launched their own investigation. Either this was a wilderness accident. Or foul play.
Pittí considered everything from murder to kidnapping to human and even organ trafficking as she re-interviewed witnesses, and raided properties around Boquete searching for evidence. But even though she had this idea that someone may be responsible for the girl's disappearance, she didn’t have any physical evidence that suggested that. That is, until June 13th, 6 weeks after their disappearance
On June 13 a sopping wet backpack was found near a river in Alto Romeo, a 14 hour hike into the Panamanian Jungle. Inside were two bras neatly folded towards the top. Two pairs of sunglasses. A water bottle. Some cash. And a passport that belonged to Lisanne Froon. It wasn’t…much. And it definitely showed that the girls only intended to be gone for part of the day. It was a bit strange, police thought, that the key to their room wasn’t inside of the backpack, and one of the girls passports was missing.
But they were also a bit relieved, because this proved girls had been in the area, some how making it to this treacherous part of the jungle. the searchers rummaged around the bag a bit more, and that’s when they found what may be the two single most important pieces of evidence in the entire search. Two smart phones. And a digital camera.
Because Answers about what happened to these two women were on those devices.
ACT TWO
For the phone records, we’re relying mostly on a book published last year called STILL LOST IN PANAMA, by Christian Hardinghaus (KRIS-tee-ahn HAR-ding-house) and Annette Nenner (ah-NET-teh NEN-ner). The authors claimed to have had access to the complete investigative and court files from Panamanian and Dutch authorities. After pouring over the research, Some of what I’m going to read here contradicts some reporting done by Panamanian police, but if we can trust the authors at their word, which I think we can, this seems like the most reliable source for the raw phone data.
That said, the book was originally published in Dutch, so there could be some information that got muddled in translation.
On April 1, the day the women started their hike, Kris’s phone showed a call to 112- an emergency line in the Netherlands at 4:39 PM. Lisanne’s phone dials the same number soon after.
It’s important to note that there is no cell phone reception on the Pianista trail, or on any of the trails outside Boquete. So the phone records only provide a record of activity on the phones, they do not provide any useful location information. Calls were attempted, but none were able to connect.
The timing of the initial emergency call was around when it would have started getting dark in the jungle. When other hikers re-created what they knew of Lisanne and Kris’s route, Judging on where the backpack was found, they didn’t feel lost at this point in their hike. They were able to get back to where they started relatively easily. So It’s possible that the women left the trail, or were unable to get home for some other reason, like if they had been injured, or if there was a third party with them preventing them from doing so.
There was a 12 minute gap between the two first two emergency calls, and some people feel like that rules out a serious injury or panic, but not the idea of someone else being there. If the women realized they couldn’t trust someone they were with, maybe they were making these calls in secret.
After the initial emergency calls failed to connect, both phones were powered off at the same time: 5:52 PM, and remained off for about 13 hours.
The next day, both phones attempted the same emergency call at different times in the morning. Then, a feature on Kris’s PIN-protected iPhone was activated which allowed access to more apps without inputting the password. Then Kris’s phone remained off for the rest of the day.
Lisanne’s phone, however, turned on and off a few more times for emergency calls throughout the day. After it was powered on at 4:19 PM, it stayed on for the next 15 hours. But The only time it was used was to check a weather app in the middle of the night.
That night, back in Boquete, missing person’s reports were filed for the women.
The next day, April 3rd, Lisanne’s phone was powered off when it reached 1% battery at 7:36 AM. Kris’s phone was turned on to dial emergency numbers a few times that morning, then immediately turned off. At 3:59 PM, it was powered on again to access the address book contact for their host mother Marjolein, but no call was attempted.
Kris accessing her host mother’s contact, without calling it, makes the most sense, at least to me, if she were showing the number to someone else. But As far as we know, Marjolein’s phone records were never cross-referenced to see if someone did contact her around the same time the contact was accessed.
At that time, Marco said he was searching the forest for the women on his own, after the SINAPROC officials were summoned to prepare for the Dutch ambassador.
The following day, on April 4, Lisanne’s phone fully ran out of battery after being turned on at 4:50 PM. It is never recharged. Kris’s phone turns on a few times, but there is no activity.
After this point, phone activity slows way down. Kris’ phone turns on a few more times, for a few seconds. The correct PIN was entered for the last time on April 5. After that, it’s turned on several more times, but according to STILL LOST IN PANAMA, no pin is entered. The Daily Beast reported that there were 77 different attempts with an incorrect PIN, but I think they may be mistaken. Remember, Kris turned on a setting where certain apps could be used without a pin.
Here’s what I find really strange about this part. According to digital forensic analysts, Kris’s phone was powered on and off so quickly, she couldn't have checked for a signal. At best, she got a glance of the home screen, displaying the date and time.
Kris’ phone was powered on for the last time on April 11, after four days without any phone activity. And A few hours after the phone turned off, the video blogger came upon the plastic bag and shoe. But because we don’t have any location data from Kris’s phone, we don’t know how close it was to wherever those items were found.
Now, I will add The activity on the phone April 11 is a little confusing. According to STILL LOST IN PANAMA, digital forensic analysts see that “11 new log files and system files were created between 10:51 AM and 11:56 AM.” And The dates and times of log files from April 6 are also manipulated during this time. All this was done without entering a PIN, so we can’t really be sure that it was the girls doing this. I don’t have much more information on these files other than that, It’s not clear what application activity was going on to change these files, or why the digital analyst couldn’t harvest more information.
But According to the LOST IN PANAMA authors, this “log file” activity could have occurred two ways. A user could be using a function that Kris allowed to be accessed without a pin, which included taking photos, the flashlight, timer and playing music downloaded on the phone. Another option is that the phone was being manipulated via external hardware, ie a “jailbreak.”
But after this very confusing iphone activity, the phone was powered off and never turned back on until it was in the hands of Panamanian authorities.
So maybe they were at a loss after looking at the phone. Were the girls in danger? Were they hurt? If the women were lost and alone in the jungle, it’s a little hard to buy that they kept their phones off all night that first night. Kris in particular had a decent amount of battery, and if they were in dire trouble, would they have tried to call emergency services or their host more? It didn’t seem like the saving phone battery was a huge priority because Lisanne kept the (useless) wifi signal on her phone, which leeched a significant amount of battery power.
But it brings up the question, were they trying to hide the phone from someone. Someone they ran into who had bad intentions. Well, investigators hoped that the digital camera they found would help answer these questions.
The camera contained images from the entire trip, but only the photos from the date of disappearance onward have been made public. Those can be broken into two groups: Day photos, taken on the trail April 1, the day the women disappeared. And night photos, taken in the very early morning hours of April 8.
There are about a dozen day photos. At first glance, they look like typical tourist hiking photos. Most of them are of Kris’ back, as she ostensibly hikes ahead of Lisanne on the trail. There are a few selfies of both women, one toward the start of the trail, and a few from the peak. They move quickly through the selfies at the top, taking 8 photos in less than 2 minutes, all in slightly different locations. In the selfies, the women make a cheesy, excited “thumbs up” gesture, they seem to be having a really good time, there’s nothing concerning about these ‘day photos’. Until you get to the last few.
The final “day” photos confirm that the women did indeed continue past the end of the trail and down the more treacherous side of the mountain. Which, at this point, authorities did figure.
These photos had two major contradictions from the witness statements about April 1. First, the timestamps on the photos didn’t line up with the timeline witnesses presented. According to the camera, the women were on the trail roughly two hours earlier than witnesses claimed. There’s no reason to think that the timestamp on the camera was inaccurate. The clothes the women had on in the photos also didn’t align with witness descriptions. Could it have been that the witnesses saw other white, blonde haired travellers that day?
The last daytime photo from April 1 shows Kris crossing a streambed, and there’s something about her that doesn’t seem right. She’s grimacing at the camera. and Some people say she looks scared.
That photo is numbered within the digital camera as 508. The next photo, which is the first of the night series shot early on April 8, is number 510. Photo number 509 is missing, the photo that bridges Kris looking scared and the photos taken a week later, after the women had traveled miles into the jungle.
Forensic experts searched for signs of any data related to this missing photo, and found that its disappearance was not consistent with the photo being deleted manually on the camera, or with some kind of system malfunction. Even using a data recovery program, no traces of data about this photo could be found.
The only way for that to happen would be for someone to manually remove the data after the fact, using outside hardware/software. Speculation on this is all over the place, and There’s no way to determine when this happened.
Now, the night photos.
All 90-ish photos taken on April 8th were taken within a few feet of each other in a steep jungle. Some photos were taken just a few seconds apart (probably as quickly as possible) and others have a gap of 15 minutes or more between them.
All the photos were taken with a flash, and the majority showed the dark night sky, raindrops, and whatever vegetation was within reach of the flash. Weather records show rain in the early morning hours of April 8, so this confirms that the camera’s date and time functions were accurate.
The vegetation definitively confirms that the photos were taken on the treacherous side of the Pianista trail. Based on the landmarks, guides in Boquete think that the women were on the bank of a strong tributary of the same river where the backpack was found
Some of the moss appears matted down, suggesting that there is some foot traffic in the area – the women were on or near a trail. There are a few other indications of man-made structures, but they’re very hard to see in the poorly lit photos. There are a few lines that could be cables making up a monkey bridge crossing a river.
A few of the photos have more significant subjects. One shows a few sticks with pieces of brightly-colored plastic tied to them on a large, flat boulder. Experts speculate that this was the women’s attempt to create a marker, for themselves and for rescuers. They also used toilet paper to spell out something (maybe an arrow or SOS) and put something reflective near the letters to hopefully catch the eye of an aerial rescuers.
Another photo is a closeup of tangled, light blonde hair believed to be Kris’. Some think that the photographer meant to record an injury but others believed that Kris may have been photographed postmortem.
Honestly, the photo really is just hair – it’s impossible to say definitively that it’s even Kris. But there is one thing I find really bizarre about this photo: it doesn’t look like the subject of this photo has spent days living rough in the rainy Jungle. The hair, whoever’s it is, is a little messy, but it’s clean and very dry.
The photos are incredibly haunting, but they don’t hold any obvious answer as to what happened to them. There’s no mysterious third person in any of the photos, at least not that I see or that any investigator saw. So authorities were left to try and guess why they had been taken. I will add here that when Dutch authorities got the camera, they noticed that some of the photos had been altered, but the panamanian authorities said it was just them trying to brighten some of the photos.
So The simplest explanation they came up with is that the women weren’t paying attention to what they were shooting, they were just using the flash to get the attention of nearby rescuers, illuminate the pitch-dark jungle, or to scare off a predator. Though there is no predator found in any of the photos and wouldn’t you have tried to flash right into its eyes?
But forensic photography analysts, and wilderness survival experts, think that the photos were taken intentionally. When looking at the photos in chronological order, they create a 360 degree view of a location.
It seems like the photos could be meant to record a significant location. Because Kris appears incapacitated in the photo that could be of her hair, some wonder if Lisanne took the photos in an attempt to record the location of her injured, or dead, friend.
But it still didn’t answer the question of where were the girls now? And if these photos held any clues, did it mean that one of them, Kris, had passed away.
Well. 6 weeks after the discovery of the phones and camera, authorities got their answer
BREAK 2
Just when the searchers thought they’d never discover another trace of the girls, a few locals from the Ngobe tribe contacted Marco, who contacted the police. They had found something.
The exact location of the find wasn’t recorded, but near the riverbank of the Rio Culebra that runs through the jungle near Alto Romeo, the same River the backpack was found near. they found 33 bone fragments and a woman’s shoe that still had a foot intact inside of it. The foot would later be confirmed as Lisanne’s. They also found a pair of jean shorts, belonging to Kris.
Although officials confirmed the remains belonged to Kris and Lisanne, they didn’t provide many answers about what happened to them. The remains didn’t hold many clues, they said. The only really definitive information was that Lisanne’s foot was broken sometime while she was still alive, but it’s not clear if this was a stress fracture from lots of walking, or a sudden injury from a fall. From there, the results just got more confusing.
The remains were in various states of decomposition. A fragment of Kris’s rib was bleached by the sun, which made it seem like her body had decayed long before Lisannes, which still had some skin attached to the bones. Experts didn’t agree on whether the remains showed signs of natural decomposition or human intervention. And reports differed on whether the bones showed signs of animal activity.
But here is what we learned from this new Dutch book that came out that looked at all of the evidence. They say that we could have learned more from these remains, but the Panamanian authorities severely mishandled them. First, they never took samples of the soil on and near the remains, which would have provided some insight if the remains were ever moved.
Also, and I could not believe what I was reading when I saw this, there were 30 unidentified fingerprints found on the girls backpacks. Panamanian authorities never made print logs, so we will never know who these prints belonged to. I mean think about your backpack, have 30 separate people touched it? That feels like a lot of people, and it would be nice to have confirmation who they were.
After the digital evidence was processed, the Panamanians and the Dutch were split on how to proceed with the investigation. The Dutch investigators, and the women’s families, remained convinced that the women were the victim of a crime. Why was their call log so weird? Why were there so many fingerprints on their bag? And one thing that Kris’s dad REALLY couldn’t figure out, but why would the girls have removed their bras and folded them neatly inside of their backpack? Who does that while hiking?
But at the end of August, a little over a month after the backpack was discovered, Pittí recommended closing the case. She said she had come to a conclusion on what had happened. The girls….had fallen off a monkey bridge into the river where their remains were found.
What? No. The families did not buy this theory for a single second, and they submitted legal requests for her to reconsider.
Pittí refused. Instead, she presented Lisanne’s parents with their daughter’s remains on September 24. It should have been her 23rd birthday.
ACT THREE
Unfortunately for the girl's parents, they were never really given any more information on what happened to their daughters other than the monkey bridge theory. So what I want to do here is walk through a few other theories that have arisen over time.
Starting with the foul play theory.
In general, there’s an argument that the evidence, and how it was uncovered, indicates some kind of cover-up. The Panamanian investigation might have just been sloppy, but there are areas where some people think it crossed the line into intentional misdirection and deceit.
Independent investigators and journalists, including the authors of STILL LOST IN PANAMA, uncovered multiple leads that the Panamanians failed to pursue, including several sightings of a red pick-up truck on the Pianista trail the day the women disappeared. We don’t know who was driving that car or what they were doing, and we probably never will. But these were locals that were asked and they knew the area well, and to them, this pickup truck seemed out of place
Then, there’s the mishandling – or complete disregard – for almost all the important physical evidence, from the plastic bag to the shoe to Lisanne’s backpack. None of those items were treated with proper chain of evidence protocol, making it impossible to test them for any possible suspect fingerprints and DNA. The good condition of the items in the backpack, after they were supposedly knocked around in a river, has raised the suspicion that it could have been planted.
Then there’s the manipulation of the digital evidence: the revision of the phone activity data on April 6, the manipulation of some of the photos, and the missing photo numbered 509. This could have been done by a savvy perpetrator trying to hide their tracks, but that begs the question why this person would bother, when they could have simply gotten rid of this evidence.
The other possibility: someone in the Panamanian government or law enforcement decided to alter the evidence. And that specifically begs the question, was there something in photo 509 that the Panamanian authorities didn’t want anyone to see?
I’ll add here that Tourism accounts for 18% of Panama’s GDP. Boquete’s entire economy depends on adventure tourism. Murdered tourists would be very bad for business. A narrative about two women who didn't follow safety directives and decided to hike the trail alone is a much safer narrative for the tourism economy. And so, some argue that authorities would have a strong motivation to cover up any criminal activity that would be dangerous to tourists.
But… what exactly might they have been trying to cover up?
The more outlandish theories involve the drug cartel, organ and human trafficking. That probably sounds pretty out there, but locals do say that they know the Pianista and other remote trails around Boquete are secretly used to transport “illegal substances” though they didn’t expand on what those substances are. If Kris and Lisanne encountered something like that on the backside of the trail, they could have been in serious danger.
And this is something that I found really upsetting but also really telling, One forensic pathologist who handled the women’s remains for the Panamanian investigation claimed that the bones looked like they’d gone through the process of organ harvesting. He would know – earlier in his career he helped close down illegal clinics who drained bodies, removed the organs, and then dismembered the remaining tissue so completely, they could never be fully recovered. He brought up the fact that Less than 2% of both women’s bodies were ever found, which is kind of a signature move in organ harvesting in the area.
There’s also the theory, under the foul play umbrella, that says this wasn’t a criminal organization, but one, singular bad actor.
There are many suspects, but the most popular are two of the local guides who were involved in searching for the women. We’re using only their first names: Marco, and Plinio (PLEE-nee-oh).
Other locals who suspected Marco said he had a reputation for flirting with young tourists, and even bathing alongside them in the hot springs. As the rumor goes, Marco offered to guide Kris and Lisanne up the Pianista, all the way to his property in Alto Romero, and the women declined his offer. So, Marco followed the women up the trail before assaulting them and forcing them out to his property in Alto Romero, which is where their backpack and remains were found.
The next day, Marco lied about bringing SINAPROC officials on a search; he really spent hours on the trail alone, covering his tracks. Later, he murdered Kris and Lisanne and dismembered their bodies. When Marco got worried that the investigation was getting too close to him, he altered the evidence on the phones and camera and planted the backpack. Then, he planted the remains too – and led the search parties that found them. That way he’d never really be a suspect
There’s no evidence to support this rumor. No witnesses saw Marco on the trail the day the women disappeared. Marco would later go on to claim he never even met the women, that them turning down his offer was just a rumor and that the strawberry farm tour was arranged through an intermediary. Which is kind of a strange pivot, especially when you think about how much effort he put into finding two girls he had never even met.
It’s pretty odd that all the SINAPROC officials Marco rounded up himself for a search had to abandon the effort all of a sudden to prepare for the arrival of the Dutch ambassador. That account actually isn’t publicly backed up by SINAPROC, and it’s honestly just weird. Why would the Dutch ambassador show up after the women had been missing less than 24 hours?
It’s also really coincidental that Marco was part of the group that found the girls’ remains. Marco wasn’t present for every discovery, but remains were only found by his Alto Romero neighbors – never by investigators.
Marco, to this day, denies all these accusations. He says he was among the most experienced and reliable guides in Boquete, and his residence in Alto Romero made him the best candidate to lead searches for the remains in that area. And for what it’s worth, the Dutch authors of LOST IN PANAMA unequivocally believe in his innocence – but, editors note they also needed his support to write their book.
Although the evidence holds plenty of confusing indicators of a coverup, and leaves lots of space for speculation about foul play, the majority of the experts who look at the evidence arrive at the same conclusion as the Panamanian investigators: Kris and Lisanne died after getting lost in the wilderness, and suffering a fatal accident, likely a fall into the river. I mean, after all, when they were searching the area around the monkey bridge where they believe the girls would have fallen, they did find bones of other people. It seems like it was an incredibly dangerous bridge that other people had died from falling off of.
There are many variations, but in a wilderness accident scenario, their final days could have played out something like this:
On the first day, they strayed off the trail for some reason. Although the trail itself was treacherous, it seems like it’s hard to get lost, and pretty well trafficked. If the women disappeared and no one saw them, they must have left the trail. Maybe they saw something that scared them, or they just wanted to keep going.
Once off the trail, they got lost. That’s when they attempted the emergency calls. A survivalist expert suspects that without a trail, they might have tried following a river. This can be a good strategy, but it was the wrong one in this jungle. They probably ended up trapped in the heavy vegetation along the river, unable to move up the steep terrain to a higher elevation.
They would have been forced to drink water from the river, which probably meant they consumed microorganisms that made them sick. That, combined with lack of food, would have left them physically and mentally exhausted in a matter of hours. From that point on, it would have been really hard to make good decisions.
Still, based on their phone activity, they survived for several days. The night the photos were taken, it was raining heavily for the first time. This could have caused a flash flood, surprising the women in the middle of the night. They might have attempted a dangerous river crossing on a monkey bridge, and Kris could have fallen. Lisanne, in an effort to record Kris’ location, took all the photos. Lisanne could have left Kris’s shorts on the riverbank as another marker. Then, she continued on her own, taking Kris’s phone with her.
The monkey bridge is part of the trail. Even though the crossing might have killed Kris, it meant that the women managed to find the trail again. Lisanne probably continued on the trail as best she could. But she was weak, and traumatized from leaving her friend behind and took all of those photos to remember where she left her. When she came to another bridge crossing, she couldn’t make it. She fell, possibly breaking her foot, and couldn’t go any further. She turned on Kris’s phone one last time, but it still didn’t have a signal. She eventually died in the river, her remains getting mixed in with her friend’s as they floated down from upstream.
But there are a lot of people who don’t believe this. One forensic pathologist who worked on the early search said that bones that fall into turbulent water tend to have breaks in certain places, like the pelvis. And while there weren’t many of the girls bones left, there was a section of pelvis found that didn’t have the breaks that the pathologist said they would have. This was not the pelvis of someone who fell into the water.
We will most likely never have a definitive answer on what happened to these girls, who were just taking a vacation of a lifetime. The accident theory is the official cause of death now, though I must say, something about that doesn’t sit right with me.
I felt like when I was going through the research on this case, I kept catching glimpses of a monster in the jungle. One that almost existed in between the lines of the text I was reading. Every time a call was placed, I wondered if it was done in secret. I felt like he was somewhere out of sight when Kris grimaced at the camera. Maybe where she could see but I couldn’t. And maybe, just maybe, his fingerprints are all over the backpack. But all other physical evidence of this monster seems to have been washed away in the volatile panamanian jungle.
But what do you guys think. Please, I love hearing your break downs of these cases. You guys put stuff together in interesting ways that I don’t always think of, and I know we have a lot of experts in different fields that listen and I LOVE hearing your analysis.
That is all I have for you in this weeks edition of dark summer here at heart starts pounding. Next week we are going to be heading down a slightly lighter yet very terrifying path of abandoned amusement parks. The very dark stories of WHY they became abandoned, and the ghosty stories of what goes on there now. You wont want to miss it.
And until then, stay curious OoooOOoooooOOO